Help - 9800GX2 2nd GPU shows up as 8800 GTS

[Dinnercore]

Hello there. I had a strange encounter this evening. I bought this 9800GX2 as broken/untested from a dead PC. Initially it did not work, I took it apart and poked it with a DMM -> found nothing wrong and tried the trick I used on my working 9800GX2 to convince it to start.

It booted and I could install the driver, used the version that is stable with my working 9800GX2, and rebooted. I got into windows and everything appeared fine for a second until I opened up GPU-Z:

Nani? One side is running and showing up as a 9800GX2 but the other half is supposed to be an 8800 GTS?! How would that even be possible?

Nvidia control panel sees only a single 9800GX2, SLI is not showing up. MSI Afterburner sees the single 9800GX2, the second one does not even show up. Could it be that one part of it is dead? I´m not sure what to make of this, since the side that is working is the one NOT directly connected to the mainboard. The potentially dead side does atleast boot up first and then start the other half like it should and both LEDs on the back light up.

The card in question is an EVGA Superclocked 9800GX2 - part number 01G-P3-N892-AR.

Any ideas what kind of issue I could be looking at? Half of the card fried? Driver issue? Card bios issue? I do remember that I had an 8800 GTS 512MB in this system just some days ago.
It definitly got heavily tinkered with, judging by the worn out screws and residue of multiple different paste applications.


EDIT: I think I can already answer this myself, its half dead. Second GPU shows Code 43 in device manager, idle power draw is 22 W lower compared to the working one.
Now I can try to run a 9800GX2 3-way SLI for science!

 

[king of swag187]

NANI?

I would personally assume a misflashed BIOS as the culprit

 

[DR4G00N]

Yeah it probably needs the bios reflashed, I had it do this with two different brand 9800 gtx's (bfg & evga), one would show up as a 8800 gt (or something like that). Flashing the same bios onto both cards fixed it.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

Yeah it probably needs the bios reflashed, I had it do this with two different brand 9800 gtx's (bfg & evga), one would show up as a 8800 gt (or something like that). Flashing the same bios onto both cards fixed it.

Yup mismatched device id and vendor between GPU's, bios flash is req'd. Dump the good 9800gx2 EVGA bios and flash onto the wrong BIOS reading GPU.

 

[Dinnercore]

Thank you all for the fast replies, I´ll give the bios flash a try. Nothing to loose at this point, even that it is partly working is a big score for me.

EDIT: I have to admit, I´m not experienced with bios flashing. Only used atiflash on my Vega to get the liquid bios on it. That was pretty simple and straightforward.

But this time with nvflash I struggle a bit. I got the bios from the recognized EVGA half. Just for fun I saved the other one too and found that the broken one has more then double the filesize. But my issues are with the flashing process: First of all it complained that I would try to run a 64-bit app on a 32-bit OS.

Which is clearly bs. Next I used the nvflash64, this worked BUT complained about trying to flash on a mismatched GPU:

Searching the web I found the flags -4 -5 -6 to ignore mismatches but when trying these I get:

Maybe I´m just not seeing the obvious mistake I´m making and look like a total idiot but is there any other way to try and force the flash? I´ll give it a try in DOS and see if that does anything.

 

[agent_x007]

Bad vBIOS version.
Two GPUs on one card can't use the same vBIOS.
It should be +1 (or -1) between versions. Depending on card choise.
In your case, 62.92.99.00.12 is the working one so you should search for 62.92.99.00.11 or 62.92.99.00.13 as second one.

 

[Dinnercore]

Bad vBIOS version.
Two GPUs on one card can't use the same vBIOS.
It should be +1 (or -1) between versions. Depending on card choise.
In your case, 62.92.99.00.12 is the working one so you should search for 62.92.99.00.11 or 62.92.99.00.13 as second one.

Thank you, that is very helpful information! My Bios Version is 62.92.39.00.12 and you are right that I need the matching 2nd bios.
I checked the working bios with NiBiTor and currently searching for the 2nd Bios online but it seems like no one has uploaded it to the big sites yet. Can´t find it here on TPU, it seems like it used to be available at MVKTech but that is dead now.
There is no matching clockspeed version on TPU either, I could only try to use the .09 / .10 versions and hope they work. We seem to have two other EVGA 9800GX2s in the database but both only have one bios file uploaded

Is there any major source other then TPU / MVKTech for GPU bios files? Or could I edit my existing bios into .11 / .13 whatever it wants to be?

