Nvidia VGA Bios modification/flash/restore guide

Rivatuner can easily overlay the fps, temp, cpu temp and all that as an on screen display. If you need help on how to do this just pm me

 

I know ! but it will eat some cpu power

 

No it doesn't, its not like how fraps reduces your fps.

 

We have the same idle temp for CPU and GPU, My cpu maybe a little lower depends on the surrounding temperature in my room. But with room temp at 82 degree F i have that 45-47 C. Thanks, Good to hear that..hmm so I might O'C a bit then, but still get that cooler just in case. I need this to last a good 3 years or even 4 until I graduated from college.

 

Everybody complaning about temps I would love. I must have a really toasty card but my idle used to be in the mid 80's and load it could hit 100c.

When I moded my c90 I managed to drop it to a mid 70's idle and can see so far the highest 94c load!

In 3dmark the video test 2 made it hit 94c, all the cpu test its in low 80's because my fans kick on. I am starting to think I really will need a cooling pad if I want to overclock. I dont need to performance is fine for me, I just wanted too for the hell of it. Us computer hardware/enthusiast guys are weird like that.

 

Well I bit the bullet and ordered a cooling pad....

I wanted the coolermaster notepal infinity because it was cheap and it has a great design I think (one big center fan so the air is right where I need it, and also the intake is in the rear not the bottom so it can be used on a bed or a lap without blocking the air intake) However its not avalible in the US, so if I order it from overseas even tho its only 30$ the 18$ s&h brings it right up to the price of the tried and true Zalman NC-1000 wich everybody raves about and what I initially wanted anyways because its very sleek, and well built.

I looked around everywhere for the best deals and ended up at buy.com because its 52$ with free shipping. However they have 2 ways to save money. New google checkout users save 10$ instantly (what I did so it was only 42$) and also if you apply for there buy.com visa card you save 30$ instantly.

I went thru all the paper work and saw it had no annual fee's and just high apr's so figured hey, get the card, save 30$. Pay it off in one payment (will only be like 20$) then just shred the card and never use it again. However the one thing that confused me was the "minimum monthly periodic finance charge" of 1$.

I for the life of me dont know if that means you get charged a 1$ every month no matter what, or only if you have a balance or make a transaction. All in all I figured it was not worth the chance and just used the google check out 42$ for the zalmans is a steal anyways.

So once I have the pad I will do a review, and we can see how well my c90 cooling mod works with it, and of course as concerning to this thread. Time for some major overclocking!

 

Does anyone know if my warranty for my 1520 (w/ 8600m GT) would be invalid if I decide to OC? I hear that even if something goes wrong, you can simply just change the clock speeds back and they won't know about it, is this true?

Also, what clock speeds are relatively safe with the 8600m GT (256 DDR2), I'm planning on keeping this laptop for 4-5 years (I most likely won't OC, but if its harmless to OC maybe a 100 mhz then why not? Especially when I would love to have the extra FPS jump when playing TF2 / Portal / HL 2 Ep 2).




And BTW, I just read the last post and I saw it was about cooling pads. I bought just a standard Targus pad with no fans, and it helps SOOOO MUCH for temperature. I notice about a 5-15 F drop with my laptop elevated off whatever surface it is underneath.

 

Yeah I might get one of those too, the c90 works much better if that rear fan assembly gets off the desk, then my mod I made will work better if it was elivated too. Mostly tho because the slant will be nice and I have seen some that have a palm rest in them too.

 

Yep, this one is also slanted (like most I'm guessing) and I really like that feature, especially when I'm gaming because when I had a desktop, I always had my keyboard slanted. But everyone, I would recommend getting a cooling pad, it is possibly the best $15-30 you can spend for cooling down your laptop.

I would also appreciate it if someone answers my last post just above ^^^, not trying to be annoying, I would just like to know an answer .

 

anyone??????

 

It will void your warranty!

But you can restore your original VGA BIOS using same method when you send your 1520 back to RMA

 

Any damage caused by an OC will not be covered under warranty. You can probably get away with just reverting your VBIOS when you RMA it though.

