Modded my 6800GT's BIOS.....happy as Heck

[Visable-assassin]

yeah, i know it's old.....but I hadn't heard it for a good while.....good stuff.



My link in the first post is still working for the dl for me......

your link was broke for me my friend

 

[cornelious0_0]

your link was broke for me my friend

Aww.....weird....still working on a few different comps for me.....anyone else having issues with it?

Now it's going to be hard to NOT void the warranty in the first hours I have it. We'll see how that goes. Thanks for the project.

NP dude, that's why I'm here for you guys. It is just a BIOS flash which is why i love this mod....because you're not doing any soldering on the board, yet you're still reaping some of the benefits. People are still able to take the cards well beyond 1.5v with hardmods (soldering goodness).....but that's for all those crazy azz rich ppls running their cards at like 10C.

Seeing how little work I've seen go into most RMA processes for video cards I would be VERY surprised if you were unable to RMA the card if the flash SOMEhow rendered the card unusable. Basically (from what I've experienced) they'll plug the card in, if it doesn't work they'll check it for discoloration and/or burn marks.....and ship a new card if something isnt visually noticeable.

I'm NOT going to get into what is and isn't a valid reason to RMA....I'm just saying that ppl are still a little too sensitive about what can and can't actually damage a card.

Have fun.....best wishes.

 

[s10010001]

Aww.....weird....still working on a few different comps for me.....anyone else having issues with it?



NP dude, that's why I'm here for you guys. It is just a BIOS flash which is why i love this mod....because you're not doing any soldering on the board, yet you're still reaping some of the benefits. People are still able to take the cards well beyond 1.5v with hardmods (soldering goodness).....but that's for all those crazy azz rich ppls running their cards at like 10C.

Seeing how little work I've seen go into most RMA processes for video cards I would be VERY surprised if you were unable to RMA the card if the flash SOMEhow rendered the card unusable. Basically (from what I've experienced) they'll plug the card in, if it doesn't work they'll check it for discoloration and/or burn marks.....and ship a new card if something isnt visually noticeable.

I'm NOT going to get into what is and isn't a valid reason to RMA....I'm just saying that ppl are still a little too sensitive about what can and can't actually damage a card.

Have fun.....best wishes.

OHHH you dont even know...

I once pulled off some memory modules on an old card of mine...so i sanded it flat, epoxyed it back on, put back on the stock HS, un did my voltmods...and got a new card no quextions asked.....

did i just say that??

 

[cornelious0_0]

did i just say that??

Heh, it's alright....I'm guilty of worse.....but w/e....that's all in the past.

I just find it funny how things work out sometimes, but yeah....back on topic.

 

[gmkmay]

Great little mod here, very easy. Went from 405/1.1 to 435/1.14 with the 1.4v change. I'm debating on trying 1.5v, just a little hesitant.

I also wonder if I could get my ram a little higher if I replaced the stock ramsink setup with some copper sinks (I have a waterblock ont he core)...oh well, I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

 

[ReNeGaDe*]

I'm gonna give this a try on my Galaxy Glacier 6800GT. Right now it autodetects to 379/1.01, but the max I can get on it atm is what's in my sig (400/1.1) If this kills my card, it won't be the first 6800GT I've had to RMA

EDIT: OK I got this running okay at 425/1150 I can't seem to take my memory any further, though

 

[btf]

I tried this mod with a BFG 6800 Ultra OC with a bios that adds .1v on gpu/ram.

Booted up had to re-install drivers and it detected 450/1200 stock. It was perfectly stable in 3dmark etc... got 13,042.

I'm waiting for a slot cooler before I got further. But one time I put the nvidia drivers on auto-overclock by accident. The card was running 485/1200 I noticed a problem when artifacts started after a couple of minutes.

I would think with decent watercooling 480+ would be stable.

