Wanna overclock your NVidia card through BIOS modification? Here's how...

[Megatomic]

I don't know if this has been talked about here at AnandTech Forums so I am gonna just go for it. Lot's of people overclock their cards through Coolbits or tweak programs but I find this to be messy and it has to be redone everytime you reload your OS. There is a better way IMHO. To overclock your NVidia-based video card through BIOS reprogramming, you can go to this site:

http://www.x-bios.3dgames.ru/

Click on the Top 20 Downloads link on the left menu. There you will be able to download 3 programs you will need to do this with. The first one is called savebios.zip. Extract the single file to a hard drive and execute it. It will give you a file called vidbios.bin and this is your card's current BIOS file. Next download rvbsetup.exe. This is an installable program. Once it is installed you will run it and you can open the vidbios.bin file you created a minute ago. Tweak whatever settings you feel comfortable with, I have done the GPU clock and the memory clock of my GF4 Ti 4200, though I went back to the GPU default clock after testing out my success. Make sure to do a "Save As" and rename the BIOS file you are working with, that way you will have a pristine copy of you card's original BIOS in case you ever need to revert back (warranty issues and such). Finally, download NVFlash 4.15, the filename is v4.15.zip.

At this point you have created your tweaked videocard BIOS file and have downloaded the flash program required to flash your videocard's BIOS. What you need to do now is create a pure DOS boot disk, just like for when you update your motherboard's BIOS. In WinXP, the boot disk you can create in the Format A: applet works great. Extract the files in v4.15.zip (2 files) onto the boot disk. Also copy your two video BIOS files to the floppy disk remembering which is the tweaked out file. Now reboot and make sure to boot to the floppy disk. Once you have arrived at the DOS prompt A:\ type this command:

nvflash -c

This will test your BIOS' compatibility with the nvflash tool. The NVFlash tool is developed by NVidia btw... If the test is successful (and it almost is certain it will be if the video card was designed to or close to NVidia's spec for the card) type this command:

nvflash -ftweakedbiosfilename

Where tweakedbiosfilename is the name of your tweaked out BIOS file including the .bin extension. There is no space between the -f and tweakedbiosfilename. When you hit enter it's all downhill from there. Once the process is complete, power off your computer. After a few seconds, turn on your computer. It should boot as normal (as if you just did nothing). You should now have a video card which "natively" has higher clock speeds. If you have loaded Coolbits, go into the Clock Frequency tab of the Ti 4200 Properties in the Display Settings control panel applet. You should see your new settings there as defaults.

Very easy isn't it? I have followed this procedure many times myself and my card is still working wonderfully. And while this procedure has worked for me there is a risk of failure which I cannot be responsible for. Just make sure you have a PCI video card around so you can flash your card's BIOS back to it's original state.

For fun, if you try this and are successful please post your results in this thread. If you are unsuccessful, post your results too and I will try to help you correct mistakes or recover from catastrophe.

 

[Megatomic]

Did anyone try it yet? It works! I did it again today to o/c my GPU to 275 and it worked. One day I'll get a badass cooler for my VisionTek card and o/c the core up to 300MHz or more.



So, should I repost this in General Hardware? I think more traffic flows through that forum...

 

[CubicZirconia]

Pretty interesting, but I don't know If I wanna risk my 200 dollar ti4400 with a potentially lethal bios flash.

 

[Megatomic]

Well, I've done it at least a dozen times with my $200 GF4 Ti 4200. Now I wish I'd waited to buy a new video card, I could have gotten a 4600 nowadays for $250 or so.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Waiting will always mean you can have the same for less or better for about the same price (if that makes any sense)! If you wait you'll never end up with anything and you'll certainly be robbed of a lot of fun, enjoy what you get rather than worrying about what you could have had. So long as you avoid buying the cards straight after release and avoid buying too near top-of-the-line then you should never be stung too badly ... esp if you keep one ear to the ground.

If I was in to o/c'ing I'd be very tempted to find the limits via Coolbits, knock off 5-10% or so (long term stability and to prevent ageing) and then flash the BIOS to make this perminent. Just be sure if you do this that you aren't aiming too high, not overly bad with Coolbits but certainly possibly lethal to your gfx card if not your mobo too!

