Best way to check if the BIOS of a used card was modified/used for mining?

Cyber Akuma

Cyber Akuma

Gawd
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Jan 3, 2009
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I just purchased a GTX 1060 on eBay for almost suspiciously cheap (A PNY VCGGTX10606PB-CG ), looking at the seller's other items I think I can guess why, they had a handful of GTX 1060, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 cards as well as bags of PCIe to SATA power adapters, so feels like the chances of this being previously a mining card are high (Is it common that miners would keep the boxes the cards came in? Feels like that's something that would get tossed, but this card comes with it's box as did most of the others).

If the seller had modified it's BIOS (and didn't re-flash it back before selling), what would be the best way for me to check? I know I can dump the BIOS using GPU-Z, but I am not sure how that would help since I am not aware of any checksum repository for them, especially if it's not listed on TechPowerup. And I also don't know if there could possibly be other settings somewhere that could have been changed or if it's all in the BIOS and if it checks out, the card is stock.

If it is modified, I know I can use NVflash and a BIOS from TechPowerup to reflash it, but if the flash were to fail, would it be possible to try flashing it again by using a different card to display video? I have a spare GT 720 I can use alongside the GTX 1060 in case a bad flash bricks it and I need to see what I am doing in an attempt to re-flash it. Or would a bad flash kill the card to the point that I can't even re-flash it anymore?
 
Common for older amd cards to have been flashed, but i am not aware of any reason for 10x series cards to uave been flashed. No need.
 
motqalden said:
Common for older amd cards to have been flashed, but i am not aware of any reason for 10x series cards to uave been flashed. No need.
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To drop the voltage below what overclocking tools allow. I thought that starting with Pascal that it was basically impossible to customize the vBIOS anymore, though. I know you can still flash a vBIOS from another AIB model, but that wouldn't allow you to drop the core voltage any further.
 
gpuz should give you the bios version thats on it and then compare it to tpu.
yes, it it "bricks" you can use another gpu/system to reflash it.
might be best to just flash it to the newest bios version on tpu anyways....
 
Is it safe to just flash the BIOS for the hell of it? Aren't you normally not supposed to mess with a GPU's BIOS unless the manufacturer issued a patch to fix some issue with it, which is usually rare?
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Is it safe to just flash the BIOS for the hell of it? Aren't you normally not supposed to mess with a GPU's BIOS unless the manufacturer issued a patch to fix some issue with it, which is usually rare?
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Its safe to mess with the vbios for the hell of it. I commonly flashed the overclock and voltage settings of my amd cards with a custom vbios so I didnt have to overclock it separately under different operating systems (this card was under esxi and ran both windows and linux)

It takes maybe 5 minutes to flash back to stock.

The only evidence would be if someone left the card flashed with a modded or incorrect vbios. I have accidentally sold a firepro s10000 with one of the two chips flashed as a 7990 for mining reasons (driver compatibility with 4+cards installed) fortunately the buyer was understanding and had no issue flashing it back when I gave him the right vbios but I would understand being irritated by that. Similar could occur with a rx 580 with modded mem timings as it would be unstable gaming.

10 series cards were not commonly flashed (nvidia made it a relative pita) and mining really doesnt hurt cards if temps are reasonable. Ease your mind and run the card as it sould be just fine.
 
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The card just came in, and, should I be worried that TechLookup does not seem to recognize it?

Despite the model number being in TechLookup's database, when I clicked "Lookup" on GPU-Z it brought me to a page that claims that the card is not recognized:


The card is a A PNY NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB, model number: VCGGTX10606PB-CG

It's BIOS version number (86.06.45.00.C6) also does not match any of the BIOS versions on TechLookup's site for that card:
 
Cyber Akuma said:
The card just came in, and, should I be worried that TechLookup does not seem to recognize it?

Despite the model number being in TechLookup's database, when I clicked "Lookup" on GPU-Z it brought me to a page that claims that the card is not recognized:


The card is a A PNY NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB, model number: VCGGTX10606PB-CG

It's BIOS version number (86.06.45.00.C6) also does not match any of the BIOS versions on TechLookup's site for that card:
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Now run some benchmarks with it and compare. If it's close you likely weren't scammed.
 
I have every intention to benchmark it, right now I am doing stress tests to make sure it doesn't crash or artifact first.

Just wanted to ask first if this was a red flag or not while running these tests.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
I have every intention to benchmark it, right now I am doing stress tests to make sure it doesn't crash or artifact first.

Just wanted to ask first if this was a red flag or not while running these tests.
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It sorta is, but because it's a PNY I'd give it a bit more slack. That's not a very common GPU brand. And of course you're always able to flash the bios to one of those either from PNY or techpowerup.
 
Furious_Styles said:
And of course you're always able to flash the bios to one of those either from PNY or techpowerup.
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Huh, funny you mention that. I just tried checking PNY's website and... they don't even have any 1060 cards listed, or any 10XX series cards other than the 1030, despite even having GT 710 and GT 730 cards listed. What even is this thing?
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Huh, funny you mention that. I just tried checking PNY's website and... they don't even have any 1060 cards listed, or any 10XX series cards other than the 1030, despite even having GT 710 and GT 730 cards listed. What even is this thing?
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That's not surprising as it is a few generations old. I'd try a google search for the specific model number or look for their "legacy" products.
 
Tech power up is not all inclusive for vbios. There isnt much pont in having anything but a few models for each arch and memory type as that vbios will work for every similar card.

Just bench the card and it should be fine.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Huh, funny you mention that. I just tried checking PNY's website and... they don't even have any 1060 cards listed, or any 10XX series cards other than the 1030, despite even having GT 710 and GT 730 cards listed. What even is this thing?
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Yeah I'm not too surprised given the relative small amount of GPUs they probably sell.
 
kirbyrj said:
That's not surprising as it is a few generations old. I'd try a google search for the specific model number or look for their "legacy" products.
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Yeah, I tried looking for a Legacy Products page, but that seems to exclusively only have enterprise cards like Quadros and Teslas. Googling the model number just gets me the TechPowerup page for the card and a few random stores listing the card as Out Of Stock.

Furious_Styles said:
Yeah I'm not too surprised given the relative small amount of GPUs they probably sell.
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They actually had a rather large selection of GTX 1600, RTX 2000, and RTX 3000 cards listed, although like 95% of them were sold out.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Yeah, I tried looking for a Legacy Products page, but that seems to exclusively only have enterprise cards like Quadros and Teslas. Googling the model number just gets me the TechPowerup page for the card and a few random stores listing the card as Out Of Stock.



They actually had a rather large selection of GTX 1600, RTX 2000, and RTX 3000 cards listed, although like 95% of them were sold out.
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They are probably a pretty decent company. I have no experience with them so sadly I can't offer much or really vouch for 'em.
 
Pny is fine. They make alot of oem cards and reference pcbs. Their coolers are mediocre but that is just fine for a card like a 1060
 
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