Fake GTX960, Help finding the correct bios

[Rikintosh]

Yes, another case of bios for fake board. Sorry for that, I know that the forum is already full of cases like that, but I'm tired of recording countless different bios without success.

Before you tell me to throw it away and buy another one:

Spoiler: reason

I don't live in North America. I am Brazilian, I live in a third world country, where everything is more difficult, someone considered rich here, can be considered poor in the USA. As if that were not enough, I am poor in my own country. The dollar is 5 to 6 times more expensive than my currency. Video cards are not manufactured here, they are imported, in addition to having high federal taxes for being considered "luxury items". Unfortunately this Chinese garbage is all I have at the moment, I can barely watch a video on YouTube without the driver stop working and the whole computer crashes. My computer is still a Core2Duo. So please, buy another card is totally out of the question here.

I will try to describe it here as much as possible about it:


- I have the USB programmer.
- The card has a 6-pin power connector
- 8x Elpida memories (W1032BBG -50-F)
- Chipset: GF116-200-KA-A1 (PAC0084.M01) (and this numbers: 12B3B480 1113A1)
- HDMI, VGA, DVI
- Black dual fans with blue stickers

On sticker back of the board: NVIDIA GTX960 4G D5 Graphics s/n: HZ2020072508

 

[StefanM]

At first install latest Fermi driver 391.35
Then prevent Windows Update from Updating Specific Device Driver in Windows 10

It should be working then in spite of the faked VBIOS header.

 

[Rikintosh]

At first install latest Fermi driver 391.35
Then prevent Windows Update from Updating Specific Device Driver in Windows 10

It should be working then in spite of the faked VBIOS header.

Already tried. The driver installs perfectly, but it is unstable, and I can't run any game

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like the GPU is a Fermi! A real GTX 960 is a Maxwell!

 

[Caring1]

It's a GTS450 Rev.2 with 1GB of Vram.

Try this one:

Galaxy GTS 450 VBIOS

1024 MB GDDR5, 783 MHz GPU, 902 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Rikintosh]

It's a GTS450 Rev.2 with 1GB of Vram.

Try this one:

Galaxy GTS 450 VBIOS

1024 MB GDDR5, 783 MHz GPU, 902 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Yes I know. More specifically, the GDDR5 1GB version. But I tested countless bios, and all of them were graphically corrupted

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like very likely a broken GPU chip. Better off to use onboard graphics with Linux or Windows 7. Looks like a loss here, as much as I don't want to say that.

 

[Rikintosh]

Looks like very likely a broken GPU chip. Better off to use onboard graphics with Linux or Windows 7. Looks like a loss here, as much as I don't want to say that.

No, it is not defective. If it were, it wouldn't work with the factory bios.

 

[qubit]

Before you tell me to throw it away and buy another one

That's exactly what I'm going to do: throw it away and buy another one.

I get your personal situation makes it difficult to buy a card now, but perhaps a used working GT 1030 or similar from a local seller might not be out of reach for you?

EDIT: We don't know what rig you have, so does the CPU have a built-in GPU? If so, that could be the answer, just use that. Please fill out your system specs which will help us to help you.

Sure, have a go at fixing it and hopefully the TPU community can help, but don't spend too much time and effort on it. Keep the following in mind which I just wrote in another thread that applies here too:

It sounds like you're not going to get anywhere with it and it might be worth getting rid of it to preserve your sanity. How much can one get for a broken RX 580 anyway?

To properly repair and troubleshoot high technology like this, the right test rig is required (think $thousands for a custom logic analyzer), various other tools, schematics, spare parts and training. Even then, a repair isn't guaranteed, depending on the damage. Anything else is guessing, albeit educated guessing.

Obviously, that level of investment isn't worth it for a single graphics card of any price, even if you could buy the test equipment and training, which you can't. The only people who will have it are the manufacturers, plus NVIDIA and AMD.

 

[Rikintosh]

That's exactly what I'm going to do: throw it away and buy another one.

I get your personal situation makes it difficult to buy a card now, but perhaps a used working GT 1030 or similar from a local seller might not be out of reach for you?

EDIT: We don't know what rig you have, so does the CPU have a built-in GPU? If so, that could be the answer, just use that. Please fill out your system specs which will help us to help you.

Sure, have a go at fixing it and hopefully the TPU community can help, but don't spend too much time and effort on it. Keep the following in mind which I just wrote in another thread that applies here too:

Completely unfeasible. This card costs more than half a month of work here... About BR$600, BR$700, I earn BR$1000 per month (= $175,00). About 2 years ago, this card was much cheaper, but the dollar crisis and cryptocurrency speculation is much more severe in underdeveloped countries. To give you an idea, a PS5 costs almost 5 months of salary, a luxury for a few... My country is on its way to becoming like Cuba.

My computer is a core2duo e8400, 4gb ddr2. Or it was, because I didn't use it anymore because of the lack of the video card. It has an onboard Intel G31, but it would be necessary to use the VGA port, my monitor (incredibly) does not have a vga. So I'm using it right now to write this, the bottom half of an ibm notebook that doesn't have a screen, keyboard, cd drive and battery, it's practically a motherboard and several cables connected lol His video card is an intel 4500mhd, which allows me to watch youtube and netflix, but games are out of the question (unless very old games)

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

No, it is not defective. If it were, it wouldn't work with the factory bios.