SeekingTao do be careful as modding a GF4TI tends to be largely irrelevant as all tend to have very good stock cooling, new HS tend not to help and these cards seem to reach the technical limit of botht hte core and the RAM and ass such heat simply isn't the limiting factor. As always with o/c'ing it is very wise to use small steps and test thoroughly in order to find your particular card's limits, then simply back off a few notches and you're set.

 

[Megatomic]

AnAndAustin: wise words, thanks for contributing! I did proceed slowly and I do not propose to go above 500MHz DDR on the memory. I only did that because I wanted to get the maximum bandwidth from the chips while not exceeding the specs on clock rate and voltage. The memory chips on the card are 4.0nsec Samsung chips which by design can run reliably up to 500MHz DDR so I took it. The core is only clocked at 275MHz and will probably be reduced back to 250MHz as the extra 25MHz did little for my performance in UT2003. I guess a big core o/c would net me better performance but I come back to my cooling problem then and I am not ready to start tearing into the card just yet. If I broke the card my wife would kill me.

Any other opinions?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Cool SeekingTao, I too live in fear of my wife (who's incidentily lovely just in case she's reading this LOL!).

Anyway, 4.0ns DDR RAM is technicly certified up to 500mhz, but as it's on a std 4200-128 it only has to actually run at 444mhz, if there's one tiny fault even on a single RAM chip this could mean the 500mhz isn't even doable, unlikely but possible. However, 4.0ns on GF4TI4200-128 tend to hit about 550mhz so it's worth trying to find your own card's limit as it is likely to be higher than the technical limit but could also be lower. The same goes for the core, essentially 4200 cards use exactly the same core as 4400 and 4600 cards, hence it is technicly designed with 300mhz in mind BUT once again it only has to run stably at 250mhz to be in spec, 275mhz should be VERY safe and a fair bit faster in most games, again it is worth finding the limit of your particular card, in GF3 and GF4TI cards generally the core speed is just as important as RAM speed so be sure to find both.

Just for example, IF I found the limits to be 290/540 then I'd personally drop it down to about 275/520 in Coolbits, maybe even 270/500 which is prob what I'd set through the BIOS in this particular example. 270/500 is still a large boost over stock 250/444 and should be noticable in any game.

 

[BFG10K]

It's far safer to overclock your video card with the likes of Riva Tuner than it is to fiddle with the BIOS on the card. And yes, Riva Tuner has no problems applying overclocking settings on startup.

 

[Megatomic]

I have used Riva Tuner and Coolbits for years now (GF, GF2, GF4) and they are safe, yes. I used Coolbits to test the overclock of my GF4 for quite a while before I used the BIOS reprogramming method. I am now supremely confident in my card's ability to operate at the speed it is currently set to run at. And I can go back to default settings of the BIOS by reloading the original BIOS image that I saved.

Oh well, with all the hardcore hardware hackers out there I thought there might be an audience for this procedure. I guess I was wrong.

 

[AnAndAustin]

It's definitely a very good tip SeekingTao, the hardcore o/c'ing fans should love it and it should be way safer than flashing with a higher spec gfx card's BIOS to set higher default clocks as some people do (Rad8500LE flashed w/ Rad8500 BIOS, GF3TI200 flashed w/ TI500 BIOS etc). I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll give it a go.

 

[drewdogg808]

seeking tao, did you have to change all the values for the gpu clock and memory speeds? there are 2 columns, one for GPU and one for memory, each with 8 spots for tweaking. also, are you only supposed to adjust the columns on the right side if it's ddr? or did you just change the first two values on the right side? sorry for so many questions, but i'm gonna give this a try. tia.

 

[Megatomic]

drewdogg808 - I only changed the first cell for the gpu and memory clocks. But I remember that the program automatically filled out all the gpu clock cells with the new clock rate for me and I was unable to do it for the memory clock cells. This did not affect the program in the BIOS though. When I flash the BIOS and check the clock rates using Coolbits I have 250/500 displayed for the defaults.

Hope all goes well for you drewdogg808.