 

[Nitrogen]

Wanted to offer my two cents on this. I just got around to trying it a couple days ago, and went through the normal testing stuff. Unfortunately, I was not so fortunate as to gain nice overclocks like most of you. My highest attainable clock speed remained exactly where it was (albeit 420/1.10 is a nice OC anyhow). So, the 1.3V to 1.4V somehow didn't help me. In fact, while playing Doom 3 tonight, I had it crash the system on me, and when I tried again, I got artifacting. Ran rthdribl against it and it topped out at 92-93C. I flashed back to the 1.3V BIOS and she's solid at 86C now (same speed, of course).

So, I guess my GPU is somewhat peculiar in that it tops out very abruptly, whether at 1.3V or 1.4V. I still like the OC I have, and it's awesome that you guys have been having good luck with this mod, for the most part. Just wanted to offer my experiences to the thread. Later.

 

[cornelious0_0]

Wanted to offer my two cents on this. I just got around to trying it a couple days ago, and went through the normal testing stuff. Unfortunately, I was not so fortunate as to gain nice overclocks like most of you. My highest attainable clock speed remained exactly where it was (albeit 420/1.10 is a nice OC anyhow). So, the 1.3V to 1.4V somehow didn't help me. In fact, while playing Doom 3 tonight, I had it crash the system on me, and when I tried again, I got artifacting. Ran rthdribl against it and it topped out at 92-93C. I flashed back to the 1.3V BIOS and she's solid at 86C now (same speed, of course).

So, I guess my GPU is somewhat peculiar in that it tops out very abruptly, whether at 1.3V or 1.4V. I still like the OC I have, and it's awesome that you guys have been having good luck with this mod, for the most part. Just wanted to offer my experiences to the thread. Later.

Dude, at higher temps and clock speeds your card is more senstive to heat....and with ridiculous load temps like 93C no wonder you didnt gain at all. If you had told me that you were hitting mid 80's before the mod I would have told you not even to bother.....but I guess you figured that out.

I feel sorry for that card, as your room temp is either through the roof, or you got no airflow in your case......and she's suffering in there.

 

[PsycoGeek]

Thanks for the tip... I had been hesitant to flash the card with another downloaded BIOS. Went to 1.4v and pushed the speeds from 391/1101 to 415/1.12ghz. Also put on an NV5 Silencer and modded it too. Check it out here . Updated it with new temps in my rig.

 

[gmkmay]

You were right about using a different OC'ing program than coolbits btw. The ram on these 6800gt's has some serious headroom, I hit 1200 with no problems even when coolbits threw anything above 1150 back at me (played 4 hours of doom3 earlier). I could possibly go even higher, just don't feel the need for it

 

[Nitrogen]

Dude, at higher temps and clock speeds your card is more senstive to heat....and with ridiculous load temps like 93C no wonder you didnt gain at all. If you had told me that you were hitting mid 80's before the mod I would have told you not even to bother.....but I guess you figured that out.

I feel sorry for that card, as your room temp is either through the roof, or you got no airflow in your case......and she's suffering in there.

Haven't had time to check into the typical operating temperatures of this particular chip. I know hotter than CPUs, by a good margin. Going by the fun little graphical representation in the temp meter, it was just hitting the red at that point, so I figured I was in an iffy area, to say the least. As far as cooling around the card, that's not really a problem. There's a 120mm fan blowing directly on it. CPU is watercooled, and eventually I would like to include the video in the loop. What I would like to do is remove the heatsink and get rid of the stock TIM and throw my own on there. I think that may benefit my situation some, in which case I'll do the mod again and see where I can go. Good to know that those operating temperatures are right up on the upper limits, though it comes as little surprise.

 

[cornelious0_0]

You're more then just in the "iffy" area dude.....that'd downright nuts. I only dropped my temps a couple C at most from putting AS5 on teh core and ram, so dont expect any OC differences.

I honestly woulndt be surprised if you're not gonna get a whole lot out of that card.,.....not with case/room temps like that, that're pushing the card up to 90C.

