Monday, August 21st 2023
NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools
You can now play with NVIDIA GeForce graphics card BIOS like it's 2013! Over the last decade, NVIDIA had effectively killed video BIOS modding by introducing BIOS signature checks. With GeForce 900-series "Maxwell," the company added an on-die security processor on all its GPUs, codenamed "Falcon," which among other things, prevents the GPU from booting with unauthorized firmware. OMGVflash by Veii; and NVflashk by Kefinator (forum names), are two independently developed new tools that let you flash almost any video BIOS onto almost any NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, bypassing "unbreakable" barriers NVIDIA put in place, such as BIOS signature checks; and vendor/device checks (cross-flashing). vBIOS signature check bypass works up to RTX 20-series "Turing" based GPUs, letting you modify the BIOS the way you want, while cross-flashing (sub-vendor ID check bypass) works even on the latest RTX 4090 "Ada."
The tools bring back the glory days of video BIOS modding using utilities the likes of NiBiTor (now discontinued). The possibilities of such utilities are endless. You can, for example, flash the BIOS of a premium factory-overclocked graphics card onto your close-to-MSRP graphics card. For cards up to RTX 20-series "Turing," in addition to clock speeds, BIOS modding lets you raise power limits, which have a more profound impact on performance, as they increase boost frequency residency. BIOS modding also gives you control over the graphics card's voltages, cooling performance, and fan-curve, so you can make your card quieter, as long as your cooler can keep the GPU away from thermal limits (which you can adjust, too). With cross-flashing (without modifying the BIOS or disturbing its signature), you are now able to restore a voltage of 1.1 V on your RTX 4090 GPU, if you've got one of the newer models, which ticks at 1.07 V only. You could also flash your FE with a custom-design vBIOS with high power limit, to go beyond NVIDIA's power limits.
OMGVflash author Veii posted a comprehensive thread on the TechPowerUp Forums, which announces the first public beta of the tool, its development history, usage instructions, and some troubleshooting support. Find the thread here. The author has expressed interest in working with TechPowerUp on publishing future versions.
NVflashk author Kefi posted a similar comprehensive thread on TechPowerUp Forums, which can be accessed here.
OMGVflash and NVflashk are independently developed of each other. We've hand-inspected the binary code of both tools and they are free of any viruses or trojans. There's only few code modifications to the original NVFlash tool, to activate the bypass. There's no additional malware payload or anything similar. The file sizes are identical to the unmodified files. VirusTotal also confirms that these patches are legit.
Tampering with the vBIOS will void your graphics card's warranty. As with all modding, graphics card BIOS modding is not without risk, and meant for power users. It is fairly easy to recover from a broken flash, as all current desktop processors come with iGPUs that you can boot from, so you could flash a working BIOS onto the bricked graphics card. Just do remember to back-up your BIOS. You can use either of these tools to extract your current BIOS, or better yet, use GPU-Z for the task.
TechPowerUp editor and author of GPU-Z, W1zzard, will be answering all your questions in the comments section of this post. He has extensive experience with vBIOS internals from his worth with GPU-Z and he has also developed a parser that decodes, processes and organizes the ROM files in our TechPowerUp GPU BIOS Database.
Update 16:44 UTC: Kefi is currently working on a GUI version that makes it easy to backup and flash the BIOS. You can also search our BIOS Collection from within the app and filter on various properties.
Sources:
OMGVflash by Veii, NVflashk by Kefi
The tools bring back the glory days of video BIOS modding using utilities the likes of NiBiTor (now discontinued). The possibilities of such utilities are endless. You can, for example, flash the BIOS of a premium factory-overclocked graphics card onto your close-to-MSRP graphics card. For cards up to RTX 20-series "Turing," in addition to clock speeds, BIOS modding lets you raise power limits, which have a more profound impact on performance, as they increase boost frequency residency. BIOS modding also gives you control over the graphics card's voltages, cooling performance, and fan-curve, so you can make your card quieter, as long as your cooler can keep the GPU away from thermal limits (which you can adjust, too). With cross-flashing (without modifying the BIOS or disturbing its signature), you are now able to restore a voltage of 1.1 V on your RTX 4090 GPU, if you've got one of the newer models, which ticks at 1.07 V only. You could also flash your FE with a custom-design vBIOS with high power limit, to go beyond NVIDIA's power limits.
NVflashk author Kefi posted a similar comprehensive thread on TechPowerUp Forums, which can be accessed here.
OMGVflash and NVflashk are independently developed of each other. We've hand-inspected the binary code of both tools and they are free of any viruses or trojans. There's only few code modifications to the original NVFlash tool, to activate the bypass. There's no additional malware payload or anything similar. The file sizes are identical to the unmodified files. VirusTotal also confirms that these patches are legit.
Tampering with the vBIOS will void your graphics card's warranty. As with all modding, graphics card BIOS modding is not without risk, and meant for power users. It is fairly easy to recover from a broken flash, as all current desktop processors come with iGPUs that you can boot from, so you could flash a working BIOS onto the bricked graphics card. Just do remember to back-up your BIOS. You can use either of these tools to extract your current BIOS, or better yet, use GPU-Z for the task.
TechPowerUp editor and author of GPU-Z, W1zzard, will be answering all your questions in the comments section of this post. He has extensive experience with vBIOS internals from his worth with GPU-Z and he has also developed a parser that decodes, processes and organizes the ROM files in our TechPowerUp GPU BIOS Database.
Update 16:44 UTC: Kefi is currently working on a GUI version that makes it easy to backup and flash the BIOS. You can also search our BIOS Collection from within the app and filter on various properties.
210 Comments on NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools
Does anyone know why the gpu clock doesn't go up and stay at 300?
I'm glad I managed to go back to the original bios and went back to raising the clock to 1770 normally
ddu was used, I reinstalled the driver, literally everything possible and with the mod bios the clock did not go up, it just returned to normal after putting the original bios
Do we think there are any particularly neutered + budget cards that are going to be uncorked to punch above their weight?
For example those mining specific cards www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/?mfgr=NVIDIA&generation=Mining%20GPUs&sort=released
I would love a budget upgrade from my 980 :lovetpu:
Both the tools, which I presume share almost the same hack do not work.
These guys, the authors, are they Chinese?
The RTX 2070 uses a TU106 chip and the 2080 uses a TU104 chip. They're completely different hardware-wise, and this wouldn't work even with the TU104 2070 Super regardless - the hardware is different. 2070S to 2080 is possible by means of bios chip replacement/force-flash + resistor mod, but is not guaranteed to work (2070S dies may be too defective). None can be upgraded to 2080S.
Flashing a Quadro-equivalent bios on the second bios of a dual-bios card would be awesome. Have both drivers installed and just flip the switch and boot up in Quadro mode for the rare occasion when something you need is paywalled behind a Quadro driver.
Edit: - and not all are the same.
www.techpowerup.com/257776/nvidia-rtx-2060-super-and-rtx-2070-super-chips-come-in-three-variants-each-flashing-possible
The 450W BIOS you're referring to is from the ASUS ROG card, right? I've got one, it's essentially a 4080 on a 4090 PCB and cooling assembly, and it's so large that it makes my E-ATX motherboard look small. I dunno. Even then, it wasn't necessary to even touch the power limiter so far.
I was not aware of the die difference in between the 2070s and 2070. I knew that there were few golden variants of the 2070 but misleading I was sure the whole 2070x up to the 2080x where sharing the same die with no difference.
Unfortunately I have no 2070s here with me to make the Radeon 9500 --> 9700 trick of that old good times