Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/27 23:51I would try the ASUS version BIOS on the PNY card some more, but I really don't know which one of those five is the closest to my card. For example I don't know which ones belong to 1GB cards and which ones belong to 512MB cards. Would it matter? Can you tell me which of those I should be using? And should I change anything in the chosen BIOS to make it more suitable for my card?
Should I change clocks, voltages, timings, performance table entries, etc. Last time I used AS11 version and it produced a garbled image. I am not worried about not being able to see, but perhaps there is something that can be tweaked or another BIOS be used to produce a better result. What do you think?
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Mavke
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/28 08:56Well I can tell you none of those five BIOS files is close to your PNY version as they all have +500 differences. So I would suggest you stick to the 1GB versions only cause those with only 512MB would most likely have different memory chips. You can't change anything in those BIOS's cause it won't make any differences unless it is purely linked to the memory timings but that is just a very minor chance as there are just too many differences.
As I can see all will give you a garbled image and I am quite confident that is because of the many differences. And your original PNY version BIOS is much newer than these of ASUS and it is in general a bad idea to flash an older BIOS cause quite often the PCB design is getting changed over time which will make that older BIOS's typically never work on a newer design.
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r00tb33r
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/28 09:45Thanks for your help. But NiBiTor doesn't state the memory size of the card a particular BIOS image file belongs to. How do I figure out if a BIOS is for a 1GB or a 512MB card? Sorry if I somehow missed it, I'm looking right now and don't see it. Also, would you tell me a little secret, how do you compare the BIOS's for differences? Do you use a compare feature of a generic hex editor? If so, which one? If I had that ability I would look for most similar images with different fan speeds, so I won't bother your unnecessarily.
Also good news, remember I mentioned in the first post that I flashed that MSI GeForce GTS 250 version BIOS to my card that worked fine? Well its the same BIOS version as the ASUS. Which probably also means that this older BIOS version works with my possibly newer PCB. If it's not too much trouble, try comparing these two which are attached. I compared the two files using Cygnus, and found 86 differences with the default match setting and of course one extra difference at the end for the check digit.
I don't know enough about structure of the BIOS for you to figure this out just by seeing the location of a difference. Also, I can use NiBiTor to make all clocks, voltages, and performance profiles the same to reduce the number of differences. Sounds like a plan?
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Mavke
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/28 13:12There is no way to tell from the BIOS image itself the amount of memory as it is not stored in the BIOS for the NVIDIA based cards. But we do know that quite often the difference in memory size gives that the BIOS's don't work well when crossflashed. Some tried in the past and had some minor success but most just had garbled image or worse. And yes we use Cygnus to check the rough differences but as you mention if there are already that many it will be impossible to point to the one parameter controlling the fan speed, which I would assume has to do something with the duty cycle.
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r00tb33r
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/28 20:52Thank you for your response. Now that I know how to compare them, I did some more experiments. And, I have the best news yet. Apparently the MSI image is also quiet on boot but I guess I didn't notice it before because around 70% speed is still loud, I verified by flashing again to make sure. I also found two ASUS BIOS images of the same version, one quiet and one loud. I reduced the differences using NiBiTor, then flashed both to verify.
One still loud, one still quiet. Then I compared the two using Cygnus. The first difference is the date, which I can't edit and the last difference is the last 2 bytes at the end of file which I assume is the checksum. The fifth difference I checked against the MSI image, that region near the EPU thing is completely missing, so I doubt its this one because MSI is also quiet. Although I can't be certain. Cygnus Hex Editor Compare Results... > Differences (6 found): 1: [File 1] Offset=0x38, Length=0x5 [File 2] Offset=0x38, Length=0x5 2: [File 1] Offset=0x98, Length=0x2 [File 2] Offset=0x98, Length=0x2 3: [File 1] Offset=0xCB96, Length=0x1 [File 2] Offset=0xCB96, Length=0x1 4: [File 1] Offset=0xDDCA, Length=0xD [File 2] Offset=0xDDCA, Length=0xD 5: [File 1] Offset=0xEC04, Length=0x16 [File 2] Offset=0xEC04, Length=0x17 6: [File 1] Offset=0xEDFE, Length=0x2 [File 2] Offset=0xEDFF, Length=0x1 That leaves just three or four at most differences. Just a side note the quiet is a relative sense, as around 70% speed is still very loud. I think we are getting extremely close. With just 3 differences to work with, do you think you can figure it out? I really appreciate your help, and I have attached the images for reference.
