Asus P104-100 4G mining card hack to GTX 1080 possible?

[masterdeejay]

I have bought a cheap ex mining card for 60 usd. The seller already modded the vram to 8Gb with bios (the 4G card mod to 8G is very common for this mining series). I can game with a modded asian driver but still limited performance because of the low 4x pcie mode.

The PCB is the same as the Asus GTX1080 Turbo. Vram is GDDR5X 8x1GB (from Micron spec pdf)
Is there an unlocked bios for this card?
First i need to fix the pcie lanes.
It is pcie 16x physically (all traces are good, and there is enough smd capacitor on the lines) so i think it is just bios limited.
I don't care if the outputs not working.
I have Ch341a programmer just don't know that bios to use on this card. It is indeed a GTX1080 turbo, and i think it is the full GP104 GPU (according to Asus pdf spec).
This is a fun project, i have another card for gaming (Intel A770 16Gb) so it is no big deal if the card is dies in the process.

 

[masterdeejay]

PCB and compontents look like the same on the back.
Left GTX1080 turbo, right is the P104-100




No missing components (except the outputs)
But i still need to check the smd-s on the back near the GPU and Pcie lines.
And the straps for the GTX1080

 

[masterdeejay]

Differences:
P104

1080:

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

I approve of defrankensteining this GPU.

Can't answer your question but I cheer for you.

 

[masterdeejay]

Unmodded state. Pcie 4x 1.1
Latest cp2077, 1280x1024. Ultra

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

$ per FPS isn't awesome in this mining GPU, that's for sure. My RX 480 (flashed to 580 and overclocked to 1400/2100) does a better job.

 

[masterdeejay]

I think the pcie 4x limits the card.
This card was 60 usd, very silent (becase it is not utilized well)
The test was in an old dell workstation, 4gen so it is also cpu limited. (Your cpu is way faster than this xeon 2678wv3)
So it is very bottlenecked.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

I think the pcie 4x limits the card.
This card was 60 usd, very silent (becase it is not utilized well)
The test was in an old dell workstation, 4gen so it is also cpu limited. (Your cpu is way faster than this xeon 2678wv3)

My GPU cost me $45. In-game benchmark is not CPU sensitive as I had exactly the same numbers with an i3-6100.

 

[masterdeejay]

Then i must find a way to remove these limit, because it is still a GTX1080 and this should do better.

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

Then i must find a way to remove these limit, because it is still a GTX1080 and this should do better.

We are on the same quest. Unfortunately, strapping is not going to change our ability to flash to a 1080. If I understand correctly, the board id is hard coded in the silicon of the gpu itself. Again to my understanding, (which is limited, and I hope I am wrong) this is where your PCIe device ID comes from, and how your PC will always identify the card. I think, this is why modified drivers are the only current answer, and it's not as easy as just force flashing the bios. (I gathered this info and my thoughts on gpu reporting from the GPUz forum.) While it would probably run off a GTX bios, the computer will still see a GP104, and assign drivers accordingly. If ONLY the bios was the issue, I could just hard swap a pre-flashed chip, and move on with my life. I might try it, just to see if I could get nvidia to install the wrong/better driver on it, but I would guess they have some sort of checks and balances in the software that would prevent me from making a plug and play card that way. I.E. even though the card would identify as a gtx1080 via bios, the actual silicon would still report itself as a GP104, which I am thinking would make the software just say no to the whole install process.

This has been implemented since maxwell gpus, again, if I am getting this right. This is why it was and still is possible for older 400/500 series cards to be spoofed as 1050s and sold on ebay with fake drivers. The bios was the source of id for the card back then. So faking it's identity to windows was as easy as flashing the bios.

(more info edit: there is a ridiculous security implementation to also contend with, FALCON. FALCON uses checksum verification to ensure your BIOS is approved for the silicon. It has control of the power of the card, if FALCON finds an invalid checksum, it just powers down the card. This is another Maxwell implementation.)

I think the key here is making the card somehow report as a gtx1080 or 1070ti, then flashing an appropriate bios. However, I don't understand enough about PCIe to know where that data is physically being queried, and how to go about modifying the card to spoof it.