As for what clocks are safe, you have to determine that for your self. Every individual card has different OCing properties.

 

The warrenty deal is a dont ask dont tell kind of thing. The problem with bios moding is if you somehow managed to toally fry your card (its hard to do unless your doing it on purpose or are totally clueless) you may not be able to flash the bios back. If its software level tho they will never know.

However I doubt very seriously dell goes as far as checking the bios on a card.

 

You will be surprise what extend a business company will do to save themselves some money.

 

Well for people with 1520's, whats the best clock speed? I haven't OC'ed yet and my highest temp I get is 62 C, that's pretty good, right?

 

62C is cool compared to my 90C

BTW I just update my guide! Any comments?

 

Nice, clean and clear.

No worries man, your guide looks good event during ver. 1.

 

very clean, good job

 

Thanx for both of you

I need more suggestions and questions for complete the -FAQ- section
Please PM if you have any suggestions or new questions

 

Thinking about adding a poll to this Thread

Feedback needed!

 

Poll will be great

as I said in my pm as wel

"Since you know the word bios scares the **** out of most people and they don't read any further and look for other solutions.

I was wondering if its possible to put up a success rate poll on that thread, so that people who have successfully followed your guide and successfully bios over clocked their gpus can vote, and those who haven't been successful can do the same.

This way people will get an idea and might help them out if they are on the edge.


Thanks in advance"

 

Hi, I've bought a Vostro 1500 with 8600m GT. I'm not sure but I think it's an MXM graphic card.

Using Riva Tuner, I overclock from 400 stock to about 650 GPU but only from 400 stock to maximum 450 memory (650/450). The card has DDR2, but I think 450 is too slow for DDR2, something is holding it back.

I've been looking for a driver level tool to increase the 8600MGT memory voltage. I'm sure with a little more power I can get the memory past 500, maybe even up to 600!

So any ideas how to increase the 8600M GT memory voltage?
Can I just go ahead and increase the memory voltage in the bios?

EDIT:
When I tried flashing a new bios it failed:
"pci subsystem ID mismatch"

I changed the bios just as it's written at the start of the thread. Why isn't it working?
Do I have to add a command to the "nvflash newbios.rom" command line?

 

Don't touch volt modding part. 450Mhz for the memory is reasonable speed

 

I had to insert "-6" into the command line to make it work.

I couldn't find any voltage tweaks for memory...

I could go up to 675/475, now standard @ 660GPU/460Mem to be safe...

Temperatures are OK, maximum GPU 64° when 3DM06 benching

So, I assume Vostro 1500 has an 8600m GT MXM card?

 

No Vostro has no MXM type card

I know you can force nvflash to make it work but it's not 100% correct way and safe

 

aha!

So if there's a new vostro bios sometime, do I have to flash the original 8600m GT bioses before I can flash the new notebook bios?
Are they inter twined?

Vostro must have some sort of standard graphic card instead of mxm format because of Dell/Vostro modular form...

 

It depends on the how dell write new BIOS system.

 

I had the same problem with a 8400m-gs in a Vostro 1500. Even when flashing the original bios without any mods, I get the subsystem id mismatch message. When flashing the modded bios i used options -4 -5 -6 and nvflash asked for confirmation to proceed despite the subsystem id mismatch; it worked after that. I did not modify any of the id numbers in the bios other than the 3D frequencies. Just wanted to add this for others reading the forum.

 

Read -FAQ- section @ guide

 

Looking at the FAQ:
This can happen if vga bios integrated into your system bios .Integrated BIOS not work 100% correctly Make sure you have mxm type vga card

Dell Vostro 1500 has a separate video card which is not mxm, i.e. the card is upgradable and the video bios is not integrated in the system bios. But this subsystem ID mismatch still happens.

 

I'll try to search some info for you but you can force nvflash by -6 when flashing BIOS

 

Hi, I've read in some forums vostro1500 8600m GT can overclock to 600GPU/500mem with Win XP.

I have vista, vista somehow doesn't allow a high overclock...

