nvflashk - Flash any BIOS to NVIDIA GPUs - Safe board ID bypass up to 4xxx series

[FoulOnWhite]

Yes I'm a noob please forgive me for my noob question
I have a MSI GT 77 HX (laptop) with a 4090 what could be my options when it comes to flashing or modifying the 4090 vbios etc and In the future if the 4090 TI laptop comes out could I flash the 4090 TI to this gpu?

Thanks in advance!

Imo been as it is a laptop, i would leave it as it is. The cooling will not be as good as a desktop card. Also i don't think you will turn it into a Ti with a bios flash

 

[kefi]

@kefi Congrats on world record #1 for 3D Mark Solar Bay.

I think next step is seeing you get into LN cooling

Thank you! Yes, LN2 is something I will eventually get into. Probably will have a dedicated bench where I can quick disconnect liquid blocks and do LN2 shit, got an entire office to myself, why not

 

[janos666]

I "successfully" flashed my Gigabyte RTX3080 10Gb WaterForce EK Rev1 (2x8 PIN power) with the air-cooled sibling (3x8 PIN power) in hopes to get an increased power budget. I picked the latest image file by compilation date, so it's probably Rev2 or Rev3. (Now that I thought about this, I could have picked a Rev1 image and then update it to ResizabeBar compatible with the manufacturer update tool after crossflashing. Ahh, well...) The display outputs are the same on both.

After reboot, my motherboard is stuck with the VGA LED lit up. It doesn't boot.
It will be tricky to get out of this because everything is watercooled (CPU and VGA in the same loop), so I can't just move this card to the secondary slot.
Would I be able to reflash the card if I placed the bricked card into another motherboard with a CPU that has an iGPU ("hanging in the air" without dismantling the water loop)? I happen to have a skeleton PC from crypto mining (I sold all the VGA cards but not the board+CPU+RAM+PSU and the PCI-e risers that would fit between the watered MB and the watered VGA without dismantling...).
Errr... Which PSU should power the riser (the same as the 2x8 PIN or the one that powers the "guest" motherboard)?

 

[OneMoar]

I "successfully" flashed my Gigabyte RTX3080 10Gb WaterForce EK Rev1 (2x8 PIN power) with the air-cooled sibling (3x8 PIN power) in hopes to get an increased power budget. I picked the latest image file by compilation date, so it's probably Rev2 or Rev3. (Now that I thought about this, I could have picked a Rev1 image and then update it to ResizabeBar compatible with the manufacturer update tool after crossflashing. Ahh, well...) The display outputs are the same on both.

After reboot, my motherboard is stuck with the VGA LED lit up. It doesn't boot.
It will be tricky to get out of this because everything is watercooled (CPU and VGA in the same loop), so I can't just move this card to the secondary slot.
Would I be able to reflash the card if I placed the bricked card into another motherboard with a CPU that has an iGPU ("hanging in the air" without dismantling the water loop)? I happen to have a skeleton PC from crypto mining (I sold all the VGA cards but not the board+CPU+RAM+PSU and the PCI-e risers that would fit between the watered MB and the watered VGA without dismantling...).
Errr... Which PSU should power the riser (the same as the 2x8 PIN or the one that powers the "guest" motherboard)?

is that not a dual bios card?
flip switch to other postion
boot up
flip switch back to trashed bios

reflash correct bios

done

 

[janos666]

If only... I see zero visual or written indication of it being dual-bios. Everything decided to break down around me at the same time (I can't access the file server from my laptop where
I saved the backup and the server machine refuses to mount a FAT32 formatted pendrive... it's almost Ragnarok here...), so I am still working on the riser solution.

 

[OneMoar]

If only... I see zero visual or written indication of it being dual-bios. Everything decided to break down around me at the same time (I can't access the file server from my laptop where
I saved the backup and the server machine refuses to mount a FAT32 formatted pendrive... it's almost Ragnarok here...), so I am still working on the riser solution.

id have a hard time beliving that a top end card like that doesn't have a bios switch

its a tiny little micro switch usually on the top edge of the pcb or by the io plate / power connectors

 

[janos666]

Well if Gigbyte employees weren't smoking some poisonous knock-off and used their top-end PCB for the EK WB SKU I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Instead they used the 2x8 PIN PCB for the "really water cooled" SKU (and pumped out 3x8 PIN SKUs with air coolers). It's supposed to be limited to 370W but it never drow more than 350W (but throttles).
No, I checked again, no visible switch. No mention of it on Giga's website. And I only had to flash once to enable ResizableBar.

