Used 2080ti BIOS Weirdness

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TheGardenTool

2[H]4U
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I acquired a used 2080ti and through a couple hours of Furmark and Unigine Benchmarks it seems stable. Clocks appear to work as they should. I think Fan went up to 60% max and temp hit 88C before seeing clock throttling which appears to be what I should expect with the card based on my limited knowledge and quick searching. But I did notice some strangeness with the BIOS according to what I could find one TPU.

The model is an Asus 2080ti Turbo. Seems like it's a reference board with a Blower Style fan. TPU has a BIOS revision 90.02.0B.00.BB for this particular model listed as seen here https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/204087/asus-rtx2080ti-11264-180910. GPU-Z is saying the BIOS on the card is BIOS 90.02.17.00.B2. The only reference I could find on TPU is to an unverified BIOS listing here https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/209546/209546 that also lists it as from a different Asus model. The Model Name and Device ID as reported by GPU-Z is also matching the unverified BIOS link. Some more weirdness is the SHA1 hash doesn't line up to what I got from Powershell when I dumped the BIOS off the card to either the original BIOS or that unverified listing. Not seeing any other BIOS downloads available from Asus for the card so don't think that's it.

What can I try to use to figure out what's been changed from the original BIOS? Been awhile since I've used an nVidia card. I believe I used nvFlash to flash a GTX 780 years ago to increase the power limit, but don't remember or recall if it was possible or simple to try to tell what changes were between the BIOS files with it.

Primarily just wanting to make sure there is not some power limiting going on if the card was used for mining in the past. I suppose I should also just consider flashing it back to what the original BIOS should have been as reported by TPU anyway.
 
Flash it to the new bios you listed. Saying it's the correct one. Didn't look that close. It has a power limit at 300w where the other one.you linked is at 280w.
 
A bit more googling and trying of things, it seems Asus may have changed to the non-A GPU with this model sometime during its life cycle. Not sure if there's a way to check without taking it apart to see what markings are on the GPU itself. It's working as it should so I think I'll leave it alone further until I get around to taking it apart to clean and reapply paste, etc.
 
TheGardenTool said:
A bit more googling and trying of things, it seems Asus may have changed to the non-A GPU with this model sometime during its life cycle. Not sure if there's a way to check without taking it apart to see what markings are on the GPU itself. It's working as it should so I think I'll leave it alone further until I get around to taking it apart to clean and reapply paste, etc.
Click to expand...
The blower cards were always non-A chips. At some point the XUSB firmware version (whatever that actually is...) changed, which prevented all of the original/older BIOSes from being flashed on the new cards with this new XUSB firmware version. I'd bet your card is newer has has a newer BIOS version because of it.

If you're wanting to know if the default power limit is correct, you can just check using GPU-Z. Open it up, click the advanced tab, then select NVIDIA BIOS in the drop down box. Power limit will be displayed there.
 
CaptainClueless said:
The blower cards were always non-A chips. At some point the XUSB firmware version (whatever that actually is...) changed, which prevented all of the original/older BIOSes from being flashed on the new cards with this new XUSB firmware version. I'd bet your card is newer has has a newer BIOS version because of it.

If you're wanting to know if the default power limit is correct, you can just check using GPU-Z. Open it up, click the advanced tab, then select NVIDIA BIOS in the drop down box. Power limit will be displayed there.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Good information to have and know. I did come across a couple screenshots of GPU-Z for this model I found around and did start to confirm that this does appear to be the stock BIOS and it’s TPU that may not be accurate. 280w is the listed power limit in Advanced tab which is a bit sad. Been away from nVidia so long didn’t realize all the tricks they were doing to force some separation even within a model.
 
TheGardenTool said:
Thank you. Good information to have and know. I did come across a couple screenshots of GPU-Z for this model I found around and did start to confirm that this does appear to be the stock BIOS and it’s TPU that may not be accurate. 280w is the listed power limit in Advanced tab which is a bit sad. Been away from nVidia so long didn’t realize all the tricks they were doing to force some separation even within a model.
Click to expand...
Even with an "A chip" card, the highest power limit "normal" BIOS you can run is only 380w... which will still bounce off the power limit all day long. Without a power limit, these cards will easily hit 450w when overclocked (especially at 4k). 3DMark Time Spy Extreme can hit 550w+ in GT2. So you're getting neutered by Nvidia no matter what.
 
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