Gigabyte Never Posted VBIOS Updates But TPU Has Them - Safe To Flash?

[BatRastard]

First let me drop the screenshot in here we'll and go over it ...

As you can tell, I have a bonafide GV-1050TOC-4GD that I bought new back in 2016 or so. The Gigabyte software always lists a "failure" when trying to check for VBIOS or driver updates. Craptacular software never worked! On the right is GPU-Z showing the BIOS that shipped with my Geforce 1050 Ti OC 4GB is 86.07.22.00.82 which has a match on TPU here (highlighted in yellow). My first concern is the MD5 hashes of my VBIOS dump and the one from the TPU archive don't match despite being the same VBIOS revision ...

My MD5 (Dump) -- BDBDB99B0625E2D49BAEA6A41E8D8381 (216kb -- 221,184 bytes)

TPU's MD5 (Archive) -- D61A3E340570DAD6C143FCE8C6CDD96E (216kb -- 221,184 bytes)

Most Recent VBIOS (Archive) -- DB39FF4B51F5864DA9973B553FC6A547 (253kb - 258,560 bytes)

That leads me to my second concern: the most recent VBIOS for this card (highlighted in green) is about 37 kilobytes larger. If the VBIOS chip on the GPU is 256K, I'm sure it'll fit. But a much larger concern is will it work?

How badly do I risk bricking my card despite the model numbers, the Device IDs, and the 3 VBIOS files seemingly coming from other GV-1050TOC-4GD cards? Has anyone here with the same card but different shipped VBIOS successfully flashed their card to the VBIOS highlighted in Green? Aaaaaaand since I have a backup of the VBIOS dumped from GPU-Z, and there's always a risk of bricking things, does "nvflash.exe work" in WINE?!? Because let's say I DO end up bricking my card -- it'll prevent my Ryzen 3600 from booting, so I'll have to stick it on my i5-4670k machine running Arch/Endeavour OS from the Intel IGP to rescue it. If it doesn't work in WINE, can I rescue the card with nvflash from a WinPE environment (i.e. from my Macrium Reflect Rescue ISO) or from dropping to a Command Prompt from a Windows Install USB)?!?

Sorry for so many questions, but I want to cover all bases ...

 

[Ware]

I don't know if the green BIOS will work. I see one is 216K and one is 252K, and they have different subsystem ID's.
I have to wonder what you hope to accomplish, since you didn't mention any issue with the card.
Lastly, I would not even attempt to flash anything under WINE.

 

[Dr. Dro]

You do not need to flash another VBIOS in your 1050 Ti if it is already working. This is not a new GPU and flashing BIOS will not improve its performance or stability. It is likely that this BIOS is intended for a different revision of the hardware, as this is a mass produced budget GPU that has undergone many changes to streamline and lower production costs over the long years it has been manufactured in stupidly high numbers.

Also, do not run flashers (low-level hardware access) under any sort of virtualized, emulated or binary translated environment, this includes VMs and Wine. If you don't have access to a real install of Windows, download FreeDOS and run the DOS version of nvflash directly.

 

[BatRastard]

I got FreeDOS so that's not a problem. I don't have a problem with the card because I'm unaware of the problems Gigabyte chooses to ignore. The fundamental problem with Gigabyte: they have to be publicly shamed and humiliated in order to post fixes and updates. The F3 BIOS for the B85M-DS3H-A?!? I did that. The BIOS for that board fixed an STR issue but another undocumented issue was also fixed: populating the SATA ports with devices would no longer cause the board to fail to post. Gigabyte sat on this "beta" BIOS for over a year before I found out it existed from a post on the UK Gigabyte forum, and publicly reamed them for it. 10 days later, the BIOS inexplicably appeared for down and no longer in Beta ...

 

[Dr. Dro]

Honestly the advice stands, if your card is working, it does not need a VBIOS update. 1050 Ti will not receive features like Resizable BAR by installing any BIOS available for it, so you can just safely leave it as is.

I know Gigabyte has a poor track record with BIOS support - my own X99 Ultra Gaming was abandoned on a beta BIOS - but it really sounds like you are actively looking for a problem, and you may soon find yourself with a real one

 

[BatRastard]

Not yet! Maybe when I get my RX 6600. I'm not putting my 1050 through a wringer since the only backup I've got is a XFX R5 220 or something like that (bought it in 2016 from Best Buy for like $100 and it's THE reason for getting the 1050!)