 

[Dragunov]

Hey guys, i just bought an Inno3d 6800GT and i was thinking of flashing it's bios so i downloaded nvflash from the link on this topic, i made a MS-DOS startup disk and copyed the contents of the nvflash zip file on it. I booted using the floppy disk, i typed the command "A:\nvflash -b backup original.rom" and i got this error:

" NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (Version 5.08)

ERROR: Firmware image filename must have a *.rom or *.nvr extension"

What should i do for this flash to work? I managed to overclock my GT to 400/1170 perfectly stable, no artifacts whatsoever, but when i pushed the core to 420 and even at 410 i noticed some artefacts in the turtle scene in 3dmark 2003... so i'm thinking the card needs a little more juice to work properly I still have the stock cooler, will it support the increased VGPU ?

Thanks a bunch guys

 

[cornelious0_0]

Hey guys, i just bought an Inno3d 6800GT and i was thinking of flashing it's bios so i downloaded nvflash from the link on this topic, i made a MS-DOS startup disk and copyed the contents of the nvflash zip file on it. I booted using the floppy disk, i typed the command "A:\nvflash -b backup original.rom" and i got this error:

" NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (Version 5.08)

ERROR: Firmware image filename must have a *.rom or *.nvr extension"

What should i do for this flash to work? I managed to overclock my GT to 400/1170 perfectly stable, no artifacts whatsoever, but when i pushed the core to 420 and even at 410 i noticed some artefacts in the turtle scene in 3dmark 2003... so i'm thinking the card needs a little more juice to work properly I still have the stock cooler, will it support the increased VGPU ?

Thanks a bunch guys

Hehe, it's nice to FINALLY see someone else around here with an Inno3d 6800GT.....good stuff.

From what I can recall, the error has something to do with the version of nvflash that you're using.....other then that I have no idea, because that's what it has always been with ppl up until now.

 

[archevilangel]

I've actually tried the 1.5 bios. The temps seemed fine, and the first auto detect frequencys would go good, but then after that it wouldn't pass "test changes" at any frequency, even way below stock. I always assumed that it's because of the lack of a second molex connector.

 

[Dragunov]

After my post i've read this topic more carefully and seen that someone else allready got this problem and solved it using another command "A:\nvflash -b original.rom", so i saved the original bios, raised the VGPU to 1,4v, loaded up the new bios and now it runs rock stable without any artefact not even in the turtle scene at *hang on to your chairs...* 430/1200 and all that with shitty stock cooling, i didn't even bother to grease some good ol' Artic Silver 5 on the GPU, (54C idle and 80C in rthdribl)... Looks like Inno3D isn't such a poor vendor after all You have the black PCB on yours too, cornelious0_0 ? ooh and another thing, with your card you got those frequencies(455/1300) using stock cooling or did you mod your board? Please tell me what cooler are you using now.

P.S.: I hope my temperatures are fine and all this heat won't harm the card, it's 120C proof after all right?

 

[cornelious0_0]

You have the black PCB on yours too, cornelious0_0 ? ooh and another thing, with your card you got those frequencies(455/1300) using stock cooling or did you mod your board? Please tell me what cooler are you using now.

P.S.: I hope my temperatures are fine and all this heat won't harm the card, it's 120C proof after all right?

My Inno3d is green, and no, I am not running stock cooling. I have a modded NV5 that I'm using, with individual ramsinks on the card and the "memory tabs" cut off the Silencer. At 1.4v with stock clocks my temps are 43C idle and 55C max load.....not to shabby eh?

Your temps are fine, but a little on the high side. It's actually not that bad, I just find it funny that your idle is almost as high as my load temp.

 

[Dragunov]

Wow, very nice temps dude, what was the max OC when you had stock cooling on? Do you think that it's worth it to take the cooler out and grease the GPU and mems with some AS5 ? Would i be able to squeeze a little more MHz out of it if i do that (it would be nice to reach 450/1200 - 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition speeds )? Lucky you, you got a green card, mine is all black (i think it looks kinda dull), i would liked green better but hey, who can complain about the colour when you get such overclocking results

 

[Circuitbreaker8]

Is there any way to do this without a floppy drive?