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Mavke
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/28 22:10Okay, so you are indeed making good progress. I have done a hex comparison like you and indeed on six differences on these two BIOS's you have provided. The first one is the date and the last one is the checksum which means both you can drop of the list. That means only four differences remaining, and I would exclude as well the fifth difference. What I would try is to make now three BIOS files each with just one of the differences and see which one works to bring the fan speed down. You can use Cygnus to make the changes manually but always load afterwards in NiBiTor to calculate the correct checksum.
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r00tb33r
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/29 20:34Thank you for your support. Anyway since your last post it was clear that success of finding the controlling value is imminent. The second difference on the quiet and loud comparison was the fan speed control we were looking for. I tried the other differences as well and they seemed to affect the artifacts on the garbled image I get when I use the ASUS version BIOS. So, original loud image versus adapted loud image with second difference applied, gives only two differences. Cygnus Hex Editor Compare Results... > Differences (2 found): 1: [File 1] Offset=0x98, Length=0x2 [File 2] Offset=0x98, Length=0x2 2: [File 1] Offset=0xEDFF, Length=0x1 [File 2] Offset=0xEDFF, Length=0x1 So for this comparison the first difference is the fan control and the other difference is the checksum at the end of file. I checked location 0x98 on the MSI version BIOS as well, and it has the same value as the quiet ASUS version BIOS, so I suppose for BIOS version 62.92.7D.00.11 it seems that 0x98 is where fan control is defined. The structure around that location in the newer BIOS from my PNY card also looks similar, I will try that next.
At this point the help I need is figuring out other valid values for fan speed besides 780D for fast and 8C0A for slightly slower. It would have been easier for me if the value was single byte, as 256 stepped pulse width modulation control is common for simple tasks, but two byte I don't know. I did however try converting these hex values into decimal, and if my memory serves me correctly, bytes are stored in reverse in the file with least significant at the left.
So I suppose it would be 0D78 and 0A8C to get the value. Those come out to be 3448 and 2700 in decimal, which seem to be plausible fan rpm values. Do video cards define the actual rpm or just throttle values? What do you think? I have also attached the new BIOS files from my experiment that I compared above, in case you want to look at them yourself.
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r00tb33r
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/29 21:19And we have success. I edited the 2 bytes at 0x98 offset on the PNY version BIOS, first the known 8C0A value, then I tried my own, 1380 declimal or exactly 40% of the 3448 presumed max speed, which is 0564 as hex value or 6405 when stored in the BIOS as value. This produces a practically silent card on boot. I touched the fan with my hand, its still spinning at decent speed and moving air.
So there it is 0x98 offset, 2 byte value. At this point I'm happy with the card. Also, this newer PNY version BIOS is definitely better than the older MSI version BIOS, which actually lacks dual head capability, only single or clone display. I needed dual head functionality anyway since I keep two monitors on my desk. So, this GeForce GTS 250 is not such a bad card after all.
Anyway, thanks for the help and the awesome site and tools. Oh and I forgot to mention, I have a GeForce 9600 GT card laying around due to similar noise problem, might as well try it out one of these days as well. Also, do you know where I can get BIOS for Mac editions of the cards? Say the GeForce 9600 GT, I know those came on Macs at one point.
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Mavke
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/03/30 15:30Excellent mate, and I do want to apologize cause I was not much available to assist as I would have liked but got some personal matters ongoing which required my attention. But you figured it out and now I will check what we can do to integrate that perhaps in NiBiTor for these series. It would be good to know if this would also work for other series, but this is a very good start. Well done!
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deben
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Re:PNY GeForce GTS 250 wanting to make the fan quiet at boot? - 2011/05/09 07:52Great job, I successfully changed the default fan speed on my PNY GeForce GTS 250 at the 0x98 offset it was originally D90B meaning 3033 and I changed to it's 40% rate giving me 04BE in hex meaning 1214rpm. So I wrote BE04 at the given offset and flashed. I was waiting for a new BIOS since long, now I can run silently without the drivers. Thanks.
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