[SOLVED] How to enable UEFI GOP on my GTX 550 Ti GPU?

[SkOrPn]

Hello again,

I have a question for some of you experts here at TechPowerUp. I see that the 550 Ti was UEFI GOP enabled by Gigabyte in 2013

I also see that others have enabled UEFI on their identical GPU that I have simply by flashing this same UEFI BIOS rom. He/she flashed a Gigabyte BIOS over the EVGA card. My card is a PNY 550 Ti Enthusiast Edition and has this exact BIOS installed now (how it came from the manufacturer).

So, since I am not interested in overclocking or changing power profiles, I just simply want the UEFI bits so I can enable "Ultra Fast Boot" on my motherboard which requires that all devices be UEFI compliant. Shouldn't this be as easy as pie?

I have already tried nvflash64 -6 uefi.rom (the new gigabyte bios above from a admin cmd) and it kinda worked, I mean the video was garbled up but I could still see the bootup and what I was doing in windows so I flashed back to the original backup pnylegacy.rom, which worked perfectly. Maybe I need to change ID's using NiBiTor? When comparing the two roms the only thing I see different is the memory speed going from 1026 to 1025 and the ID's are a slight mismatch, and also the file sizes are way different, pnylegacy.rom being 60 KB and the new uefi.rom 120 KB. Other than that they are the same GPU's, right?

Any reason why these extremely close to identical cards/firmwares isn't working? There should be no real difference from his EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti to my PNY GeForce GTX 550 Ti?

Also, just curious what would nvflash64 --updateuefi do to it? It says it will update only the UEFI part of the rom, but I am not sure if that means it will take the UEFI bits from the Gigabyte UEFI bios I pointed to and then insert it into my cards current firmware. That seems unlikely to work. lol

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

P.s. Do not worry about me possibly bricking it, I have plenty of other GPU's to fall back on and I am sure I could use one of my other systems with built in APU's to flash this card back to stock if need be. Thanks again

 

[MrGenius]

I don't know everything about how it works with nvidia cards. Strike that...I don't know anything about how it works with nvidia cards. What you're supposed to be able to do, and have it work, is add a UEFI GOP module to your existing ROM. There's a tool for that too(which is also used to update the UEFI GOP module to the latest compatible version). You just use the tool on your BIOS ROM, and it makes it UEFI compatible by adding the latest compatible UEFI GOP module to it. Which should work. But it might not. It probably won't brick your card. But there might be issues with the signature in the UEFI GOP module the tool adds to the ROM. Which will prevent it from booting in UEFI GOP mode. It will(probably) still boot. But it won't be any faster than without UEFI GOP. There's a hack involved to bypass the signature check for AMD cards(which is supposedly only required if the legacy section of the BIOS has been edited). But, like I said, I have no clue how it works with nvidia cards. I guess it's possible, too, that the BIOS ROM file will be to big to fit on the EEPROM chip with the UEFI GOP module added to it. I don't know how big that would need to be though.

I've gone ahead and used the tool on the BIOS you linked to above(that you say is already on your card). It says it added the right version for your card. You can flash it and try booting with UEFI GOP enabled. If it works...it works. If it's not booting any faster than usual, and/or you see a black screen until right before your desktop appears, then it's probably not working.

Here's a link to where to find the tool. But without knowing how to use it, it won't get you very far. It's not difficult at all to use. But there's no README or instructions either. You need to read the thread to try and figure it out. Or just follow these 2 simple instructions.

1. To determine if a UEFI GOP module is present in a BIOS ROM file, or determine which version it is, drop(as in left click and hold, then drag, and release) the BIOS ROM file on the #Nvidia_ROM_Info batch file(or the #AMD_ROM_Info batch file accordingly). A small window will then open telling you what you need to know.
2. To add, or update, a UEFI GOP module to a BIOS ROM file, drop the BIOS ROM file on the GOPupd batch file. Then carefully follow the instructions in the small window that opens.

 

[Hood]

I went through this about 3 or 4 years ago, making sure all my hardware was UEFI compliant (had 660 Ti, then 780 Ti, so no problems there). Your target drive that you install Windows on has to be formatted to GPT partition table (MBR won't work). When installing Windows, you have to boot the installation media (DVD or USB) from the list of boot devices in boot section of UEFI BIOS, and select the entry labeled UEFI along with desired drive letter, click on it, and Windows will install in UEFI mode. I then was able to use "ultra fast boot", but the difference was not really noticeable, maybe 3 seconds quicker.