 

[chrisf6969]

I might have to do this little trick, though I'm going to leave the voltage at the default.

I want to set the clocks to 400/1100 in the BIOS so I dont have to redo the coolbits trick each time I upgrade drivers. Or in case I forget to do it, etc.

P.S. Corn, shouldnt this be in the videocard forum?

 

[cornelious0_0]

Is there any way to do this without a floppy drive?

Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't done a LOT of looking. It's just that you'd idealy need a medium that you could read from the command prompt off a startup disk, and also one that you could read and write too. I wish there was an easier way myself, but instead of installing a floppy drive in my system I opted to take 2 minutes to install the GT in my parents computer to flash it, and swap it back to my machine.

Dragunov, at 1.4v I don't hit a lot higher then 400-420 on the core, and about 1100 or so on the memory. You're not necessarily going to get a lot more of an overclock out of your card by simply redoing the cooler with some AS5, but combined with the NV5 you should see some nice results. I'd actually prefer a black card, cus my case is black, my mobo is black, my sound card is black, I'm getting the interior of the case painted black, everything will be sleeved black......you get the picture.

It actually looks like I'll be replacing the GT with something in the next week or so though.....and it's blue, so it's all good.

chrisf6969, the BIOS edit is a very easy way to do something as simple as set the overclock in place, because I feel for ya when you say that it's a pain to have to redo it everytime you upgrade drivers.....as sometimes you won't even remember.

P.S. Corn, shouldnt this be in the videocard forum?

Possibly, dunno why it's never come up though.

 

[lithium726]

so after two months of this thread, it gets changed from HELL to Heck? pardon my confusion, but what the HELL?

 

[cornelious0_0]

so after two months of this thread, it gets changed from HELL to Heck? pardon my confusion, but what the HELL?

OMG....I just realised that.....that's pretty funny. You'd think it would have happened a bit sooner if it was gonna, but w/e.

I'll agree though, Heck does sound kinda lame.

 

[rtierney]

I tried the mod on my eVGA 6800GT, and my card got extremely unstable, even at a wimpy oc such as 400/1100.
I reverted back to the old 6800GT bios, and I'm back to 440/1155, 100% stable.

 

[lithium726]

I tried the mod on my eVGA 6800GT, and my card got extremely unstable, even at a wimpy oc such as 400/1100.
I reverted back to the old 6800GT bios, and I'm back to 440/1155, 100% stable.

wow, thats really weird..maybe the heat got to it?

 

[s10010001]

OMG....I just realised that.....that's pretty funny. You'd think it would have happened a bit sooner if it was gonna, but w/e.

I'll agree though, Heck does sound kinda lame.

ROLF, you said your happy as heck!

 

[cornelious0_0]

ROLF, you said your happy as heck!

I didn't say it.....the mods did......gah.....w/e.

wow, thats really weird..maybe the heat got to it?

I really doubt it, unless he was already idling at 80-90C there's no way that the added heat from running at 1.4v would make it that unstable.....not with the relatively small temperature increases i saw when I did the flash on the stock cooler. Some cards just don't like the extra power....nothin' to complicated.

 

[DermicSavage]

my card is unstable @ 1.5v and is still also unstable @ 1.4v at 420/1100

went back to 1.3v and 400/1150 :|

I think i have the worst luck in getting cores that dont OC well

 

[cornelious0_0]

my card is unstable @ 1.5v and is still also unstable @ 1.4v at 420/1100

went back to 1.3v and 400/1150 :|

I think i have the worst luck in getting cores that dont OC well

I have yet to see a single GT that is perfectly stable in 2d and 3d modes at 1.5v.....but it does seem like I'm starting to see more and more cards recently that aren't even able to handle 1.4v. Sucks to be in that kind of position....and I know. If we're talking about general bad luck with overclocking how about my 1800+ Pally that went from 1.53GHz to 1.57GHz before locking up.....she just wouldn't budge.

