NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock Broken, vBIOS Modding and Crossflash Enabled by Groundbreaking New Tools

[Vya Domus]

DLSS3 uses hardware fourth generation tensor cores and Optical Flow Accelerator that do not exist on 3xxx series, it's not just software

Considering that their implementations are closed source we have no idea whatsoever if this really is true or not. My guess is that it more than likely isn't, there is nothing about frame interpolation that requires any kind of special hardware, computing motion vectors is something people have done for at least a decade on normal shaders and it's plenty fast.

I have been skeptical about Nvidia's claims ever since Remedy spiled the beans that the version of DLSS they used didn't even use the RT cores in Control. Intel's XeSS doesn't need ML accelerators either.

 

[W1zzard]

Does this mean I could flash a 3090 BIOS onto a 3080 Ti and unlock the extra CUDA Cores that were disabled?

No, core counts are not configured within the BIOS, but through a separate system called "fuses"

 

[Prima.Vera]

Thsts good news, however you need liquid cooling to really take advantage of those tools. Already my card goes into lower power due to high temps, so not going to help users with default cooling much.
Also, is it possible to modify the card description, ID, serial, etc, în order to fake it look like another card?

 

[Karti]

man...I honestly did not know Nvidia even (tried to) locked this out....what a crappy move.
has AMD locked this out as well?

Not only that

they also locked (still since i don't know if that will be supported now) CUSTOM vbioses

Maxwell 2.0 was the last gen - that i know - which allowed end user / customer to literary make their own vbios and flash it onto the card without any issue.

I still have files for my custom undervolted Titan X bios, which also gave me 0rpm fan mode etc

 

[JakoDel]

do they work on pascal cards? I'm broke af

 

[InVasMani]

I can't believe it took this long honestly. It'll be interesting to see where it leads with bios modders for certain.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

Thinking of flashing a 400w vbios to my 350w 3080ti. Maybe this weekend I'll try.

 

[HDBitdata]

Can you cross flash a Quadro Bios into a 3090 or 4090 card?

 

[Deleted member 218758]

Does this mean I could flash a 3090 BIOS onto a 3080 Ti and unlock the extra CUDA Cores that were disabled?

You can try
If NVIDIA's Bird falcon allows you with my Version - then that's a success.
But mind you the following:

You need to match the display-out most of the time.
I/O (Display) Matrix & Powerplugs , do adapt ~ usually also memory IC detection does adapt.
Yet you can easily find yourself in a situation of other Parts of the GPU not working.

If Falcon allows, then that's a yes.
It's not on nvflash to allow or prohibit that

Pascal (and pretty much Turing) will allow a "flash to whatever you want" mode.
Including everything under it will flash, as long as the Biosmod was correctly made and no checksums are broken (see Maxwell tweaker for example)
Good luck

 

[Nanochip]

Cease and desist coming soon? But the rabbit is out of the hat. This is excellent.

 

[Deleted member 218758]

Can you cross flash a Quadro Bios into a 3090 or 4090 card?

A little group tried to play with Volta and Engineering Cards.
Falcon itself refuses. Mostly due to a new vbios version.

If you can get the foundation on the ROM , lets say your Target Vendor Bios
And then utilize my tool to update - it will update the remain sections too and count as a full rebrand.
As for times at & before Pascal - yes, full access
Turing Half access,
Ampere and Ada - only signed bioses have full access ~ but pretty much every Boardpartners Bios is signed

ChipID rebrands, are difficult
It's not really nvflash's work to excecute such. It does forward to Flacon and from there the Topic is open ended.
Falcon's access, is Nvidia's proprietary and confidential information/tools/access.
Due to friendly reasons, i refuse to help on this part.
But nvflash won't be the reason why it fails. It will start executing and either finish or Falcon will say no.

Try and have fun.
Just if you have two NVIDIA cards ~ remember to start from Index 1,
If you recover with an AMD GPU, Index0 or no index at all ~ will be your target flash (recovery procedure).

 

[Jism]

man...I honestly did not know Nvidia even (tried to) locked this out....what a crappy move.
has AMD locked this out as well?

The only thing that was left was Morepowertool for the 6x00 series. Now the 7x00 series are completely locked out.

This is fantastic news. Many boards of Nvidia had hard caps of 200W or even lower. With this you can unlock it. New OC's incoming!

 

[asdkj1740]

any new bios tweaker for ampere and ada lovelace?

 

[Vipeax]

@Veii, for my understanding, is it similar to https://www.techpowerup.com/248769/...eries-fe-cards-to-be-flashed-with-custom-bios, but then with more checksums bypassed, but you will still be limited to a (signed) BIOS that was released by any given vendor at any point in time? Thus, a real custom bios is still not possible(?).

 

[Daven]

Which you still cannot, because the cores are disabled through on-die fuses. Unlocking through BIOS modding was possible on older ATI cards until they figured that using the BIOS to lock shaders is too easy to circumvent. It's how I got interested in the hardware scene over 20 years ago (ATI Radeon 9500 to 9700 mod, http://web.archive.org/web/20030118032341/http://www.maxdownloads.com/~ian/wizzard/)

Ahhh, those were the days. I once modded a 9800pro into a 9800xt back in 2003. I bought individual little copper heatsinks for each memory chip and a new cooler for the GPU. Tinkering like that is so much fun!

Edit: The copper heatsinks look very much like this..

