[GWARslave119]

Thats not what I downloaded, just a list of different bios versions

 

[Laithan]

No I don't think those version numbers are your issue.

You must have the modified version of NVFLASH to flash the modified BIOS and in addition, you need the right version. v5.218 modified is your best bet for flashing the modified BIOS (for MAXWELL). I don't know if the BIOS you were flashing was "good", not sure where it came from. You can open it with maxwell bios editor and see if it looks corrupted or not. I would take your original BIOS and make a copy of it and then modify THAT BIOS with the tweaks and only flash that one. You can more easily mirror settings from one BIOS to the other by opening two instances of Maxwell BIOS editor, put them side by side. You can also copy the settings from one of my Gigabyte 970 G1 BIOS' as I think the settings should also work well with a Strix... but keep in mind, not ALL Maxwell GPUs allow voltage modifications.. quite a few from EVGA are locked, not sure about the Strix but all other tweaks work... just don't be surprised if the voltage is locked at 1.20v

 

[GWARslave119]

This is the thread that started me down this whole road a couple weeks ago:

ASUS Strix 970 Overclocking and Over-Voltage?

I have a ASUS Strix 970... PSU = Corsair GS 700 CPU = Core i5 2310k (2.9 GHz) OC @ 3.5 GHz 2nd GPU = ASUS GTX 650 Ti BOOST DC2-OC 2GB (As PhysX Card) Yes I did go through some more threads before asking... I've been using Nvidia Inspector for overclocking as for now. For now, most stable...

forums.tomshardware.com

And within it theres several links that branch off, which is how I found ur post. I started using the Maxwell BIOS tweaker 1.36 to work off the backup of my bios that I made, but seeing as I was pretty much just copying what this one guy already did, I went ahead and downloaded that rom instead. Here's the post within the thread where the person helping the OP whips up a rom:

ASUS Strix 970 Overclocking and Over-Voltage?

I have a ASUS Strix 970... PSU = Corsair GS 700 CPU = Core i5 2310k (2.9 GHz) OC @ 3.5 GHz 2nd GPU = ASUS GTX 650 Ti BOOST DC2-OC 2GB (As PhysX Card) Yes I did go through some more threads before asking... I've been using Nvidia Inspector for overclocking as for now. For now, most stable...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[GWARslave119]

oh and yeah, I figured itd ve best if I worked off my backup like i originally planned to :0 But speaking of locked voltages... thats what i noticed while deciding what values i want the bios to be set to. voltage won't go over 1.212 when using Afterburner, even with the voltage options checked and whatnot. So I figured lemme try GPU Tweak III, just to see if it wants its' own software and not msi's heh. So thats wat im doing atm.

 

[Laithan]

I looked it up, looks like the Strix is voltage locked to 1.212v (my brain remembered 1.20v,. ty). There is nothing you can do about the voltage, sorry.

I read this: "Asus GPU Tweak has access to the voltage controller on the ASUS cards which allows for overvolting. Even with modded bios for overvoltage it won't go past the stock 1.187v on the ASP1212 voltage controller. The only way to actually over volt is through the GPU Tweak utility... But for some reason it doesn't work at all now. "

however it turned out to apparently allow you to set the voltage at one point but it didn't actually apply the voltage.. it was still limited to 1.212v.

The strix may have a single PCI-e 8-pin also, so you can raise the power limit slightly with a BIOS mod and tweak the throttle behavior but raising your overclocking headroom likely won't change.

 

[GWARslave119]

and i take it by it still being limited means whatever circuit with the voltage controller that was designed on the strix model physically cant go above 1.212? I don't know much about semiconductors, but i was curious and looked up the ASP1212. It mentioned something regarding going up to 2.3v.. is that just if everything else in the circuit was designed to go that high?

Thats the second thing that I could guess after reading you saying the card was voltage locked, and I thought "bust thru the lock" ha

 

[GWARslave119]

Wait, the guy from the original post i found said...:

 

[GWARslave119]

I looked it up, looks like the Strix is voltage locked to 1.212v (my brain remembered 1.20v,. ty). There is nothing you can do about the voltage, sorry.

I read this: "Asus GPU Tweak has access to the voltage controller on the ASUS cards which allows for overvolting. Even with modded bios for overvoltage it won't go past the stock 1.187v on the ASP1212 voltage controller. The only way to actually over volt is through the GPU Tweak utility... But for some reason it doesn't work at all now. "

however it turned out to apparently allow you to set the voltage at one point but it didn't actually apply the voltage.. it was still limited to 1.212v.

The strix may have a single PCI-e 8-pin also, so you can raise the power limit slightly with a BIOS mod and tweak the throttle behavior but raising your overclocking headroom likely won't change.

Well I'm a bit confused with the value's that I'm getting. Tryna mark down my max stables... not understanding the values I get. Without changing any values in Afterburner or GPU Tweak, and either playing a gpu intensive game, or running Heaven benchmark, i get 1304mhz and 3506mhz (or 7012mhz) as my max, with the Power % reaching 88%. Activating my afterburner profile and doing the same game/benchmark put me at max 1444mhz (+140) and 3903mhz (+400), yet my Power Limit gets reached while only at 104% (set to reach 120%). Heaven also reports my gpu clock at 1595mhz thruout the benchmark, so not sure where it's getting that from (shows 1455mhz at default clock settings). Now I know my max table clock is 1455 by default, but i never reach it (i get 1304) which is Clock #62 on the Boost Table. Even after adding my Afterburner profile I still don't reach the max table clock (1444 is Clock #73 -1mhz). And the +140gpu/+400mem profile used to be +100/+350. I'm pretty sure if I tried raising it in the past, things would crash. Earlier today tho I did bump up my PCI bus voltage in my BIOS to 115%, so not sure if that's why I was able to go higher than my previous profile was set to, but I thought maybe I'll try it since I can't raise the card's voltage bios, raising the card slot's voltage might help do something.

