That sounds plausible, and might work. How would I go about this method?
Because I've gotten the TDP to ~50% via KBT (however I don't think I'm doing it right because the numbers seem quite high, nor do I know what I'm doing with certainty) but it still says Pwr as the PerfCap and under load it stays at P8.
After some researching I found it was a physical mod, I'd like to see if I can accomplish as much BIOS-wise first before really getting desperate (as that seems quite dangerous to the card)
All across the internet you can find various people with their GPUs (mostly Kepler series) having a very high Power usage on idle, thus freezing the card's clock speeds making it a useless piece of hardware. Some of the threads here:
Same problem occurred to me when I bought a used GTX 690 and noticed it was throttling as hell in Multi-GPU mode, but all fine in Single-GPU. Sure enough, my Power % in Afterburner was skyrocketing to 300+% and GPU clocks stayed frozen at 324 MHz (default idle clock speed for Kepler GPUs AFAIK). As I ventured into searching for a fix, I was disappointed with all the threads ending up dead or with RMAs by the owners. Of course, I cannot RMA my card because not only it's now 4 years old, I also don't have any papers for it. Before finally giving up, I tried playing around with clock speeds with Kepler BIOS Tweaker and to my surprise, the dead GPU started functioning and while it was very unstable, it meant that the card is certainly not dead, just defective. TL;DR Endless hours of modifying BIOSes and restarting after each flash resulted in a perfectly (well, semi) working GTX 690 (notice the spiky GPU1 Power %). You also have a (old) card that suffers from the same problem? Let's fix it! Tools you'll need:
Kepler BIOS Tweaker (for modifying Power usage of the GPU) (from here on referred as KBT)
WARNING!!! Our broken GPUs are already unstable and we will additionally proceed to flash an unstable BIOS. I am not responsible for any damage caused to your hardware while modifying using my method. Flash at your own risk!
Alright, once we have all the tools, let's get a BIOS to work with. There are two ways of getting the BIOS you need:
Downloading off TechPowerUp's VGA Bios Database. Just use the filters until you find your card. NOTE: You don't have to necessarily use the BIOS of your card's vendor (for ex. ASUS BIOS on ASUS GTX 690), you can use any vendor's BIOS as long as they use same clock speeds as your GPU (for ex. I'm using EVGA's BIOS on my ASUS GTX 690)
Using NVFlash to backup your current BIOS (you can modify it as well). Here's how to:
Boot up NVFlash by extracting it somewhere. Then hold SHIFT and press RIGHT MOUSE anywhere on blank space in the folder. You should see an option "Open command window here", press that and you're ready to play with your BIOS. If you don't see such option, re-read this step and try again. That's how you'll boot NVFlash everytime.
If you're using 32-bit OS, use nvflash.exe, if 64-bit OS, use nvflash64.exe and add --list. (ex. nvflash64.exe --list). You should see something like this. I have the GTX 690 which has 2 GPUs on one card, so unless you're using same card, you should only see one GeForce GTX on your screen. NOTE: Part of my screen starts flickering after I insert various commands, so don't freak out if yours does too.
If you don't see any GeForce GTX cards pop up, your GPU is probably dead and I can no longer help you in such situation. If not, continue further.
The number on the very left (<0>) is an assigned ID for our GPU, we will have to use that.
Type nvflash(64).exe -i(insert the ID here) --save romname.rom. Example: nvflash64.exe -i1 --save stockgpu1.rom, because my GPU1 is defective.
Your screen should go black, that's normal. After some time it will come back up with your stock rom saved. Now we can continue to modifying it.
[*][*]
Now that we have our stock BIOS, make another copy of it so you can modify one and have another as backup.
Open up KBT, press Open BIOS and navigate to the rom we want to modify. Here's what I see: PUUSH.
Go into Power Table tab and start increasing the numbers to lower the power usage. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but that's how it works with defective GPUs it seems. Personally, after editing, the numbers which were lower at default ended up being way higher than the numbers which were higher to begin with. Confusing, I know. Here's a screenshot comparing stock and modified BIOS for me: PUUSH. Please note that these values probably won't work for your specific GPU!
