Extract and Flash GTX 970 and 980 Firmware - Zoson's H2O and AIR Custom BIOS - Page 26

Ok guys, first the bad news.
1. Pretty much every manufacturer is cheating to get higher clockspeeds by lowering internal clocks.
2. Not all BIOS can be modded to the same boost levels because KBT cannot modify the boost table of Maxwell BIOS(yet?). Whatever the stock core/boost will be is going to limit the maximum turbo bin available. You can see this if you compare a stock bios vs any non stock.

Now the good news.
1. The cheating can be fixed with KBT.
2. We can still remove the limits associated with various cards.
3. Gigabyte G1 has an insane power limit of 366W!
4. The reference EVGA BIOS posted here will work on any card with a *reference* circuit board. You'll need to use the -5 override along with -6 though, and your card will then appear in GPUZ etc as EVGA. You can always just flash back to your stock BIOS and get your old MFG name back.
5. I've put together BIOS for Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS, along with the EVGA reference BIOS!

The last bios I posted was effectively 'all limits removed'. Anyone with a reference card using LN2 will love it.

I've now made a 'to tdp bios' for all the various cards, meaning, all of them have had their maximum power limit raised to 250W(with the exception of the G1) The reference EVGA was raised to 275W.
Flash at your own risk. Overclock at your own risk.
GM204-REFRENCE-EVGA980SCACX-NOLIMITS.zip 136k .zip file GM204-GIGABYTE-G1-980-NOLIMITS.zip 137k .zip file
GM204-MSI-GAMING-980-NOLIMITS.zip 137k .zip file GM204-ASUS-STRIXOC-980-NOLIMITS.zip 137k .zip file

Now, the cheating, compare the reference clocks with what's in all the others. The fixed bioses above are all set to the same clocks as the reference EVGA I'm running on my own cards.


Finally, 145% TDP(~262W). Done with Furmark using "Burn-in 1080p" button with all the furmark settings unchecked(dynamic, burn-in, xtreme, postfx, etc). Enabling the other stress settings would make you hit overtemp before you hit the power limit.

Also notice it did the 145% TDP without breaking 1.268v.

And yeah, my second card is a dog with a 64% ASIC. It's totally holding my overclock back a LOT. However, it did allow me to prove that the SCACX BIOS even with the more aggressive clocking should run on _any_ reference 980.

End moral of the story? We all need to watercool our cards after having modded bioses because thermals are our limit.
Edited by zoson - 10/24/14 at 3:35pm

No idea. Technically both the ASUS and MSI should be able to handle the same limit. Gigabyte is going off the 150+150+75 limit of 8 pin x2 and PCIE. Even though you'd NEVER get there. I can't really see anyone getting over 285W of the first fully unlocked bios i posted, even with cold.

The voltage table was... overboard. What they had set there nobody will ever use... ever. Basically a full 8+8 pcie implementation that you'd have seen on the likes of a GTX 480. Honestly though just download it and open it in KBT, it's right there...
I'm not sure what you mean here... Basic implementation of GPU Boost 2.0 means that your GPU is intelligent enough to know how much voltage + how much temperature + how much load = how much clockspeed is possible. This is an improvement in technology that you just have to learn to deal with. Different loads will produce different clockspeeds and temps.
Original strix was ~241W max, increase to 250W. So 105% of 241 is 253W, while 121% of 250W is 302W. This is what I saw also. Significantly higher required power > 1500MHz.

Finally, it's important to remember that my BIOS has the original faster internal clocks for L2C, XBAR, and SYS, so you'll see better performance overall at any clockspeed, and higher power requirements.
Edited by zoson - 10/24/14 at 6:51pm