 

[Jism]

@W1zzard What actually happened with Atitool and why is it even discontinued? I mean a "Atitool" as of today would be excellent. A build-in OC'ing tool to either find max mem or core - it was so simple and easy to use lol. Rebrand it, breath new life into it, it might be a big phat techpowerup Hit here.

 

[katzi]

Oh... That's got to be upsetting for Jensen. Oh well /s

 

[neatfeatguy]

Only flashing I ever did was on a bad GTX 285. BFG closed doors and this replacement they had just sent me crashed with everything I tried. It was either trash the card or do something extreme - I pulled the BIOS off my GTX 280, dropped it on the 285 and it worked. No more crashes, even ran the flashed 285 and the 280 in SLI for about two years. I haven't thought about flashing the BIOS on a GPU for years, never had another reason to do so. If the card works, no since in mucking around with it.

It's always interesting to read up on this stuff and it's good to see these locks can be bypassed now should folks feel the need to tinker. I do wonder, though, how many people are going to start coming around asking for help to fix bad BIOS changes/flashes....you know, more than they already for the fake cards they by off bad sites.

 

[dyonoctis]

Considering that their implementations are closed source we have no idea whatsoever if this really is true or not. My guess is that it more than likely isn't, there is nothing about frame interpolation that requires any kind of special hardware, computing motion vectors is something people have done for at least a decade on normal shaders and it's plenty fast.

I have been skeptical about Nvidia's claims ever since Remedy spiled the beans that the version of DLSS they used didn't even use the RT cores in Control. Intel's XeSS doesn't need ML accelerators either.

From what I've understood the benefits of AI hardware on consumer device is not about "computing stuff that cannot be done with regular hardware" but being more efficient at doing it, and not using compute ressources that could be used for something else.
While XeSS doesn't need the XMX units, even Wizzard found that the "non- native" XeSS wasn't equal when it comes to performance gain and visuals.
Remedy also eventually stopped using the "2.0 prototype" in favor of the Tensor core accelerated one.

For DLSS3 an Nvidia engineer came out and said that DLSS 3.0 can work on ampere...But the end result will not be as good, and seeing how people like to trash talk the current "ideal" implementation, they might have avoided a bullet. If it was even more glitchy and had a higher latency impact, forums dwellers would have never shut up about how laughable the tech is

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard What actually happened with Atitool and why is it even discontinued? I mean a "Atitool" as of today would be excellent. A build-in OC'ing tool to either find max mem or core - it was so simple and easy to use lol. Rebrand it, breath new life into it, it might be a big phat techpowerup Hit here.

I have something similar for internal use in my reviews, not enough time to polish, release and maintain

 

[Jism]

AMD version's is buggy. What might be stable in a compute based way of testing, can completely be unstable in games.

We had such good tools to our benefit in the past compared to now.

 

[xrli]

Will this work on Tesla and Quadro cards? If so this is going to be great!

 

[kefi]

Oh, cool! Thanks for the shoutout.

What I released is only the bypass itself - I'm working on a graphical user-friendly version of nvflash to release later this week.

 

[Tomorrow]

Great news for flashing but what i really want is a GUI tool, to modify any 20/30/40 series BIOS file (v/f curve, voltage, limits etc) and then flash it to the card.

If i understand thing correctly then no such GUI tool currently exists but it is possible to flash different manufacturer made BIOS'es to cards they were not meant for?

I already have 380W KFA2 BIOS on my Gainward GS 2080Ti ~300W card. I could try 450W bioses and there's even crazier Galaxy HOF OC LAB WC Edition with effectively unlimited 2000W and higher v/f curve but im not brave enough to try that even tho my card is cooled by Morpheus II and two high static pressure 120mm fans. Essentially 4,5 slot air cooling.

Im more interested in somehow unlocking ReBAR on 20 series. Nvidia never bothered making new BIOS'es to unlock this so i wonder if it requires unlocking or does it require new code in BIOS? Im asking because ReBAR has been PCIe feature for a long time and so it's possible that it has been included in some very old cards but never enabled?

AMD enabled it for 5000 series Navi 1 and if i remember correctly people have enabled it on older GCN cards too.

EDIT: Thanks kefi. Looking forward to it.

 

[kefi]

Great news for flashing but what i really want is a GUI tool, to modify any 20/30/40 series BIOS file and then flash it to the card.

If i understand thing correctly then no such GUI tool currently exists but it is possible to flash different manufacturer made BIOS'es to cards they were not meant for?

I already have 380W KFA2 BIOS on my Gainward GS 2080Ti ~300W card. I could try 450W bioses and there's even crazier Galaxy HOF OC LAB WC Edition with effectively unlimited 2000W and higher v/f curve but im not brave enough to try that even tho my card is cooled by Morpheus II and two high static pressure 120mm fans. Essentially 4,5 slot air cooling.

Im more interested in somehow unlocking ReBAR on 20 series. Nvidia never bothered making new BIOS'es to unlock this so i wonder if it requires unlocking or does it require new code in BIOS? Im asking because ReBAR has been PCIe feature for a long time and so it's possible that it has been included in some very old cards but never enabled?

AMD enabled it for 5000 series Navi 1 and if i remember correctly people have enabled it on older GCN cards too.

That’s what nvflashk is going to be, a GUI flasher, I just released the bypass the very day I made it work. GUI release should be ready later this week