Need an advice on 9600m GT

[Arkadius1984]

Hi,

I have a huge problem with my graphics card. My computer is HP touchsmart, that was equipped with geforce 9600m GS card, but recently it's cooling fan stopped working, but before I've realised that, it was already too late, as it got overheated big time, and it's performance drastically decreased, so it was a time to find a replacement. Luckily my mate's acer laptop broke down and he decided to sell it for spare parts, so I got 9600m GT card from his machine. As HP won't accept Acer vbios, I've dsoldered bios chip from 9600m GS and installed it onto 9600m gt from Acer. It did the trick, but now I had to force install correct drivers as installer won't pick up the card version correctly, and after installing drivers, performance is just a tiny bit better than with that fried 9600m gs. My question is if can someone advise me as to which BIOS version should I use to reflash that hybrid 9600m GT to make it work as it should?

[drdeathx]

Why didn't you just flash the bios on the replacement card. Good work re soldering the chip BTW.

[Arkadius1984]

Well, the main reason that I didn't reflash the card was that my PC wouldn't take this card at all - black screen and beeping sound was all I got when installed the card with Acer vbios. So I figured out, that it should work if I replace chip with Acer Bios with chip from my 9600m gs, and it actually does work. I used to do some PCB soldering in the past, so it wasn't a huge deal - all you need is pair of tweezers, small heat gun and steady hands

I've managed to boot up the computer, hovewer system would recognize card as Generic VGA so I had to force install the proper drivers manually, with a success. The only problem was, that all clocks were as same as with my 9600M gs, and no overclocking software would let me adjust them, because of driver mismatch error.

I have found a solution just this morning - using NiBiTor software, I've modified my 9600M GS bios to the exact settings of 9600m GT card, and to my surprise, it did the job perfectly - tested it with a few games and I got way better performance than with GS, even before it was fried Currently running at 650/1350/900 MHz, all stable with temperature below 60 - so far so good.

The drivers still won't install automatically, and Nvidia control panel is giving me an error, but that's just a minor flaw Will work on that later on and shall post any updates on here

Regards, Ark.

[Arkadius1984]

Hi,

It's been more than a week since my graphics card came back to life, and after some extensive testing it looks like it will stay alive. Currently running at 650/1375/950 MHz and no problems with stability at all, temperature stays under 65 degrees all the time, so full success here.

The thing that puzzles me at the moment is how to make Windows to recognize the card as Geforce 9600M GT and not a standard VGA adaptor. Maybe somoeone have an idea where does OS take the info about the model and make of the card from? Is it some info stored in vBios or on the board itself? And if there is a way to override this and make Windows install correct drivers automatically?

Many thanks for any tips.

Best Regards, Ark.

[schmekl1]

Hey all.