The one thing that may be possible, and easier, is a performance boost via enabling the card's video output. This IS a strapping, and I would imagine, driver issue. The strapping I can do, the driver, I can not. The appropriate components needed for video output, appear to be present on the ASUS card we both have. Any time you pass video through integrated graphics, there is always a performance loss. Eliminating that loss may result in 1070ish performance I think. This would make the cards an attractive value being $30-$40 cheaper than an actual 1070 at current ebay prices. Plus we get to extend the life of the cards, which staves off them becoming e-waste for a few more years.

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

So, more progress... The card is confirmed capable of pcie 16x1.1 @x4 1.1. The card will also run as a 1080, or even GP100 quadro from the modified drivers, with the original bios, both with the same base stats as a normal GP104. Which means, it's in name only. Performance with either driver is about 10fps slower than an actual GTX1080, ran apples to apple through another card via time spy. Yes, running an actual 1080, through another 1080 for output. This could be attributed to the lower clock speeds, and significantly lower everything else counts. Which just happens to be the about the same amount, as a 1070.

I confirmed the GPU reports the chip as the ID, regardless of bios. The real trick would be to modify the original bios, so it has baseline clock speeds of a 1080, or maybe even a vendor's 1080 specs, I.E. the higher power limit and clock speeds of the EVGA hybrid based on the reference 1080. So it's fine if it is a P104-100 bios with the driver mod, but we could do better if we could get a custom bios to use 16x, and any other tweaks hiding in there. I think the silicon can't check more than "is this a signed P104-100 bios?" It still allows for vendor ID and such to pass through, even when it's angry someone flashed it with obviously the wrong one.

So below in GPUz I show my EVGA 1080 (reference hybrid), and my P104-100 flashed with the same bios. The silicon did what it was supposed to do, shut down the card and prevent anyone from having fun. However, you can see the card is operating at 16x (yea, yea, 1.1, but trust me, it's plenty) with 4 lanes. Now, I'm not tearing down my water cooling, to swap the card into a 16x lane to confirm it can use all of them: 1. Water cooling, 2. Sli water cooling, 3. no onboard gfx, so it would be limited to sharing those lanes at 8x max anyway. Having 16x with 8 lanes would be great.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy the patched drivers are to install to the card, even letting it run 1080 drivers and that it ran timespy without a hiccup, even with some undervolting, and mild overclocking. I think for $60, 1070ti-ish performance is great.

I am sad to say it's not plug and play since it appears we won't be able to do anything about the P104-100 bios. You will always have to have a P104-100 bios, you will always have to have the patched drivers.

The video output is another puzzle. Where is it being disabled? The strapping is not the issue. I don't have the file for the ASUS boards specifically, but they deviate from reference slightly in the strap area. More specifically.... However, I do think the reference straps are hopefully the same location, even if there are more. If so, from the factory, it is strapped for video. I used your 1080's picture for reference, and moved strap 1 low, which is 1080 default configuration. I honestly can't tell you if that did anything, since Page23's map isn't self explanatory, and was made by a kid in high school with the underscore key. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Examining the board, it appears the GP104-100 has the same components where they count as the 1080. Many spots are just not populated on either for whatever reason. If the 1080 outputs video with the same parts, it leads me to believe it's either a BIOS issue, or another bit of the silicon locked out. Interestingly enough, when I had the card setup as a GP100 quadro, Nvidia control panel also identified it as a GP100 quadro, without video ports.... So it's not a driver issue.

Lastly, here is a superposition score in SLI, with no overclocking, and nvidia choosing the GP104-100 for physics. You might feel better about your results. I can't seem to find an option to select GPU in anything but 3dmark stress tests. Maybe I screenshot some of those later.

p.s. I did consider connecting the 104 as a SLI slave, but again, water cooling, and I don't have a slot 0 HMB connector, or any other SLI connectors on hand. Maybe I get a flexible one to test if it would even work, just for fun.

 

[masterdeejay]

Nice! Thanks for the info!

I sold the card 85 usd so i have a little profit. But i still need a card for CUDA (and gaming), so the next will be i think the CMP series (40HX) or a P102-100.

 

[masterdeejay]

I ordered a Zotac P102-100 5Gb unlocked to 10Gb for 95 Usd. It is like a 1080Ti but 3200 (-10%) cores, 320bit (-10%) memory but +5-6% GPU clock.