 

[SkOrPn]

@Hood, that is fraken nuts dude to only get a 3 second difference. What is Ultra about that? Haha, this might not be worth it then.

@MrGenius, Thanks man for the perfect reply. But now that I look closer to the info, it is not the same bios.rom after all. I looked at only the date and ID's which is strangely identical, but my BIOS reads from GPU-Z as 70.26.20.00.51 (the bolded number is the only dif). I bet that might be because of different ports or something. Actually not sure why there would be TWO BIOS versions released on the same day, from the same vendor except for that reason. After I posted the above I did notice that his card has three different ports, including a VGA, but mine has two DVI-D and one mini HDMI. As far as I can tell everything else is the same as the BIOS you modded for me. Below is my bios pulled from the card.

I am going to try modding my bios myself though just to see if I can. It's probably easy enough. I will report back. Thanks again guys for the information.

 

[MrGenius]

Yeah...it's better if you can do it yourself. Really not that hard at all. Easy as...

1

2

3

Then you'll find the "pnylegacybios_updGOP.rom" in the folder with the tool.

 

[SkOrPn]

OK, I updated it with the uefi gop. Now to test it and see if GPU-Z shows it has UEFI.

Thanks again.

Yeah...it's better if you can do it yourself. Really not that hard at all. Easy as...

1
View attachment 102120

2
View attachment 102123

3
View attachment 102122

Then you'll find the "pnylegacybios_updGOP.rom" in the folder with the tool.

Dang you are super fast with those screenshots bud. It was too simple. Nice that people create this stuff. I LOVE Fernando's site win raid, that place has been saving me for years now.

I will report back soon. Thanks again

EDIT:
Haha, OK it worked just brilliantly. I could not have hoped for an easier task. And for some reason it seemed to boot up smoother, but I am sure that is placebo effect. lol

Thanks for the info MrGenius, your a true Gentleman. I will rate and like your posts man. Thanks again. Now to test it in that new asrock mobo I have just sitting here begging me to do something with it. LOL

 

[MrGenius]

No problem at all. More than happy to help. I'm just glad the answer was there for both of us. I know it made a world of difference for me when I found it.

 

[SkOrPn]

Well that "ultra fast boot" didn't quite work out as planned. Note to self: You should read the fine print before trying something new lol. It stops me from accessing the UEFI bios during bootup and it drastically slowed down the boot process, like three times longer. There is apparently an app that I can use from Windows that will force you into the UEFI bios but I'm not keen on doing that. Had it been say 3 seconds or something into Windows then yeah I could see it's value.

@MrGenius

I noticed that the UEFI bios claims that the vbios does not have a GOP even though GPU-Z now shows it as UEFI enabled. I wonder if that is telling? Was I supposed to add a GOP to the gopupdater folder before building the new ROM? Or did it do that automatically? It also says Its only for Windows 8, but I wonder if Asrock just hasn't updated that message in many years now, lol.

 

[eidairaman1]

550ti, 600 series were all intended obsoletion. Most would just buy a new card at that point. Glad it was resolved though.

 

[MrGenius]

I noticed that the UEFI bios claims that the vbios does not have a GOP even though GPU-Z now shows it as UEFI enabled. I wonder if that is telling? Was I supposed to add a GOP to the gopupdater folder before building the new ROM? Or did it do that automatically? It also says Its only for Windows 8, but I wonder if Asrock just hasn't updated that message in many years now, lol.

The file that was added is in the #GOP_files folder(nv_gop_GF10x.efirom). It's called "Windows 8 Feature" on my MSI motherboard too. It still works with 10 though.

It's a weird deal. I toyed around with it a while back and discovered some odd behaviors while using it. I have the "Windows 8 Feature", which enables UEFI GOP boot. And also "Fast Boot" or "MSI Fast Boot". Those both do the same thing essentially. What I found out is using just the "Windows 8 Feature" increased my boot times by about 10 seconds. From about 50 seconds to about a minute(this was using a 64MB 7200 rpm HDD as my OS drive). But if I used "Windows 8 Feature" with "Fast Boot" or "MSI Fast Boot" it was WAY slower(about 2.25 minutes). Using "Fast Boot" or "MSI Fast Boot" without "Windows 8 Feature" wasn't any faster than using nothing(about 50 seconds). So it doesn't work on it's own(as is slightly slower than using nothing), and works WAY worse when using the other fast boot features.

