*M18x R1* Full Potiental Has Been Unlocked In Modded Bios

The BIOS set thermal/TDP limits for non-extreme CPUs are usually set a little under the CPUs actual max, so you can get a hair more turbo performance/longer lasting turbo boost.

 

yur running a 107 base clock ??? damn dude I stopped upping mine at 103 because the video I saw did the same thing ... guess I am going to up mine then

 

How did you determine your limit of 107 anyway ?

 

very nice ...

 

I agree, but we should be getting higher scores on OC GPU's that were causing throttling due to temperatures.

 

GPU Throttling isn't controlled by any of the registers exposed in the BIOS SetupUtility, i'm fairly sure. I think it's controlled by the Compal EC, which isn't affected by this mod (yet)

 

Ok, now despite my awesomeness in OCing for 3dMark11 .... here comes my newbie question ... lol

How do I flash the new bios ? I need a guide ... maybe should be in the first post of this thread ???

 

and how exactly do i change this? what setting to what values?

and to shaden, i kept upping and trying to boot into windows after till i got it stable

 

I don't think changing those values will be exposed in this modded BIOS, you'll have to manually edit the registers using my BIOS.hsl. They might be exposed in the menus though, check the performance menu if you can access the short/long limits?

 

yes the short and long limits are in the menu, i just dont know what to set them all to

 

So, in a nutshell, this modded bios thus far, unlocks alot of avenues but has still to unlock the ability to increase the throttle limitations for the 580m's (or 6990's for that matter) which are obvioulsy set to throttle at a certain temp. in Dell bios'.....

 

And let me add another Question to Stevie ... it unlocks Fan profiles !? !?

 

@HaloGod: The CPU is locked, so set the short/long limits as high as you want. It will still be limited by the turbo bins/multipliers so it wont ever exceed that.

@Stevie: Correct (for now) - we have access to the EC firmware in the stock BIOS though, just need to modify that part now

 

From what I have read here and from screenshots, it seems that its possible to play with the fans and change certain things - maybe such as at what temps they kick in at etc etc....

 

thats what I am hoping ... create 100% fans at 40C profile for Benching ...

 

Still don't know how to flash a new bios though ....

 

@Shaden: We tested the fan profiles already with the direct register mods, and they seemed to have no effect as these are controlled by Compal EC. I would expect the same (no effect) from changing the values via menu.

 

keeeerap But still thanks for the effort and for the repeated answer I am sure

 

Obvioulsy Dell REALLY didnt want people to alter these fan speeds and fry their tech, which would result in lots of RMA's....if not done correctly.

 

I don't really see the point in this ... I could see setting hard minimums for the fans, but not maximums. Unless the fans are apt to burn out themselves ... There is just no logical reason to limit fan usage.

 

One thing I found through experimentation;

If you use my modified platform.ini to dump the BIOS, the Compal EC seems to crash, causing the internal keyboard and mouse to stop working as a side effect. Another side effect is that all 3 fans ramp up to 100% duty cycle (higher even than they would at 100% setting) - so that could be useful for benching

 

I guess its like Dell taking out an insurance policy on their hardware that potentially, could get burned via noob-ness.....I mean, if someone set their fans incorrectly, think of all the burn-outs Dell would be left with....

Not that anyone would want their fans coming on less as the system gets hotter but there is no accounting for errors. Therefore, fan control (from Dells perspective) is best left "up to them" to limit hardware failures I imagine.....

If it can be unlocked so that fans could be set to come on max at low temps, that would be good for benching I guess! - if you could get the kinda fan speed that you get from bios flashing to be "user controllable" that would be cool....literally.

 

so who exactly said the 580m limits are controlled by the bios?
those resisters that control that are actually on the card itself....the only real way to see what you can do is to freeze the card and run a bench..this will keep the card far bellow the 73C range and allow the card to run max speed...now say you do this and it doesn't go any higher...then you will have your answer.
i haven't seen anyone yet catch that guy in the sager forum. or am i missing something? talking about gpu scores only.

and he went and solder on a bunch of chips to do that..speculation of course..

 

You sayin' the 580's are screwed John?

 

not at all...only "thinking" maybe we are looking in the wrong place. da_g has yet to find anything with a 73C data bit. hell he hasn't found anything re guarding a 6990m either for that matter. me either.

 

No, he's just saying that the m580 has it's own BIOS independant of the computer's BIOS, and that one might be the one we need to target for modification rather than the computer's BIOS

 

yeah^^^ what he said.

 

Hahaha - I gotcha. vBios modding.....

 

Nice to see the bios is unlocked. Sounds like the R2 bios mod. Unlocked options but they have no effect. What they can do is patch the bios like the R2 mod to allow more overclocking of the non xm cpus

 

Actually, the majority of the options work great Only the fan controls aren't working (controlled by EC) - afaik everything else works.

 

580m throttle is 80*C, not 73*C. Where did "73" come from?

 

I wonder if Dell will revise vbios for the M18x like they did for the M17x.....