 

[rtierney]

wow, thats really weird..maybe the heat got to it?

It wasn't noticably hotter than the regular bios. I haven't tried doing it again since i've begun watercooling it, though.

 

[cornelious0_0]

It wasn't noticably hotter than the regular bios. I haven't tried doing it again since i've begun watercooling it, though.

I HIGHLY doubt that the h2O will have any effect on your success with 1.4v.....the temps do NOT go up that much.....not nearly enough to play that big of a role anyways. It'd be worth trying it again just so you can say you have.....but I see no reason why it'd suddenly work.

 

[lithium726]

I really doubt it, unless he was already idling at 80-90C there's no way that the added heat from running at 1.4v would make it that unstable.....not with the relatively small temperature increases i saw when I did the flash on the stock cooler. Some cards just don't like the extra power....nothin' to complicated.

yeah, i saw a small increase as well, but htat doesnt mean newer cores on newer peices of silicon cant get a bit hotter than the older ones... its possible that hte little bump in voltage is sending riiiight over the edge, but not likely, as you said.

probably just cant handle it, perhaps as time goes on, nvidia is finding ways to further the gap between GT and Ultra, my card handles 1.4 beautifly

 

[cornelious0_0]

perhaps as time goes on, nvidia is finding ways to further the gap between GT and Ultra

I'd like to think that's what's happening, as it would clear a lot of things up, but at the same time I hope that it isn't.....because it kind of "takes the fun out of it" in a way.

 

[12 Axes]

Yeah I have the BFG with the new cooler. I was hoping that I could get some crazy high clocks with my MCW-50t. For a couple of days I tried making my own bios' or using other peoples modified bois'. I didn't have much luck, I could get it to pass the coolbits test at the max of about 490/1.18, I think it was a while ago. However anything much beyond my 1.3v clock of 440/1.15 was really unstable.

 

[cornelious0_0]

However anything much beyond my 1.3v clock of 440/1.15 was really unstable.

And that's all that really matters.....I can clock mine higher.....but I have yet to see a GT do more then 450-460MHz on the core....as it's a power issue, and the card itself (due to the build differences between it and the Ultra) cannot handle the extra power needed to acheive any kind of real stability beyond that 450-460 range. I'm at 455 with mine and fairly happy with it....but I wont have teh card much longer so w/e.

 

[Dragunov]

Since i had a very high temps(80C with rthdribl) with 425/1200 @ 1.4v i switched back to the original 1.3v bios and now she runs smooth at 400/1200 @ 1.3 v at only 72C in rthdribl. I was beginning to feel a little paranoid about all that heat and i don't want anything to happen to the card, anyway i don't feel too much of a difference at this clocks

 

[cornelious0_0]

Since i had a very high temps(80C with rthdribl) with 425/1200 @ 1.4v i switched back to the original 1.3v bios and now she runs smooth at 400/1200 @ 1.3 v at only 72C in rthdribl. I was beginning to feel a little paranoid about all that heat and i don't want anything to happen to the card, anyway i don't feel too much of a difference at this clocks

You're right and perfectly fine in saying that you probably didn't notice much of a difference from the 25MHz.....but honestly dude......those 8 degrees are nothing, you didn't have to worry...just being a little OVER paranoid if you ask me. Why not bump it back up and take the free 25MHz?

 

[Dragunov]

Well yeah cornelious0_0, it's easy for you to say, you got yours at 55C full load The only thing is that i didn't got my card exactely from the "local computer dealer" so if it burns i might have problems with the quarranty Most of you guys are lucky to be in the US buying such cards for less than 399$, I got mine for 445$ and i didn't even got it from a shop (like i said before), prices in stores are near 550$ here

 

[DermicSavage]

holy paranoia batman!

seriously, 80C is fine when overclocked, but I would consider it the upper limit

your card wont fry till your temps are at least 100C, and youre 20 below that