I tried running my Vostro1500 8600mGT @650/470
Benching with 3DM2006 it stops and lands on the desktop with a failure message:

"IDirect3DVertexBuffer9::Lock failed: n/a (Unknown)"

However there is no graphic failure in 3DM06, it runs perfectly untill it freezes and lands back on the desktop with the above fail message.

Somehow the nVidia Vista driver stops the benching or gaming when I run my memory above 465Mhz...

EDIT:
Ok, I've done some testing and I think the overclocked nVidia Vista problem has something to do with the use of the 756MB available turbo cache from system memory.
Somehow the overclocked 8600mGT memory and the use of the 756MB memory makes problems...

 

Thanks, you can find my original BIOS here if you want to have a look.

 

What drivers were you using? Also, was your OC stable in stress tests and games?

 

ThanX ! Haven't saw any difference

13000+ Hits for my guide.

 

So is it safe to Flash the Vostro 1500 with 8600m gt then? Because I don't really want to mess with something this important without making sure that I have a way back or are safe from damages. Some issues can be long term, if you understand what I means: in the short run the system work fine but in the long run it causes problems...

 

You can flash your card by forcing nvflash,but i still haven't got any info about getting errors after force flash & I'm not recommend it

 

It is never "safe" flashing your VBIOS with anything other than an approved version by your OEM or ODM. However, that being said, it is no more dangerous for you than for any other poster in this thread who've flashed their VBIOS. As long as you only mess with the clock speeds, and only flash to speeds that you're 100% sure are perfectly stable, then there is no real foreseeable risk. It's always possible their could be some unpredictable and unforseen failure, however everyone who messes with their cards takes that chance.

 

anyone tested to mod the asus g1s vga bios?

 

Yes you can OC flash your V-BIOS,some people getting errors

 

should have a new DDR2 card to test soon, and a GDDR3 card aswell. Bigspin do you have any idea whats going on with the asus c90 and the performance loss when you use any drivers other than the stock ones with the GDDR3 card?

I really need to track down the reason and how to fix it before I buy one. If I cant I may just settle for the DDR2 card and an overclock (granted my new one lets me)

 

whot kind of errors?? errors during the flash operation, before, after..........

 

When flashing your card it will show errors(But you can perform force flash by adding -6 during the flash time)

 

Update the guide..............

Please feel free to report me if you found any problem with my guide

 

My 8600m GT gpu takt is set to 665 in Bios, though RivaTuner and everest both show it to be 729Mhz!!
Everest even states that the original takt is 665Mhz with 10% overclock, thus 729Mhz!!
What's the 10% overclock? I'm not doing any driver level overclocking, has dell programmed the GPU's to 10% overclick in the bios or software...?!
Whats going on? Both programms are saying the same thing, so maybe they are right and the takt is realy 729Mhz...
Help...?

 

Don't worry about that .It's a known bug.

 

Aha!
So which is the real speed?
The 665Mhz I set in Nibitor?
Or the 729Mhz Everest and Rivatuner are both showing?

 

Real speed is 665Mhz

For Eg: I OC my 8600M GT DDR2 version to 572/472(GPU:MEM) but Riva report 624/472

 

I haver a new problem,
I've got a new vostro 1500 with a 8600GT.
The new 8600gt is one of the better ones for overclocking. My last one only went up to 650GPU/460Mem, the new 8600m GT clocks to 650GPU/550MEM I get better scores in 3DM06 as well. I even managed to get to 5000 3DM06 Points.
Now the Problem: I want to play MOH Airborne Multiplayer
I used to get around 35FPS with the slower 8600GT @ 650/450
now with the new better OC 8600m GT I'm getting around 20FPS and lots of lag with the same settings!!!
I've tried new drivers but I can't figure out what's wrong.
I can't imagine the first 8600mGT with the lower 650/450 OC was faster than the newer 8600m GT at 650/550 OC!!! And it's lagging in all games, not just MOH....

 

Your clocks are too high the gfx card keeps resetting them to default values i think. I had stumbled upon this problem before, I had my 8600m gt oc'ed to 620/480 and everything was perfect, I bumped the clocks up to 650/480 and performance dropped significantly. went back to 620/480 and everything is smooth again