 

[OneMoar]

Well if Gigbyte employees weren't smoking some poisonous knock-off and used their top-end PCB for the EK WB SKU I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Instead they used the 2x8 PIN PCB for the "really water cooled" SKU (and pumped out 3x8 PIN SKUs with air coolers). It's supposed to be limited to 370W but it never drow more than 350W (but throttles).
No, I checked again, no visible switch. No mention of it on Giga's website. And I only had to flash once to enable ResizableBar.

pretty sure that model is a reference pcb with a block on it then
explains the lower power limits and brickage

you should be-able to get the bios off gigabytes site tho or from the vgabios db here

 

[janos666]

I managed to flash the backup to it. I will test if the driver works and may be try an older XTREME bios while it's still vivisected.
I doubt it's full reference PCB. It has custom LED controller and water leakage detection, 2x HDMI 2.1 + 1 x HDMI 2.0, etc (but who knows without disassembling...?).

Edit: Strange. Looks like the earliest XTREME (aircooled) bios is limited to 350W but all the rest is good for up to 450W.

By the way, I didn't have to enable CSM to boot the B450+Athlon system with the iGPU and the bricked card and flash the brick.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

I "successfully" flashed my Gigabyte RTX3080 10Gb WaterForce EK Rev1 (2x8 PIN power) with the air-cooled sibling (3x8 PIN power) in hopes to get an increased power budget. I picked the latest image file by compilation date, so it's probably Rev2 or Rev3. (Now that I thought about this, I could have picked a Rev1 image and then update it to ResizabeBar compatible with the manufacturer update tool after crossflashing. Ahh, well...) The display outputs are the same on both.

After reboot, my motherboard is stuck with the VGA LED lit up. It doesn't boot.
It will be tricky to get out of this because everything is watercooled (CPU and VGA in the same loop), so I can't just move this card to the secondary slot.
Would I be able to reflash the card if I placed the bricked card into another motherboard with a CPU that has an iGPU ("hanging in the air" without dismantling the water loop)? I happen to have a skeleton PC from crypto mining (I sold all the VGA cards but not the board+CPU+RAM+PSU and the PCI-e risers that would fit between the watered MB and the watered VGA without dismantling...).
Errr... Which PSU should power the riser (the same as the 2x8 PIN or the one that powers the "guest" motherboard)?

I had a black screen on first try, i recovered using my onboard GPU. I have my GPU custom loop cooled too and did not have to move it.

 

[janos666]

I had a black screen on first try, i recovered using my onboard GPU. I have my GPU custom loop cooled too and did not have to move it.

My main PC doesn't have an iGPU (Ryzen 5800X).
---
I flashed an older XTREME (air) 450W image and the card seems to work (at least in this B450 board). Although GPU-Z now shows 3 power sources. Is it 2x8 + the PCI-e slot? I didn't check this before flashing.
And forget what I wrote about CSM. I checked and it is enabled (looks like the board is set to defaults, may be I reset it once in the past in case I sell it...).

EDIT:
Jesus... the card that was detectable in the B450 board is now invisible in the B550 board. There is picture, the resolution is 2160p64 (yes, 64 Hz) and Windows doesn't see any video adapters, nor it shows any "error" devices.
This is an Fx vbios according to the Gigabyte tool and my card was originally on F1x, so I guess the last thing I can still try is a somewhat never XTREME air vbios that registers as F1x. (It's crazy how untrivial it is to figure out what F version your card is and what F version a vbios is).

On top of that, I had a little water spillage (the pipe clamp wasn't properly fastened, so it didn't stand the disturbances) and the card went into the "water spillage detected" error state with the vbios intended for the air cooled cards, so the vbios must be somewhat generic.

 

[OneMoar]

My main PC doesn't have an iGPU (Ryzen 5800X).
---
I flashed an older XTREME (air) 450W image and the card seems to work (at least in this B450 board). Although GPU-Z now shows 3 power sources. Is it 2x8 + the PCI-e slot? I didn't check this before flashing.
And forget what I wrote about CSM. I checked and it is enabled (looks like the board is set to defaults, may be I reset it once in the past in case I sell it...).

EDIT:
Jesus... the card that was detectable in the B450 board is now invisible in the B550 board. There is picture, the resolution is 2160p64 (yes, 64 Hz) and Windows doesn't see any video adapters, nor it shows any "error" devices.
This is an Fx vbios according to the Gigabyte tool and my card was originally on F1x, so I guess the last thing I can still try is a somewhat never XTREME air vbios that registers as F1x. (It's crazy how untrivial it is to figure out what F version your card is and what F version a vbios is).