Press Save BIOS! You'll get surprised by how many times I forgot that and ended up rebooting without any changes...
Open up NVFlash. (tutorial can be found under a spoiler above) Flash the modified BIOS with this command: nvflash(64).exe -i(ID) -6 moddedrom.rom. Example: nvflash64.exe -i1 -6 EVGA.GTX690.2048.120430_1_modifiedpower.rom.
Screen will go black again, if it doesn't come up in a low-res 'safemode' look, press y on your keyboard to confirm flashing. Wait some time until normal screen comes back up.
Restart computer.
Use benchmarks to evaluate whether your modded BIOS works: core clock boosts normally, (on my gpu) power % starts jumping around from 50 to 100.
Waste your precious time by adjusting values until you get around 100% power usage in Afterburner on idle or your core clock boots up at higher than default (324MHz) and then drops to default speed.
Repeat steps 4-9 until you have a working GPU under stress test. Good luck.
FAQ:
Q: My GPU still doesn't boost properly and has high Power % after modifying the Power Table.
A: Comment bellow if you still can't get it to work and I'll add another fixing method which is more unstable but works as well.
Q: Will I be able to overclock my GPU like everyone else?
A: Most probably - no. Since power management is defective on our GPUs, keeping the card stable at higher clocks is somewhat an adventure. I managed to get a stable OC of around 5% (from 1058 MHz to 1110 MHz boost clock on my GTX 690) instead of a possible OC of 14% of a non-defective card (from 1058 MHz to 1202 MHz), but I'm running things stock anyway to avoid any further damage to my video card. That's what I would advise others to do as well. Memory clock OC seems safe though, so you can experiment with that at your will.
Q: My TDP on idle is too high for my liking.
A: As I explained in the post, our GPUs are most probably reading the power values wrong due to a defective part of the video card, therefore you should not worry about incorrect TDP readings as long as your card works as intended - doesn't crash on stress tests, doesn't have artifacts and etc. FYI my GTX 690 is showing 100+% TDP on idle and around 60% on load, but my GPU still functions as expected.
Q: I'm using a Maxwell based video card (list of Maxwell GPUs), will this work for my card?
A: I don't see a reason why it shouldn't, just use Maxwell BIOS Tweaker II instead of KBT.
Modified working BIOSes (might not work for you even if you have the same model! Use these as an example then):
GTX 690 (GPU1): Google Drive, MEGA. (EVGA, before 300+% TDP, after 50-100%, OC very unstable - unrecommended)
GTX 660: Google Drive (EVGA). (thank to Jensen) (before 300+% TDP, after ~100%)
Hopefully this will help people who still own these old Kepler GPUs and wanna use or sell them, because they're certainly not dead yet! Also, if there already is such tutorial anywhere, please link me, because I couldn't find any fixes regarding this issue.
If you succeeded in fixing your GPU, please PM me with a download link of your modified BIOS and some info (model, what was your power % before modifying, power % after modifying, maximum safe overclock if you tested). Thank you!
I had this problem but it was because I was set to high performance in the driver. When I changed back to 'balanced' it no longer idled really hot. This is a 2080Ti OC. For people who do want to set high performance, you can do it individually on each application rather than at the global level.
Salut, merci de France à quadlt et somelilboy pour avoir sauvé ma gtx 970 que j'étais sur le point de vendre 50$ pour hs sur ebay. La technique powerdraw x 5.8 a fonctionné pour moi la première fois.
Ci-joint mon bios modifié (destiné exclusivement à une GTX 970 4GD5T OC) et un nvflash contourné qui fonctionne avec Windows10.
Just a bit of advice, any GPUs that need fixing for power or whatever else the best guy that can fix them is "northwestrepair" have a look at his youtube channel as he repairs then also. He always uses the oem bios and has never modified anything. This guy is a master at fixing GPUs.
I'm looking for one of these gpu with high idle power consumption problem for experiments and to test a software fix.
If anyone has a Pascal or higher to donate to research please contact me.
possibly I will also consider a purchase if the price is reasonable, EU area. Thank you