 

True, however I know that there's a special throttle for 3DMark... MY cards evidently thorttle way before 80, however In games I've never seen any throttle at all

 

There are a few values in the BIOS at 80 that are unknown. Someone with an m580x could try flipping these bits and testing for the throttle, unfortunately I don't have a 580 so can't test.

 

Seems odd to introduce a "special throttle" for just one particular syntethic benchmark only for 580m...unless it was known that they had problems running at over that throttle threshold for some unknown reason - pretty sure that none of the AMD flavours (6970/6990) dont throttle at 73c on 3dmark11.....so why should the 580's

 

Introducing a throttle for a benchmark like furmark is actually not unprecedented - so I would not discount that possiblity off hand, although it may be unlikely!

 

Hrm, wondering if ... and this is a big if ... BUT... I know there was chatter about the lack of access to (or existence of) internal Thermo readings on the 580s ... is it possible that there is something that we don't have a read on, like an internal temp sensor on the 580s that controls the throttling. If Xen is noting a throttle at a lower temp then others are ... ??? Maybe there is something going on that we can't see that internal monitors (vbios) can/respond to ... ???

 

Nvidia hates Futuremark as they have claimed to be a power virus... AMD doesn't throttle at all.

 

Shaden just download it, close applications and let the program flash it. You will reboot. No user input needed.

 

and I just found someone to spread rep to ... thank you SIR

 

REQUEST!!
Has anyone got the original A00 bios, these would be the first M18XR1 that shipped with the GPU 460M and 6970M People!
Original meaning not rom extract, it would SHOULD be on the DELL DISK that shipped with your M18X or someone might have downloaded this ages ago when it was on the Dell Website!

The dell website only supplys the current bios and any previous releases they remove.

 

A00 is not an update it is the 1st release for current MB therefore you wont get it on dell website (If they shipped MB without BIOS you ll find it there) your only chance is to get it from someone who didn't update to later version.btw A02 is still on dell site.

 

Someone posted earlier about having A00 BIOS, I asked them to dump with InsydeFlash (which will give us a proper BIOS to mod with) Unfortunately no one has yet, so we don't have a stock A00 to work with.

 

Mine shipped with 6970m's but it was later and came with bios A02. Barcode thanks for posting this. Da G if this bios is loaded can I just as easily use same method of modifying it and reflashing? You know so the throttle point can still be adjusted. With your bios modding I've been setting 107c for throttlepoint and shutdown point. I know 107 is too high... I'm certain Da G's method actually effects the cpu throttle point. I have a pic of 4.4ghz quad at home with 8threads 100%, your mod rocks Da G can we use the unlocked bios and then modify the settings that we found weren't working?

 

it could have been a total package..but ummm....not likely.
he is on his own with this.

what you need a DONATION da_g...lol

 

Yes, this works great, I did it myself already, it was helpful to determine what values map to what settings, etc.

These are loose instructions to register modding the unlocked BIOS:

* Flash A03 stock BIOS if you have not already (this is probably not necessary, but can't hurt, and if you have A00 BIOS, dump it for us first )
* Flash the unlocked A03 BIOS, and "load optimal settings" to restore defaults.
* Set the BIOS up how you like, within the menu limitations. Make sure you have BCLK set to your target value, as so far that is the only setting which can't be modified easily directly via register change in the hex editor, only through the BIOS menu, and modifying it after changing registers will set values to "0" that are set over-limit.
* Use InsydeFlash/platform.ini to dump your BIOS.
* Modify the registers in the dumped BIOS using my bios.hsl.
* Flash your modified BIOS
* Profit!

Tomorrow I will continue disassembly, and see if I can determine the method of unlocking (which I will then post a how-to for, since it should apply to any Insyde BIOS), and try to locate the hardcoded maximums and lift those to the real limits. Example: BIOS limits short TDP to 80 and long TDP to 99. Actual limitations are 255/255 which is the maximum value of the 8-bit unsigned integer used to store the value, and of course far exceeding design limitations and would probably explode something... but we are here to unlock all options, not keep it safe With the menu modifications in place there should be no further need to manually modify using the hex editor, except for options that have no menu setting.

 

but once those options are unlocked...we shouldn't need to flash it anymore...and i may have a theory about the bclk...
try changing all 3 places to something like 10100. then flash it and see if they change....maybe...just maybe...the bios has a back up bclk in case of over clocking bclk to high.. i don't have my machine so i can't test it.

side note: but if you reset your bios...then you would need to re flash it

 

Re: BCLK, Tried to change it via the 3 registers, doesn't take effect, if you dump afterwards one of the three registers will keep the value you set, while the other two revert to the BCLK you had set before. Checking the BIOS will show the old BCLK. The actual BCLK is stored somewhere else from what I see so far, but we can test it easily enough by setting it to a value in the bios, dumping, changing it, dumping, then making no changes, saving the changes, and dumping. between the three different copies we should easily be able to pick out any changed bits (and any other values that change without making actual changes, such as a date, time, or other changing variable) other than the three i identified so far.

 

damn...now im missing out on helping...

 

No worries man. Get your baby fixed first!! I'll keep on trucking for the lot of us