 

[Frogger]

got the bios from the recognized EVGA half. Just for fun I saved the other one too and found that the broken one has more then double the filesize.

Can you post these bios ? Looking @ the bios database I'd like to do some file compares, I might have a solution but would like to explore it further..

 

[Dinnercore]

Can you post these bios ? Looking @ the bios database I'd like to do some file compares, I might have a solution but would like to explore it further..

These are the two bios in a zip folder (see attached). Labeled working and broken. The broken one can´t even be opened by NiBiTor because it is too large.

EDIT: Ok heads up, the card may have just died anyway. To be clear I did not bake it or attempt a reflow with a hot air station! But maybe the previous owner did... Yesterday I was playing Half Life 2 on it fine for some time so I thought it might be ok, but today it just dropped the screen output from one second to the other. It was in idle, only desktop open and I was searching for the bios files on my other PC.

The funny thing is it did NOT drop the display signal! The monitor was still receiving some kind of signal but it was all black. Upon reboot everything feels fine, it posts fine, it boots into windows as far as I can hear and the card itself has the green + blue LED on like its working. The monitor wakes up from sleep as it gets the rogue signal, but doesn´t display anything. I reseated the card, used a different cable and confirmed that the monitor is working.

I then used a known good GTX 280 and put the 9800GX2 into the 2nd PCIe slot. It booted but nvidia drivers crashed claiming that some nvXYZ.dll was no 32-bit application. I used DDU to remove the driver and suddenly all the GPUs showed up again. Again half of the 9800GX2 seemed to be working, it got picked up by GPU-Z with sensors and all.

BUT then windows claimed to have 'properly installed the device driver for 8800 GTS 512MB' and it all went downhill again. Now ONLY that rogue bios thing shows up properly, the other two (GTX280 current display out card + half the 9800GX2) are now unkown video-controllers.

NaNi²?

 

[Frogger]

Ok. have a look @ RamBios {att} see if it will work for your testing needs in the future. I don't think it will work on "duel cards".
For the GX2 try flashing the att bios on the "dead" one. When looking @ the bios files 62.92.39.00.11 has one DVI output,,,, 62.92.39.00.12 has one DVI one HDMI..
The bios on the "dead" card is empty ie. filled with "0"'s !! The only mod in the .11 file is, vendor, sub sys id's...

 

[Dinnercore]

Ok. have a look @ RamBios {att} see if it will work for your testing needs in the future. I don't think it will work on "duel cards".
For the GX2 try flashing the att bios on the "dead" one. When looking @ the bios files 62.92.39.00.11 has one DVI output,,,, 62.92.39.00.12 has one DVI one HDMI..
The bios on the "dead" card is empty ie. filled with "0"'s !! The only mod in the .11 file is, vendor, sub sys id's...

View attachment 117923
View attachment 117924

Thank you for the modded bios and showing me RamBios. RamBios will definitly be useful for me, this is not the last card I´m tinkering with.

My problem right now is getting nvflash to perform a flash. It just won´t do it, always ends in: Error 'GPU mismatch'

I tried -4 -5 -6 flags and -p -f -j flags and 5 different versions of nvflash ranging from 2010 - 2018. None want to actually do it. Maybe the EEPROM itself is faulty or nvflash just can´t handle a completly blank chip. I noticed on old versions of nvflash that even more entries show up in the index list.

There I can suddenly see the 9800 GX2 / 8800 GTS in clear letters + the 2x BR04. The 8800 GTS dumps the empty rom with 128kb, exactly the same as BR04 (05BEh) does (index 2). And index 0 dumps the same rom as 9800 GX2, the 'working' bios.

Atleast I now have all GPUs showing up again.

UPDATE:

I now have tried version 5.77, after reading an old post about someone succesfully flashing a 9800GX2 with version 5.63 (no longer available).

This version atleast let me attempt to flash it, again with a big BUT:

It does not recognize the EEPROM anymore when I try to save the bios.

And when I try to flash that other index entry I get a hierarchy mismatch so I guess this one is not the right one to flash to either.