 

[Laithan]

Again, I did not do a lot of research but I remember (vaguely, 5 years ago lol) that the Strix may have been one of the voltage limited cards. They had the Matrix GPU for the flagship and that one you definitely could modify the voltage. The Strix, I don't think you can (I could be wrong).. I wouldn't put a lot of trust into some of those posts, being able to set a voltage and it actually applying that voltage are two different things. Regardless, the Strix doesn't have an addressable voltage controller either to my knowledge. Unless you allow more voltage in the actual BIOS (there are some exceptions like Kingpin), overclocking utility software settings will not be able to raise the voltage above what is defined in the BIOS. The BIOS is what dictates the maximum values. You cannot even begin to think about raising voltage until you have allowed it in the BIOS and then flashed the MOD BIOS to the card. This is where testing higher voltage just begins.. anything prior doesn't count and doesn't matter.

With the MOD BIOS in place then you will still use the overclocking utility to max out power and voltage sliders. This is critical as this is exactly what ALLOWS your GPU to use the "Maximum" values defined in the BIOS. If you don't max these sliders, you'll only be using "Default" values which are usually much lower.

Then you run something like a benchmark wih GPU-z open in the backgground. It will tell you what the maximum voltage went to. If it is still stuck at 1.212v then you are voltage locked, end of story. If it did go above 1.212v then congrats you're going to get more O/C headroom but I am sorry to say, I don't think you can with the strix

Good luck

 

[GWARslave119]

Tried looking up Matrix, looks like thats for a 980. I guess flagship is considered the best model out of the series?

 

[GWARslave119]

Oh and I made these last night, looks like my theory about indirectly "raising the voltage" (more like overclocking the overclock i guess ha) was right. Raising the pcie bus frequency does net better performance, but im sure theres things to consider/look out for since higher frequency=more energy=more heat.

 

[GWARslave119]

I do find it interesting the way this program reacted with frame limiting. You can see how when theres no frame limiting, the overclocked pcie bus had higher minimum fps, but when I used frame limiting via RTSS, the default bus frequency test had higher minimum frames.

 

[GWARslave119]

And both tests were done at the higher profile setting of +140/+400...i coulda swore that 100/350 was the highest before things like Heaven would freeze during the benchmark test.. shrugs

 

[GWARslave119]

do know anything about frequency tolerance? I might be delving into another rabbit hole if mine, but from what I've found from Silicon Labs:

"The PCIe standard specifies a 100 MHz clock (Refclk) with at least ±300 ppm frequency stability for Gen
1, 2, 3 and 4, and at least ±100 ppm frequency stability for Gen 5, at both the transmitting and receiving
devices. It also specifies support for different clocking architectures: Common Clock, Data Clock,
Separate Reference Clocks with No Spread-Spe.. "

So I found a calculator online and got this for PCIe 2.0:

 

[GWARslave119]

Hmm it won't let me delete that post, just ignore it

 

[Mechcondrid]

so not sure if you guys are still on here or can help or not, got a clevo p775dm3-g; and funny enough i successfully flashed a modded rom from a gpuid backup i took from the clevo gtx1070 mxm card in it.
loaded up fine and worked great but realized i forgot to mark the power and temps as adjustable, so remodded the backup again the same way and now i get either a cert error or "NV_UCODE_ERR_CODE_CERT20_VDPA_ENTRY_NOT_FOUND"

tried loading the backup and that flashed just fine but still get these same errors now.
also tried a newer vbios from clevo for this model and gpu combo which also funny enough did have a small power limit increase (125 from 115) and that loaded fine but same two errors persist depending on what version of nvflash i try.

thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Snak4ru]

If you have onboard video you need to specify the adapter

-i1

(NVFLASH --list)

Hi man , i need ur help , i change gpu bios with another one , pc restart automatically now in games , or black screen , when i want to come back at the original bios , i save the original one , nvflash give me an error "
Identifying EEPROM...
EEPROM ID (C8,4012) : GD GD25Q20 2.7-3.6V 2048Kx1S, page

BCRT Error: Certificate 2.0 verification failed

ERROR: BIOS Cert 2.0 Verification Error, Update aborted."

pls help me :'(

 

[Snak4ru]

Hi man , i need ur help , i change gpu bios with another one , pc restart automatically now in games , or black screen , when i want to come back at the original bios , i save the original one , nvflash give me an error "
Identifying EEPROM...
EEPROM ID (C8,4012) : GD GD25Q20 2.7-3.6V 2048Kx1S, page

BCRT Error: Certificate 2.0 verification failed

ERROR: BIOS Cert 2.0 Verification Error, Update aborted."

pls help me :'(

The Card is GTX 980Ti G1 WindForce

 

[Laithan]

Use the modified NVFLASH v5.218 by Joe Dirt that should work for both stock and modified BIOS'

 

[Snak4ru]

Use the modified NVFLASH v5.218 by Joe Dirt that should work for both stock and modified BIOS'

I will try , i come back in a few seconds