New Bios for 1.21 V for ref Gtx 680s

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TakeNoPrisoners

TakeNoPrisoners

Platinum Member
Jun 3, 2011
2,599
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Shady random bios link without any information to speak of. Yea, I think everyone should install this.
 
hokies83

hokies83

Senior member
Oct 3, 2010
837
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blackened23 said:
Little known fact: All reference GTX 680s go to 1.21V already. Software does not report voltage properly - if the driver requests 1175mV it will use 1..21V generally speaking, you can verify this with a volt meter.
Click to expand...
People must be lieing about getting 50 more mhz out of it then?

I myself have not tried it as im limited by cooling and not by clock.. so at this point it is a waste of time for me.
 
chimaxi83

chimaxi83

Diamond Member
May 18, 2003
5,457
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blackened23 said:
Little known fact: All reference GTX 680s go to 1.21V already. Software does not report voltage properly - if the driver requests 1175mV it will use 1..21V generally speaking, you can verify this with a volt meter.
Click to expand...

Just like Blackened said, all reference cards already go to 1.215 V when necessary. This has been the case since the day they were released. What this BIOS might do though is change the voltage tables so that more voltage is applied at a given frequency/power level, which is why some people are getting more voltage out of it.
 
RussianSensation

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
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hokies83 said:
People must be lieing about getting 50 more mhz out of it then?
Click to expand...

You might want to visit this thread before you go wild on GTX680 overclocking, especially if you plan on overvolting. I remember people were all excited flashing HD6950 2GB cards with actual HD6970 BIOS and then memory on the 6950 2GB cards would die in 2-3 months from a mere +0.1V bump (from stock 1.0V). NV might know something we don't. I've never seen them being this strict on GPU overclocking and I've been following GPUs since at least GeForce 2/Radeon 7000 days.

Trying to attain 50mhz extra on a card that's already clocked at 1200mhz is honestly the biggest waste of time for most people, considering there may be risks involved based on everything that NV is doing. You'll never feel that in games since the GPU won't scale linearly with that 4% GPU increase due to memory bandwidth bottleneck in the 670/680 series. If the game is unplayable on a 1200mhz, it'll be 100% unplayable on a 1250mhz 680 as well. Cards such as MSI Lightning 680 and so on have seriously upgraded components and PCB compared to reference 670/680 cards.
 
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chimaxi83

chimaxi83

Diamond Member
May 18, 2003
5,457
63
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RussianSensation said:
You might want to visit this thread before you go wild on GTX680 overclocking, especially if you plan on overvolting. I remember people were all excited flashing HD6950 2GB cards with actual HD6970 BIOS and then memory on the 6950 2GB cards would die in 2-3 months from a mere +0.1V bump (from stock 1.0V). NV might know something we don't. I've never seen them being this strict on GPU overclocking and I've been following GPUs since at least GeForce 2/Radeon 7000 days.

Trying to attain 50mhz extra on a card that's already clocked at 1200mhz is honestly the biggest waste of time for most people, considering there may be risks involved based on everything that NV is doing. You'll never feel that in games since the GPU won't scale linearly with that 4% GPU increase due to memory bandwidth bottleneck in the 670/680 series. If the game is unplayable on a 1200mhz, it'll be 100% unplayable on a 1250mhz 680 as well.
Click to expand...

I agree. I've been at 1500 MHz on the GPU and it's worth nothing outside of Heaven and 3DMark11. These cards are basically overclocked from Nvidia and, outside of the typical great overclockers, are already near their limits.
 
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B

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
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hokies83 said:
People must be lieing about getting 50 more mhz out of it then?

I myself have not tried it as im limited by cooling and not by clock.. so at this point it is a waste of time for me.
Click to expand...

Didn't say that. Remember the GTX 680 has 3 voltage profiles depending on card activity, and its usually the case where one of the profiles will cause instability while the 1175mV will actually be 1.21V on the card.

You can verify it with a voltmeter like I mentioned. I definitely agree that the 680 is probably near the limits with gpu boost like chimax said, people are getting 1400+ with various cards but I'd say its definitely not worth it for 24/7 operation unless you like sitting in a sauna lol
 
Grooveriding

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
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I wouldn't mess with this considering one of my 680s already can't overclock as high as it did when I first got it. This is playing with fire imo and even AIBs who cover overclocking will not cover a BIOS flash afaik.

If we were talking about gtx580 or 7970 etc, I would be comfortable with it. The 680/670 though are already being redlined from my experience, there is not much OC headroom there and adding voltage seems like a recipe for killing the card fast. These Kepler cards are not very robust overclockers for your average enthusiast.
 
T

thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
12,040
2,256
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If you're looking to keep a warranty, I would not flash a BIOS that is not from your specific AIB or nVidia.
 
The_Golden_Man

The_Golden_Man

Senior member
Apr 7, 2012
816
1
0
RussianSensation said:
You might want to visit this thread before you go wild on GTX680 overclocking, especially if you plan on overvolting. I remember people were all excited flashing HD6950 2GB cards with actual HD6970 BIOS and then memory on the 6950 2GB cards would die in 2-3 months from a mere +0.1V bump (from stock 1.0V). NV might know something we don't. I've never seen them being this strict on GPU overclocking and I've been following GPUs since at least GeForce 2/Radeon 7000 days.

Trying to attain 50mhz extra on a card that's already clocked at 1200mhz is honestly the biggest waste of time for most people, considering there may be risks involved based on everything that NV is doing. You'll never feel that in games since the GPU won't scale linearly with that 4% GPU increase due to memory bandwidth bottleneck in the 670/680 series. If the game is unplayable on a 1200mhz, it'll be 100% unplayable on a 1250mhz 680 as well. Cards such as MSI Lightning 680 and so on have seriously upgraded components and PCB compared to reference 670/680 cards.
Click to expand...

This is so true. Couldn't agree more.
 
xp0c

xp0c

Member
Jan 20, 2008
91
0
0
Works like a charm
My original stock boost is 1202mhz, and my new stock boost speed is 1293mhz. The 1293Mhz is higher than my highest overclock on the core(1286mhz), temps went up 2-3 degrees tops.
The voltage still behaves the same accept it doesn't use 1.175.
 
F

Ferzerp

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,438
107
106
This most definitely does make a difference. My old max on my reference card (even with my new cooling) was 1228Mhz. With this, it is 1283Mhz. 55Mhz more.

However, you have to watch out because since it is supplying more voltage, that means it is using more power, and if you are near the power cap, you can actually reduce your average clock speed. It depends on your card, and also, you may only see that in synthetic benchmarks.
 
F

Ferzerp

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,438
107
106
On a potentially unrelated note, but maybe not, I ended up getting frequent blue screens on this bios regardless of clock speed (didn't start until a while later) and ended up hosing my windows installation. After a few "start up repair" sessions, I got it to boot back in to windows, but strange things were afoot. Steam wouldn't start. 3dmark was artifacty (even after managing to roll back the bios), etc. So, I ended up restoring from backup and all is well, but the instability managed to cause a lot of HD corruption (which I've never had happen before now).

It may have been data corruption from a crash due to highest OC testing though, who knows?


edit: So yeah, WHS 2011 is so nice to have available ;)
 
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hokies83

hokies83

Senior member
Oct 3, 2010
837
2
76
I do not use it.. my 680s clock high enough atm i do not need it..

How ever i may flash the Lightings LN2 Bios on my Galaxy card for the unlocked voltage.

It shares the same chip as the lighting so you can flash it's bios onto it.
 
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