Keep getting video corruption, then I believe it is bad.

 

[qubit]

@Rikintosh An old GT 1030 costs BR$600-700? Wow. What about an older card, maybe? That's why I suggested "or similar". What about a GT 520 or the ancient 8400 GS? Anything to give you a picture, really.

I feel your pain, I really do.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

@Rikintosh An old GT 1030 costs BR$600-700? Wow. What about an older card, maybe? That's why I suggested "or similar". What about a GT 520 or the ancient 8400 GS? Anything to give you a picture, really.

I feel your pain, I really do.

8400 GS likely usually come with caps that failed already, and that's if they're not affected with the "bumpgate" issue.

8400 GS "bumpgate" issue - Google Search

 

[qubit]

8400 GS likely usually come with caps that failed already, and that's if they're not affected with the "bumpgate" issue.

Sure, try another model then, I just listed a couple of examples. I think if you shop around, you'll be able to find a low end card that's affordable for you.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Sure, try another model then, I just listed a couple of examples. I think if you shop around, you'll be able to find a low end card that's affordable for you.

Even a GeForce GT 640 would be like a million times better, if not faked. That's what I used with my FX8350 rig with a Sabertooth 990FX R 2.0. It was a major upgrade from my slow-but-reliable 2008 eVGA GeForce 9500 GT 512 MB. I also used the eVGA GeForce GT 640 on my Asus Maximus II Gene for some time, IIRC. Before I was given a GTX 660. The GT 640, has been retired from service and after taking the heatsink off, I can confirm that it wasn't a fake. It didn't act like a fake. Also, I got a big performance jump in Unigine Heaven, probably version 4.0, when I OC'ed it.
If the GPU core was OC'ed too much, then I usually would get the dreaded "display driver stopped responding and has recovered" message, or "Heaven stopped working". (appcrash message on Vista and later)
I was using 7 for socket 775, so far never used 10 on a socket 775 system.

 

[qubit]

Yeah, there's nothing worse than those fake cards. From what I've seen on other threads on here, the scammers then nobble the card so that the correct BIOS can't be flashed onto it without using an eprom programmer, making sure that 99% of victims can't fix the card. Nasty and vindictive of them, but hardly surprising from criminals.

Whatever card you get, it might be best not to overclock it though, as that will cause the hardware to fail sooner, especially as the cooler on a low end card is barely up to the job even at stock speeds. Given the situation you're in, longevity is much more important than performance.
I hope you can find a card for a reasonable price.

 

[Rikintosh]

The 8400gs is not much better than the intel 4500 ... I wish I could play fallout 3 and new vegas ... Unfortunately even old cards are expensive, because of the race for cryptocurrencies (I don't know why anyone would prefer to mine with a card) but for example, a GTX260 costs around 500 here!

This fake sign, I didn't buy it, I got it from a friend who was cheated, but he got his money back, he was going to throw it away, I thought he could fix it for me.

Spoiler: Maybe...

I fear that my theory may be right: These cards are from some Chinese OEM that makes good cards (not modded bios), but that have some kind of manufacturing problem. The batch of defective boards was sold to someone who modified the bios, or even the manufacturer himself did it. It all started with renaming gts450 to GTX550 many years ago. There was a problem with a large batch of silicon at the time of the gtx 550, some nvidia itself renamed to gts450, modified the bios to not use the part of the chip that was defective. The Chinese realized this, learned how to do it, and started doing it to deceive people. These GF116-200-KA-A1 chips may simply be defective chips, the boards may be from real second-tier Chinese manufacturers. I tracked the board design, and found that some are identical to boards from the manufacturer called Yeston, which currently manufactures "legit" boards.

Currently I gave up on this card, I will try my luck by buying a defective card to try to fix it, changing capacitors is easier than trying to find a bios for a chinese card...

 

[Caring1]

Yes I know. More specifically, the GDDR5 1GB version. But I tested countless bios, and all of them were graphically corrupted

More specifically your GPU is graphically corrupted, you make it sound like the Bios's you tried are faulty.

 

[vienna]

Reading this story was quite sad. A very old GeForce GTX260 costs 500 Brasilian reals (+70 euros) there and you have got a fake-gpu which have broken GPU. And you just hope to find GPU which could run Fallout 3 (Recommended gpus for that game are GF 8800/ATi 3800-series) and Fallout New Vegas (min. GF 6-series or ATi X1300XT-series).

So hoped GPU-powerlevels are not huge. How much costs GeForce GTX660 there? It would be interesting to hear that.

Your C2D E8400 and 4GB ram would be nice pair for GTX660. Maybe I should take look, how much would costs sending GTX660 from Finland to Brazil. I have orginalbox for that almost 9 years old GPU, so sending GPU would be quite easy task.

