Attempting to OC an old GTX980 with the new UEFI patch

[d337z]

Hey all!
So, I've hit a bit of a snag here and was wondering if anyone could help me out. So, I'm broke (not asking for help with that) and can't afford to get a new GPU, so I've been using an old GTX980 that's served me well for many a year. The problem comes when I try to disable CSM on my overclocked card. I've modified the vBIOS with Maxwell BIOS Tweaker v1.36, but I've discovered a slight issue when doing so. When a modified vBIOS is installed, the NVidia Displayport 1.3 patcher (necessary to disable CSM and run PC in pure UEFI mode) refuses to patch the installed vBIOS. I can get around that by booting with a stock vBIOS, flashing the modified vBIOS and then running the patcher before restarting. The issue is that I lose any sort of HDMI sound capability which is necessary for my setup. When I try to UEFI patch the stock BIOS and then modify it with Maxwell BIOS Tweaker, the result is a corrupted vBIOS that won't even flash with the cert bypassed NVFlash.
Is there any way to produce a UEFI patched overclocked vBIOS/vUEFI to allow me to boot the system without CSM enabled so that I can have the best of both worlds here?
I've enclosed a read of my existing vBIOS, as it stands, with the patched UEFI mode.

Thank you all!

 

[damric]

A few questions. What is the scope of what you expect with overclocking as far as clocks, ect? Can this not be done with the stock firmware and using software like Afterburner?

If you are dead set on screwing with the firmware, it can be done with certain versions of nvflash once you have modded the tables with MBT. As far as modding those tables, do you know what you are doing? It's not for most people to stomach.

There's a few versions of nvflash that bypass certificates, ect. I can't remember off the top of my head but I am sure someone will link them here. Pretty sure they are hosted by TPU. Been a while since I messed with Maxwell firmware, but if you still need help I'll be available next week. You might have it figured out by then.

 

[Dr. Dro]

If you are broke and cannot afford a replacement, my most precious advice is do not stress a 10 year old graphics card further for some extra frames. The juice ain't worth the squeeze, and with aged caps, aged thermal pads, aged paste (if you haven't replaced these recently) - the risk of damage goes up dramatically, if you need to get something extra out of it, just stick to an official bios and undervolt the card a little.

 

[d337z]

A few questions. What is the scope of what you expect with overclocking as far as clocks, ect? Can this not be done with the stock firmware and using software like Afterburner?

If you are dead set on screwing with the firmware, it can be done with certain versions of nvflash once you have modded the tables with MBT. As far as modding those tables, do you know what you are doing? It's not for most people to stomach.

There's a few versions of nvflash that bypass certificates, ect. I can't remember off the top of my head but I am sure someone will link them here. Pretty sure they are hosted by TPU. Been a while since I messed with Maxwell firmware, but if you still need help I'll be available next week. You might have it figured out by then.

These settings (and even the vBIOS) work with my GPU. I've copied over every single number, meticulously, to the UEFI patched vBIOS. I've been using this overclock for over a year now and it works extremely well. But, unfortunately, I've found myself needing to disable CSM and I can't get the patched stock to work well with Maxwell BIOS Tweaker. As soon as a single number changes, it renders the vBIOS corrupted even in the eyes of those cert bypass versions.
And I'm not worried about corrupting a bios at the moment. I can recover it fairly quickly. But I need to overclock to get some games to work properly and this overclock really does the trick in pushing through some of the frame lag.
I really feel that this is a limitation in the Maxwell BIOS Tweaker software in how it handles the UEFI side of the vBIOS.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

NVIDIA Graphics Firmware Update Tool for DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 Displays

Download English (U.S.) drivers for NVIDIA hardware - , , ,

www.nvidia.com

 

[d337z]

Going back to what I said, that doesn't work with the overclocked versions and overclocking the patched stock doesn't seem to work correctly in Maxwell BIOS Tweaker once the card is placed into UEFI mode. So is there a way to make the two play nicely together?

 

[Testsubject01]

As a fellow torturer long term OC'er of a GTX 980, I would also not recommend squeezing it hard after all those years, IF you can't afford to lose it.
Re-balled mine 4x now since 2014, the solder joints will crack with high heat cycling.

Just clean it, repaste the GPU and get Afterburner, like previously mentioned.
Then try a mild OC (1300-1350 Mhz @ Core), which will already net the lions share of extra performance without unnecessary high heat or voltages.

Even, if you push it to its absolute limits, any Arc A770, RTX 4060 or RX 7600 Entry level card will outperform it at their stock settings.

 

[d337z]

I'm well aware of its limits and the stress that I'm putting on it. But that's not the issue at hand. I'm somewhat forced to do a BIOS mod on this card so that I can maintain it in Linux and Windows without having to reset it each time. The ASIC is good and I take care of the thermal paste regularly. As a matter of fact, I'm lucky if I ever see the fans spin up under normal usage (including gaming) as the usage tends to be low (Thank you DXVK and Vulkan in general).
So, any idea why the patch and the overclocks aren't playing nicely together? And why would UEFI mode only cause the audio to state that it's run out of resources and fail to initialize?

 

[Wumyg]

I believe I did this last year to my modded 980ti bios.

I used either "GOP Update and Extraction Tool (NVIDIA Only)" or "UBU Tool". I can't remember which.

Then flashed with nvflash64.exe "Modified Version by Joe Dirt Version 5.265.0"

After that the nvidia tool confirmed the update stuck, however I know nothing about CSM.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I believe I did this last year to my modded 980ti bios.

I used either "GOP Update and Extraction Tool (NVIDIA Only)" or "UBU Tool". I can't remember which.

Then flashed with nvflash64.exe "Modified Version by Joe Dirt Version 5.265.0"

After that the nvidia tool confirmed the update stuck, however I know nothing about CSM.


View attachment 361568

I've realized that the OP is leaving out information such as rest of system specs.

Have had a 980 and have a ti version. Both EVGA. The stock bios worked fine in UEFI mode, this is a motherboard switch, not the gpu. GPU supports both, albeit in the infancy era of UEFI.

I'm wondering if the board needs a flash rather than the card, but with limited information, who'd to just take guesses here.

If you have an EVGA card, you use precision X 16 for overclocking and over-volting. There's absolutely no reason to flash the bios on EVGA cards.