On top of that, I had a little water spillage (the pipe clamp wasn't properly fastened, so it didn't stand the disturbances) and the card went into the "water spillage detected" error state with the vbios intended for the air cooled cards, so the vbios must be somewhat generic.

no the antileak stuff is a fuction of the pump not the card there is a seperate ic for that
on gigabyte cards with gigabyte water blocks there is a i/c on the card that connects to the block with a two pin cable (pressure sensor)
this is entirely seperate from the vbios

make sure you are flashing the bios of something somewhat similar

same vram type at the minium

 

[Semik]

Hi kefi, actual ETA on nvflashhk with GUI? thx

 

[errymerry]

Hey All,

I was able to flash the EVGA 3080 Ti vbios to my ZOTAC 3080 Ti on water. The base boost clocks were higher and so was the reported wattage limit (400w) for the EVGA bios compared to my stock vbios of 350w. Although it doesn't seem to boost as high. The stock bios would routinely boost in game to around 1920-2010, whereas the EVGA would only boost to it's max 1800 stock boost frequency. It appears that it's voltage limited, with the flashed bios not exceeding 0.87mv under load compared to the stock ZOTAC which hits around 1.08mv. Is there anything I can do?

GPU-Z reports that the card is pulling 400w, but my wall outlet says its pulling 567w which is roughly the same as the stock ZOTAC vbios. so I'm thinking it's not actually pulling 400w.
From what I can tell there is not ability to modify core voltages in the bios? only though hw mods such as shunt modding is this correct?

Thanks!

 

[janos666]

So, I got the RTX3080 10Gb EK Rev1 working with a 450W limit VBIOS (using a later but not the latest version of XTREME VBIOS, presumably more closer in manufacturing dates) but the system shut down after a few seconds of FurMark (I wasn't even able to see the frequency / watt / volt readings before it happened to tell if I might gained anything) and it's stuck in a red LED flashing state now (I left it powered down for the night but it doesn't boot today).

Edit: Ahrg! It was the stupid water spillage detection again. I disconnected the detector connector from the PCB without disassembling the card and now it works. (I used up a lot of PCB cleaner liquid spray to no avail, I think some dust-like conductive material got stuck somewhere in the detection circuit.)

 

[yzonker]

Hey All,

I was able to flash the EVGA 3080 Ti vbios to my ZOTAC 3080 Ti on water. The base boost clocks were higher and so was the reported wattage limit (400w) for the EVGA bios compared to my stock vbios of 350w. Although it doesn't seem to boost as high. The stock bios would routinely boost in game to around 1920-2010, whereas the EVGA would only boost to it's max 1800 stock boost frequency. It appears that it's voltage limited, with the flashed bios not exceeding 0.87mv under load compared to the stock ZOTAC which hits around 1.08mv. Is there anything I can do?

GPU-Z reports that the card is pulling 400w, but my wall outlet says its pulling 567w which is roughly the same as the stock ZOTAC vbios. so I'm thinking it's not actually pulling 400w.
From what I can tell there is not ability to modify core voltages in the bios? only though hw mods such as shunt modding is this correct?

Thanks!

If your card is a 2x8 pin, then likely the 1st 8-pin will get duplicated as a 3rd causing power readings higher than reality. You can see this in GPUZ. At least that's the way a 3090 2x8pin behaves.

 

[kefi]

So, I got the RTX3080 10Gb EK Rev1 working with a 450W limit VBIOS (using a later but not the latest version of XTREME VBIOS, presumably more closer in manufacturing dates) but the system shut down after a few seconds of FurMark (I wasn't even able to see the frequency / watt / volt readings before it happened to tell if I might gained anything) and it's stuck in a red LED flashing state now (I left it powered down for the night but it doesn't boot today).

Edit: Ahrg! It was the stupid water spillage detection again. I disconnected the detector connector from the PCB without disassembling the card and now it works. (I used up a lot of PCB cleaner liquid spray to no avail, I think some dust-like conductive material got stuck somewhere in the detection circuit.)

Moisture detection circuits are STUPID sensitive and take F O R E V E R to stop complaining once they get wet. Don't get me started on how long it took for my home water heater to stop complaining post-install. Weeks. WEEKS.

 

[P4-630]

Anyone bought a "fake" RTX4090 yet?

 

[kefi]

Anyone bought a "fake" RTX4090 yet?

I don't understand that concern. Just take a pic of the card? like what? they all have serials by the PCIe slot, coolers generally aren't cross-compatible whatsoever, power configs are different (at least pre-12VHPWR), etc etc. What combo could we possibly fake?

Were people just using screenshots of GPU-Z to prove what card it was? Which is hilariously fakeable anyways?

I'm probably missing something here..