Edit to add: For me, the DDR column is greyed out so I cannot modify it. I can only adjust the clock columns. What card are you tweaking anyways?

 

[drewdogg808]

thanks seeking tao...it took me awhile to get it to work, because i kept getting some error message. turns out that nvflash wasn't compatible with my video card (leadtek gf4 ti4400). i had to use the leadtek's flashing utility (winfox flash, wfflash). after that, it went fine. overclocked from the stock 275/552 to 305/650. that was what i was overclocking with coolbits anyway, so now it's built in.

works great, as easy as flashing a motherboard bios.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: SeekingTao
Did anyone try it yet? It works! I did it again today to o/c my GPU to 275 and it worked. One day I'll get a badass cooler for my VisionTek card and o/c the core up to 300MHz or more.

Yup, I did that to my Ti4200 and my GF2 Ti450. Both work just fine, though you may have an unnecessary step with the savebios.zip part. RVBSetup by itself can read the video BIOS and save it as a file. Just hit the little down arrow next to the Open icon, and select Read from Memory. Then edit the file, save it, and flash the card with it.
What you can also do in the Initialization section is uncheck AGP SBA disabled - that'll ensure that Sideband Addressing is enabled. The Fastwrites option there is mainly controlled by the motherboard BIOS (I have it unchecked anyway), and I have no idea what that STRAP override option does.

Something else to watch for: I've found that overclocking by the videocard BIOS can cause cold-boot issues. I guess that when the card tries to boot at the faster speed, it sucks down more power, and the system can't handle the sudden needs. I have verified that it wasn't a bad flash by trying the videocard in another system. So if your system doesn't want to cold-boot after a flash, this could be the case.

And one more tip: be careful with reference BIOSes - some cards do not like them! My Gainward GF2 Ti450 would not initialize with the reference BIOS from nVidia. Luckily, I had saved the BIOS to a file and was able to reflash it (with the help of a PCI videocard so I could see what I was doing) and the card is working again.

 

[fluxquantum]

i just overclock using expertool for my gainward geforce 3. i am too scared to mess with the bios.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: fluxquantum
i just overclock using expertool for my gainward geforce 3. i am too scared to mess with the bios.

You only live life once man...

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: SeekingTao

Originally posted by: fluxquantum
i just overclock using expertool for my gainward geforce 3. i am too scared to mess with the bios.

You only live life once man...

And you haven't really lived until you've flashed a video BIOS!!!


The main reason I had started flashing BIOSes was to enable Sidebanding, which was disabled for some reason in a few cards I had. That Ray Adams BIOS Editor is really nifty; might not have all the advanced functions of the nVidia BIOS editor, but the RA one is easier to use.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: SeekingTao

Originally posted by: fluxquantum
i just overclock using expertool for my gainward geforce 3. i am too scared to mess with the bios.

You only live life once man...

And you haven't really lived until you've flashed a video BIOS!!!


The main reason I had started flashing BIOSes was to enable Sidebanding, which was disabled for some reason in a few cards I had. That Ray Adams BIOS Editor is really nifty; might not have all the advanced functions of the nVidia BIOS editor, but the RA one is easier to use.

I agree Jeff (I feel like I am talking to myself now as my name is Jeff too ) . It was kinda nerve wracking the first time I did it and I heard the beeps and thought: "holy f**%ing hell I killed my card!!!" . Then I power cycled and all was well (only faster).

I started using the BIOS flash technique so I could have a new default overclock rather than have to redo coolbits and others every time I rebuild my system or update drivers. I find it to be way more convenient this way.

Thanks for your input Jeff7.

 

[88637]

I just decided to go ahead and try flashing my Chaintech GF TI4200. Was my first time doing a video card bios but ohh well. In rivatuner i had it at 300/594 but i figured for the lifespan of the card i should probably knock it back to 290/584. It worked either way. The more important thing it did for me was get rid of that damned video card bios info at bootup. 4 seconds of my time wasted every time i turned on the computer, drove me nuts. I wanted to change it from a 4200 to a 4400 but nvflash wouldnt let me. Not like I care, but it could have entertained me for a minute or two.