Giving away this GPU wouldnt be big thing for me. I got GTX660 as replacing card for broken GTX460. The GTX460 had three years warranty and it went broken just few months before warranty ended. So I just got free +75% uprage because GTX460 went broken.

GTX660 would be real startpackage for HD-gaming. So the GPU which I bought in 2010 would get new life there.

Are there some customlimitations or customfees for sended presents?

 

[Rikintosh]

Reading this story was quite sad. A very old GeForce GTX260 costs 500 Brasilian reals (+70 euros) there and you have got a fake-gpu which have broken GPU. And you just hope to find GPU which could run Fallout 3 (Recommended gpus for that game are GF 8800/ATi 3800-series) and Fallout New Vegas (min. GF 6-series or ATi X1300XT-series).

So hoped GPU-powerlevels are not huge. How much costs GeForce GTX660 there? It would be interesting to hear that.

Your C2D E8400 and 4GB ram would be nice pair for GTX660. Maybe I should take look, how much would costs sending GTX660 from Finland to Brazil. I have orginalbox for that almost 9 years old GPU, so sending GPU would be quite easy task.

Giving away this GPU wouldnt be big thing for me. I got GTX660 as replacing card for broken GTX460. The GTX460 had three years warranty and it went broken just few months before warranty ended. So I just got free +75% uprage because GTX460 went broken.

GTX660 would be real startpackage for HD-gaming. So the GPU which I bought in 2010 would get new life there.

Are there some customlimitations or customfees for sended presents?

I couldn't find a gtx660 working for sale. Their defective price is between 250 and 350
I would be very very very happy even if it was an 8600gt. I believe that products sent without commercial purpose, are not taxed.

 

[xrror]

I'm with you Rikintosh - I wish we (as a community) could find a working firmware to make these cards actually work w/o crashing. The whole "fake GTX 960" segment drives me nuts, mostly because if these vendors creating these fake cards actually matched a working firmware and sold these things for like $60 I'm pretty sure there is a valid market there!!! Like, heck if they went to $40, and these cards legit worked, I'd buy 3 right now!

I guess they sell enough of these broken to make it somehow worth the effort, but I don't understand how. Do these cards work if you never attempt running a 3D application on them? I don't understand how they've managed to keep going so long - but then again I guess it takes awhile for the word to get out that "cheap GTX 960" these days is almost always "fake card."

 

[Rikintosh]

I'm with you Rikintosh - I wish we (as a community) could find a working firmware to make these cards actually work w/o crashing. The whole "fake GTX 960" segment drives me nuts, mostly because if these vendors creating these fake cards actually matched a working firmware and sold these things for like $60 I'm pretty sure there is a valid market there!!! Like, heck if they went to $40, and these cards legit worked, I'd buy 3 right now!

I guess they sell enough of these broken to make it somehow worth the effort, but I don't understand how. Do these cards work if you never attempt running a 3D application on them? I don't understand how they've managed to keep going so long - but then again I guess it takes awhile for the word to get out that "cheap GTX 960" these days is almost always "fake card."

I have a theory, I believe it is not a factory designed to manufacture fake products. I believe it is a real video card factory, which makes several original models, which work perfectly, but at some point a large batch broke, and they would have to throw everything in the trash, so someone had the idea to modify it. Hence they can be one of the 3 hypotheses:

1. This big manufacturer, ordered its programmers to do this, and sold the lot to small online sellers.(to decrease the financial loss they would have)

2. The manufacturer simply threw the whole lot in the trash, and someone took it, had the idea to modify it and is profiting from it.


A. These are GTS450 cards that worked perfectly, but someone modified them because they were too old to sell easily

B. They are GTS450 cards whose silicon presented a problem and were discarded, so someone modified them (because that would make it easier to sell them)



The plan then is first, to get a way to make sure that everything on the board is reliable (especially the silicon), we need some form of testing. If the silicon of a large number of cards is ok, then we would need someone to program hardware (hardware engineer or something, specialized in video cards) to analyze the bios dump, and modify it to make it work properly, each of the fake board variants.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I couldn't find a gtx660 working for sale. Their defective price is between 250 and 350
I would be very very very happy even if it was an 8600gt. I believe that products sent without commercial purpose, are not taxed.

Watch out! The GeForce 8 series that are of 8600 GT and lower, often have bad caps! A very good chance that they will be good, only after a recap, and not with caps from a random store!
Even the 9500 GTs, at least ones from eVGA, seem to be reliable out-of-the-box, OTOH.

 

[Final_Fighter]

thats a 1gb gts450. i dont see a bios with elpida support tho. are you willing to try a bios tho?

give this a try:

faked GTS 450 VBIOS

1024 MB GDDR5, 783 MHz GPU, 850 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Rikintosh]

thats a 1gb gts450. i dont see a bios with elpida support tho. are you willing to try a bios tho?

give this a try:

faked GTS 450 VBIOS

1024 MB GDDR5, 783 MHz GPU, 850 MHz Memory

www.techpowerup.com

Yes, I have tested numerous bios, including this one.

With this, the computer can turn on, beep, activate the monitor, but no image appears.

All bios larger than 60kb do not work at all