 

[janos666]

So, I am now on the F20 VBIOS but the Gigabyte tool refuses to update it to F21 for ResizableBar support. AUROS Engine detects the card as F20 but doesn't find any updates. Downloading and running the F21 (the official update from F20) update utility says the current VBIOS version can't be detected. The post-rebar dated VBIOS from the catalog doesn't work on this card.
Is my only alternative to ask someone with F21 or F11 on board to upload his ReBar-updated VBIOS?

By the way, GPU-Z shows 3x 8PIN rails, all with non-zero power readings (the card only has 2x 8PIN). My clock was much higher during FurMark than ever while the total power consumption was much lower than the assumed real power used because it read ~200W (during FurMark with almost maxed out boost frequency which was impossible with the default 350/370W power limit).
BUT... putting the card back to my B550 board, first the board complained about a non-UEFI compliant VGA. Then, after getting into Windows, the power limit seems to be 350W (the default of VBIOS) but the GPU clock during FurMark is lower than ever (so basically the same thing is happening that used to happen when I cross-flashed my Pascal card in the past between 2 and 3 8PIN SKUs).

It looks like a lot can get messed up with cross-flashing. I will try to CMOS-reset the B550 board and may be use DDU.

 

[kefi]

So, I am now on the F20 VBIOS but the Gigabyte tool refuses to update it to F21 for ResizableBar support. AUROS Engine detects the card as F20 but doesn't find any updates. Downloading and running the F21 (the official update from F20) update utility says the current VBIOS version can't be detected. The post-rebar dated VBIOS from the catalog doesn't work on this card.
Is my only alternative to ask someone with F21 on board to upload his VBIOS?

By the way, GPU-Z shows 3x 8PIN rails, all with non-zero power readings. My clock was much higher during FurMark than before while the total power consumption was much lower than the assumed power used because it read ~200W (during FurMark with almost maxed out boost frequency which was impossible with the default 350/370W power limit).
BUT... putting the card back to my B550 board, first the board complained about a non-UEFI compliant VGA. Then, after getting into Windows, the power limit seems to be 350W (the default of VBIOS) but the GPU clock during FurMark is lower than ever.

It looks like a lot can get messed up with cross-flashing. I will try to CMOS-reset the B550 board and may be use DDU.

Yes, things can get quite strange. The BIOS is not a simple set of clock speed limits and voltages and timings, it also includes many scripts and other payloads that configure hardware monitors and other low level hardware features that aren’t necessarily the GPU itself and can differ from board to board.

I am trying to more fully reverse engineer the NVIDIA BIOS spec by heuristically analyzing the difference between many BIOS now that I have the table names, locations and sizes worked out (but not the contents). I know, for example, there is space to install I2C initialization scripts. Being able to modify those scripts would be cool asf.

These manufacturers have tools to do this. I just gotta recreate them.

 

[janos666]

So, I found F21 and F11 VBIOS in the catalog (I opened the pages of all cataloged XTREME VBIOS and realized the F version is noted in their description). Both work on my card. I kept the F11 because that's probably the closest to my original (also labeled F11 after the ReBar update). The motherboard no longer complained about UEFI compliance (I guess that came up because I didn't connect any displays to the card before powering it up).

But... FurMark clocks are ~1400 with the air-cooler VBIOS set to 450W and ~1500 with the original VBIOS (max=default=370W which translates to 350W actual readings under FurMark and demanding game scenes). Same as Pascal cross-flash between 2x and 3x 8PIN PCBs (the actual result is worse...).
So, @kefi, you should reconsider that note in the opening post about Ampere cards auto-detecting the number of PCI-e power connectors. This clearly isn't the case with the Gigabyte RTX3080 10Gb card (so possibly other similar cards have it fixed in their VBIOS as well).

Although I have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on while the card had the F20 VBIOS and was connected to the B450 board through a riser. I started FurMark with the same settings and saw ~1900 MHz with ~200W total board power readings. Maybe FurMark couldn't fully utilize the card through a PCI-e Gen1 x1 link. I assumed that's irrelevant with this synthetic load but that's the only thing I can think about. I should have checked the fps counter as well before getting happy about the clock.

 

[MightyBear]

Hey how is it looking with "noob" friendly app?

 

[Panameras918]

Nice work, thanks!

 

[Vitalii89]

@kefi awesome job man, it's a game changer honestly !

I have an idiot unstable Gigabyte 3080 Aorus XTREME 10GB GPU, which has some stability issues and need a manual GPU clock adjustment.

Do you plan to write an bios editor as well? As I would like to hard code the working frequencies right in the bios for a finally stable card.

P.S. Mine has a problem with boosting over the top and then crashes.
I know for a fact that this is not a problem with voltages or power related, cause if I leave it as is from the factory it will definitely crash when goes too high with the boost clock... But if I lower the clock manually by 50 MHz, I can also easily apply the undervolt, and it is stable.


Thank you !