While that adapter has the not supported EEPROM.
Looking at that EEPROM ID I would now guess that the bios chip itself is done. Maybe got flashed to often in the past?

Whatever it is, I´m out of ideas what to try. This card might only be good for parts now. Atleast the last thing it saw was Half Life 2, so it had an appropriate end. It still does the weird stuff of acting like its working but with a black signal out. I guess a memory module or something died too.

 

[Frogger]

From reading GPU restoration thread I see you have a working GX2 can you post a --list cmd for it & upload pic. You should see 3
<0> BRO4
<1> 9800GX2
<2> 9800GX2
The BRO4 should be the PLX bridge chip.
Looking @ --list from post #11 it looks like there is bridge chip on the 280???? you might want to check it alone index 0
" I can suddenly see the 9800 GX2 / 8800 GTS in clear letters + the 2x BR04. The 8800 GTS dumps the empty rom with 128kb, exactly the same as BR04 (05BEh) does (index 2). And index 0 dumps the same rom as 9800 GX2, the 'working' bios."
Looking @ pic #2 is it possible that you flashed the bridge chip with the vid bios???

Can you pull the 3 working Rom's from the Good card & upload ??

 

[Dinnercore]

From reading GPU restoration thread I see you have a working GX2 can you post a --list cmd for it & upload pic. You should see 3
<0> BRO4
<1> 9800GX2
<2> 9800GX2
The BRO4 should be the PLX bridge chip.
Looking @ --list from post #11 it looks like there is bridge chip on the 280???? you might want to check it alone index 0
" I can suddenly see the 9800 GX2 / 8800 GTS in clear letters + the 2x BR04. The 8800 GTS dumps the empty rom with 128kb, exactly the same as BR04 (05BEh) does (index 2). And index 0 dumps the same rom as 9800 GX2, the 'working' bios."
Looking @ pic #2 is it possible that you flashed the bridge chip with the vid bios???

Can you pull the 3 working Rom's from the Good card & upload ??

Alright here is the picture of the --list from the good card:

I think that first bridge chip is from the mobo, I´m on a 780i SLI chipset that has a separate nvidia bridge chip.
I then tried to get the bios from that card but again nvflash is letting me down and does not allow to create files when opened in DOS...

How could I have flashed the PLX chip? NVflash has not yet flashed anything to my knowledge, it always stopped on errors.

I pulled the bios files from the card using nvflash with cmd in admin mode and got the attached files. The two leadtek files are confirmed from the two different adapters, I double checked because the version number is identical!

And the file it got from the PLX seems to be empty again? I´m not sure tho.

 

[Frogger]

While that adapter has the not supported EEPROM.

newer versions of nvflash remove out dated ,no longer used eeproms. version 5.54 supported it

NVflash has not yet flashed anything to my knowledge, it always stopped on errors.

Just checkin'
the rom on the leadtec bro.rom is the exact rom file that's on the evga g92 broken.rom.
will work on it …..later

try to force this rom on to the 8800 GTS the image & adapter ids should match .

 

[Dinnercore]

newer versions of nvflash remove out dated ,no longer used eeproms. version 5.54 supported it

Just checkin'
the rom on the leadtec bro.rom is the exact rom file that's on the evga g92 broken.rom.
will work on it …..later

try to force this rom on to the 8800 GTS the image & adapter ids should match .

Thank you for all you have tried. It might have done the trick but the card is no longer cooperating. I can not flash on it, now it ends in either: Display adapter not found OR the Supported EEPROM not found.
And in windows device manager the previously working side has error 43 now too. Device stopped because it reported an error. Only black signal out.

I´ll have to call this a dead card. Probably got baked to revive it so that I received it working, maybe someone even did the mis-flash on purpose because the other side was artifacting or sth.. Atleast the seller was honest and sold it as a broken card.

I´m keeping the roms that I could save and thank you again for RamBios. As I said not the last card I´m working with. I hope some day I will come across another working 9800GX2, but the prices are going straight up atm, can´t find anything below 120$ and reaching up to 300$ for a good condition one :/.

Long story short: I´m reporting the card as dead, keeping it as a display item and this thread can be closed from my end.

 

[Frogger]

Time for retirement Always good for show .R.I.P GX2