However, all of that changed when I enabled Fast Startup in Windows 10. Just using Fast Startup without any fast boot features cut my boot times from around 50 seconds to around 27 seconds. Which only got faster when using the other fast boot features. With the fastest combination being "Windows 8 Feature" + "Fast Boot" + Fast Startup for around 22 seconds boot time(from a shut down). That same combination(sans Fast Startup) also made resume from hibernation times considerably faster too. From about 24 seconds using no fast boot features, to about 18 seconds(using "Windows 8 Feature" + "Fast Boot"). The difference between using, or not using, "Windows 8 Feature" with Fast Startup wasn't huge. But it seemed to make about a second or 2 improvement. And definitely didn't slow things down at all.

I'm booting from an SSD these days. And using the same combination of features that was faster with the HDD is still faster(than not using any of them). And by a similar amount. So I still use it(as in "Windows 8 Feature"/UEFI GOP enabled + "Fast Boot" + Fast Startup). I get about 16 seconds with the SSD vs. 22 seconds with the HDD. Which might not sound too impressive. But it's only an SATA III SSD(albeit a very fast one, WD Blue 2TB). It would be much faster if I used hibernation. But I don't. Since it's not the best thing to do with an SSD(too many writes). And it still boots faster(from a shut down) than resume from hibernation with the HDD. So I'm satisfied with that. (faster boot times aren't what I bought it for anyway).

 

[SkOrPn]

Yeah I too am using SSD's ONLY these days, but ONLY on my main desktop PC's. The one I am working on here is mainly going to be a media server (and Guest PC), so it doesn't need an SSD (or a decent gpu for that matter), but it still has one anyway. I have a ton of old OCZ Vertex 2 SSD's, Samsung 840's and 850's, and a bunch of Samsung 961 OEM NVMe SSD's that I got for a super great price. This machine will have a 256GB 961 NVMe SSD because it will be caching Plex server data for the family, but it will also have four 4TB HDD's. I just wanted the fastest possible boot times because even though I am on a 12kW solar array our power company is having power outages almost on a weekly/monthly basis and we want the network+server back up as fast as possible. These outages are not affecting the network (I assume bonded DSL is on a independent power source), which both the Modem and the Router/wifi is all on a small UPS so the faster the server boots up the faster they are watching whatever they were in the middle of, lol.

I am using GPT on a 961 256GB NVMe SSD. I installed the latest Samsung 3.0 NVMe drivers as well. I can't use hibernation for several reasons, especially on the server. We all have small rooms here too, think 15'x17' etc roughly, and some larger. So in the summer here in NM it costs far too much in energy to battle the heat, especially when your trying to sleep (and being on a well system swamp cooling is also out of the question). So, I had to put Window AC units in every room. Imagine that power bill without the solar array, it was like $500 or more per month. So I want PC's shut down when not in use. Hibernation doesn't work good with a power company that can't keep a steady flow of electricity. Someday I might have to cut ties with the power company and go with a Tesla home battery, even if I have to DIY it myself.

I am getting 15-16 second boot time roughly with Fast Boot disabled (my old legacy Intel X58 Xeon machine did 22-25). This bios only has "Ultra Fast Boot" or "Disabled" for options. So I will do some research on this Windows 10 Fast Startup thing you mentioned. Maybe I need to enable that. I am looking for the 5 second boots myself, lol. I hope they don't make us wait another decade for that feature.

So does that VBIOS and GOP image above not mean anything? I will download that app from asrock and re-enable Ultra Fast Boot and see what it says, maybe it changes only then. Be right back with some info. Thanks

Back

A couple of interesting observations I now have:

1. PNY has their BIOS splash screen enabled on this 550 Ti. That is costing me some time right there. Time to edit the vbios again.
2. The Asrock "Boot to UEFI" app does work. I guess I can use that while I am testing Fast Boot settings. Really seems stupid to not at least let you hold down the Del key during boot to enter UEFI. Shutting it off completely is just counter-intuitive imo.

EDIT:

OK, more weirdness. I enabled the Ultra Fast Boot, and then rebooted and counted 10 seconds. Definitely a MUCH better result. Got back into Windows and then rebooted again, and then counted 40 seconds. THAT is confusing. AND Fast Startup was already enabled.

EDIT2:
OK, with Ultra Fast Boot disabled and Fast Startup enabled and the VBIOS set to not show the PNY message, its now 8 seconds from the moment I first see the asrock logo to desktop. That is good enough imo. Thanks again MrGenius.