 

[masterdeejay]

Arrived an Inno (not zotac just the bios) P102-100, but died after half hour testing....(black lines and bsod in superpositinon benchmark, after that i got error 43, possible GPU is died)
It was rusty, disgusting. Thermal paste was rock hard, the pads also.
I sent it back to the seller for full refund.
pcie smd-s missing 4-16x lanes, so it is possible to repair the lanes.

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

A LOT of these cards were put inside cheap pre-made storage buildings with no air-conditioning, just a fan blowing in air from the outside, so lots of dust and worse, humidity. My P104 was in similar condition. I had to replace the thermal pads because they were so degraded. You could try installing one ohm resistors on the lanes to connect them, but I think the same issue will arise we have with the 1080s we worked on, in the bios disabling lanes. We just need one hero to leak the bios encryption/siging process and we could have all the cards back in the gaming pool before they become completely obsolete. If you can see it with nvflash, try reflashing it to a 5gb bios and see if it comes back to life.

 

[silentbogo]

There's been many attempts at this over the past 7[!] years, but I can tell you right away - it's not possible. Video outputs and encode/decode blocks are fused off from the factory. Also, it won't accept any non-matched BIOS(may get bricked).
The only way to use these cards other than for mining, is either in tandem with iGPU for video output, or as a general purpose compute accelerator.
Some cards (but not all) can be unlocked to have PCIe 1.1 x16 working, and in most cases an 8GB unlock also works. Though I had a few cards that didn't have either. Notably, my Zotac P104-100, which had no decoupling caps past PCIe x1 lane, and didn't even work when I added those. 8GB unlock also didn't work.
I still have a couple of those left, but I always find it more convenient to just toss a 570 or 580 in the rig, just to avoid all the headaches.

 

[masterdeejay]

Thank for the answers. It is very sad that there is no way to mod this card with at least the pcie parts to work. Mining today is not profitable so these cards are mostly useless.
So much wasted GPU-s.
Nvidia is simply evil.

 

[Jelly4563]

Hello, if one day you want to try again to use an NVIDIA P104-101 as a GTX 1080, what you could do is use the card in slave mode and force it to use the drivers of a GTX 1080. You don't need to change much on the graphics motherboard because Nvidia stopped physically blocking her graphics from the 700 - 900 series and started doing it hardware , At most you will have to change the bios physically and it does not matter much which bios you use because in the end the objective is not to get video through the graphics, I recommend that you use a bios with low characteristics or similar physically I'm not sure how to do this method but in a Spanish speaking video (language I originally spoke) a guy get to use a mining RTX 3060 like a normal 3060. Good Luck

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

Hello, if one day you want to try again to use an NVIDIA P104-101 as a GTX 1080, what you could do is use the card in slave mode and force it to use the drivers of a GTX 1080. You don't need to change much on the graphics motherboard because Nvidia stopped physically blocking her graphics from the 700 - 900 series and started doing it hardware , At most you will have to change the bios physically and it does not matter much which bios you use because in the end the objective is not to get video through the graphics, I recommend that you use a bios with low characteristics or similar physically I'm not sure how to do this method but in a Spanish speaking video (language I originally spoke) a guy get to use a mining RTX 3060 like a normal 3060. Good Luck

The bios is the main issue. I have put a 1080 bios of of the exact same board on a P104-100. The problem is Falcon, nvidas on die security, that will shut down the GPU core if it detects a bios not whitelisted. This means the only way to upgrade the bios, is with a signed P104-100 bios. I.E. it can never be anything other than a P104-100, but, we may be able to enable some features. This is where things like PCIe lane function, speed, and a whole host of other options are controlled/disabled. Nvidia crippled these cards intentionally, why, to sell more cards, get rid of old silicon, and ensure there wasn't a cheaper alternative to the 20 or 30 series. Not to mention they would be an amazing value on the used market, considering the volume of them out there. Forcing drivers is not a big deal, it does not however, make the card perform as a 1080, or 1070ti, or even a 1070. The modded drivers that enable it, even as a p104, to play games, yields the same performance.

We need a savior that can sign nvida bioses. That would open up a new world for performance of these cards.

 

[LabRat 891]

The bios is the main issue. I have put a 1080 bios of of the exact same board on a P104-100. The problem is Falcon, nvidas on die security, that will shut down the GPU core if it detects a bios not whitelisted. This means the only way to upgrade the bios, is with a signed P104-100 bios. I.E. it can never be anything other than a P104-100, but, we may be able to enable some features. This is where things like PCIe lane function, speed, and a whole host of other options are controlled/disabled. Nvidia crippled these cards intentionally, why, to sell more cards, get rid of old silicon, and ensure there wasn't a cheaper alternative to the 20 or 30 series. Not to mention they would be an amazing value on the used market, considering the volume of them out there. Forcing drivers is not a big deal, it does not however, make the card perform as a 1080, or 1070ti, or even a 1070. The modded drivers that enable it, even as a p104, to play games, yields the same performance.

We need a savior that can sign nvida bioses. That would open up a new world for performance of these cards.

When you start seeing videos about Ali-express "GTX 1080s"
while the next generation of cards are out, and Polaris is no longer one of the highest-% GPUs...
You'll know what you speak of has been done.

IMO, There's too many of these old mining GPUs across The Asias and Europe for *someone* to not (eventually) figure out a workaround.
-and, just as Ellesemere-Polaris is so popular today, they might actually 'sell'.
Esp. since MSRPs on new kit, aren't going down anytime soon.

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

When you start seeing videos about Ali-express "GTX 1080s"
while the next generation of cards are out, and Polaris is no longer one of the highest-% GPUs...
You'll know what you speak of has been done.

IMO, There's too many of these old mining GPUs across The Asias and Europe for *someone* to not (eventually) figure out a workaround.
-and, just as Ellesemere-Polaris is so popular today, they might actually 'sell'.
Esp. since MSRPs on new kit, aren't going down anytime soon.

Falcon is an on die security, the die reports what the card is. Has been that way since Maxwell. The bios does not pass through report the GPU anymore, it's reporting is now used by falcon for whitelist verification. How did I confirm this? I flashed the chip, on the bench, (as in just not in a pc, on an actual chip programmer) as a 1080 and the card still reports as a P104-100, even with the wrong bios. The core and memory will just remain at 0%, because falcon will shut them down.

Overcoming on die security, is one of the reasons the last two nvflash modders had a spat when Kefi released his version of the mismatch override nvflashk. (other than the guy immediately assuming Kefi somehow stole and copied his work, when in reality, Kefi just did what the other guy had done without breaking a sweat in his spare time independently, with receipts) The other modder, had plans to wait for a solution to overcome falcon before releasing his version of nvlash, thinking if he released, that nvidia would get ahead of him and the peeps that were working on that aspect.

This is why I say the person that can sign nvida bioses will be the one that saves the cards. It will never be a 1080 without somehow modifying the die, or applying a modification to the card on (adding another device) that intercepts the reporting data and outputs a 1080. Even then, its core specs are more inline somewhere between a 1070 and 1070ti.

 

[masterdeejay]

Ok so the next mining card project:
Ordered CMP 100-210, this is a volta GPU (Titan V mining). I hope i can use the tensor cores on it or at least run cuda.

 

[Keullo-e]

Just pure speculation but why not a 1080 VBIOS chip from ebay? Soldering one isn't a hard task to do.

 

[contact.ernest.vickers@gm]

Just pure speculation but why not a 1080 VBIOS chip from ebay? Soldering one isn't a hard task to do.

As said above, I have bench flashed the p104-100 with a 1080 bios. The GPU chip itself, the silicon, has on board security that checks to see if it is an approved bios for the silicon. If it is not a signed (encrypted security) nvidia bios, Falcon will shut down the core and memory. I.E. the PC will still be able to see a card there, it just will not function. It still, and always will, be reported by the silicon as a p104-100. This applies to all nvidia cards post maxwell architecture, and why programs like nvbios, are unable to "flash anything to anything" like they did in the pre-maxwell times.

 

[Keullo-e]

As said above, I have bench flashed the p104-100 with a 1080 bios. The GPU chip itself, the silicon, has on board security that checks to see if it is an approved bios for the silicon. If it is not a signed (encrypted security) nvidia bios, Falcon will shut down the core and memory. I.E. the PC will still be able to see a card there, it just will not function. It still, and always will, be reported by the silicon as a p104-100. This applies to all nvidia cards post maxwell architecture, and why programs like nvbios, are unable to "flash anything to anything" like they did in the pre-maxwell times.

Ah, okay, I admit that I didn't read the whole thread.

Just weird that even Nvidia has their own name on cards like these, I thought that these are from manufacturers.