[Solved] Programming XFX GTX275/260 Bios to solve FAN SPEED problem I found out that i can edit the bios with nibitor but i need help i do not understand what all temperatures readings mean. In this topic you can find that there are FAN speed problems making the fan stuck at 40 % and the card can easily reach 90 degrees celsius unless you use rivatuner or something else to program the fan speed. Fan speed problem topic I want to modify the bios fan speeds so i no longer need rivatuner, anyone has done this before? Below are the original BIOS fan speed settings. So we might get it to work, but off course it is XFX who should have deliverd us a good working bios, but they don't . Frequently asked questions: * What does TMin mean ? * What is Min. Duty Cycle ? * What is tRange Slope ? * What is THigh ? * What is TOperating ? * What is TLow ? Original FAN IC values: TCrit: 97C THyst: 0C TMin: 61C min Duty cycle: 40% TRange slope: 32C THigh: 94C TOperating: 84C TLow: 74C
Why not use a simpler and much easier version of RT. With MSI afterburner or EVGA precision you can have profiles and set your fan speed to whatever you want in a few clicks. So lets say for 2d clocks set card to default 40% fan speed. For 3d clocks 100% fan speed.
Imagine i want a new videocard, and i sell the one i have with the stuck at 40 percent fan speed, the card would simply burn out if i sell it to someone and that person is not a computer specialist. I modified with Nibitor the BIOS. You find the original BIOS settings posted in the first post. Below are the modified FAN speed settings to solve the FAN speed problem The FAN default speed is 45% The FAN kicks in at 71C, at 75C the FAN speed is 50% at 79C the FAN speed is 60% at 81C the FAN speed is 64% The card does not get hotter dan 82C with Crysis benchmark. If you read the problem topic linked to in the first post, the card before (without being a computerspecialist using rivatuner) become much hotter and the fan speed remained at 40% Now i can sell this card if i want to, even to not a specialist, evenso i can still use rivatuner. The fanspeed now gradually rises, and not a sudden noise like when using Rivatuner. Don't want to overclock anyway. To mod your own bios you need nibitor, and nvflash, you must create a DOS bootable USB flash drive with nvflash you must save your original BIOS and keep it somewhere save, load the bios into nibitor goto temperatures, select FAN IC, and if you have the same XFX with the FAN speed problems like i had, use the settings i found out. But at your own risk. Without the modified BIOS the XFX 275 easily hits 92Celsius with the modified bios max is just 82Celsius, a big difference if i sell the videocard when i want a new one to someone who is not into using rivatuner or evga precision. Conclusion modding your own bios fan speed settings really works. No longer need to create Fan profiles. Modified FAN IC values: TCrit: 97C THyst: 0C TMin: 55C min Duty cycle: 45% TRange slope: 32C THigh: 83C TOperating: 77C TLow: 64C
Found some things at a german website, sorry for the bad translation How much the FAN speed is increasing, is dependent on the TRangeSlope value. The higher TRangeSlope, the flatter the speed curve. min duty cycle defines the starting value of the fan, Tmin added with a BIOS stored in the measured compensation of eight degrees Celsius is the threshold at which increases the fan speed with automatic speed along with the temperature. The value tcrit determines at what temperature the fan roars with full 100%.
Look at the above image, during gaming with TRange Slope at 32C the card during gaming became still 84 degrees, as you can see in the image i modified TRange Slope to 20C, what does it mean? Well it means the fan speed rise will go faster, instead of 64% FAN speed at 81C the card FAN speed became 72% FAN speed with 20C TRange Slope at 80C, the card now during full load when playing Call of Duty 4 never becomes higher than 81C. I am satisfied now, me too wonder why XFX delivered the standard BIOS with FAN IC programmed to do nothing below 100 degrees celsius. In the problem topic in the first post of this topic XFX said they asked NVIDIA to solve it for them in the drivers, but the problem is in the FAN IC wich must be programmed in the BIOS. It is XFX fault to deliver the card as it comes with the FAN IC programmed wrong. In the problem topic in the first post you can see what happens if the FAN IC is programmed wrong (and the XFX card comes programmed wrong.) XFX should just give people a BIOS update, until now they don't, if you want to solve the problem yourself i assume you know how to create a bootable USB stick, i assume you know how to download NVFLASH the nvidia flash tool. Bootup from the bootable USB drive with NVFLASH on it, First backup your original BIOS with 'NVFLASH -save original.rom' or simply type NVFLASH /? to see what commands you can use. Now reboot into windows, load the original Bios into Nibitor, goto temperatures, now click FAN IC, there modify the fan speed numbers like in the image, save the modified image onto the bootable USB stick at the location where NVFLASH is located. e.g. 'mybios.rom'. Program in side dos from the bootable usb drive you booted from with NVFLASH mybios.rom, click [y] to program. FULLY AT YOUR OWN RISK, but if you do not change anything but just the FAN IC with the numbers in the image you only make the FAN doing more, the XFX card comes with the FAN speed stuck at 40% you there should be nothing you do wrong. I made the bios better this way, i can fully game without rivatuner or evga precision, the FAN does not make really noise, it is at 72% during full load, and becomes over 72% if the temperature goes higher offcourse. With the latest NVDIA driver 192.07 the clock down problem is solved to, inside windows without gaming the clock speed is clocked down to 300Mhz. Every problem i had with this card now is solved. Complete Solved FAN IC values solving fan problems: TCrit: 97C THyst: 0C TMin: 55C min Duty cycle: 45% TRange slope: 20C THigh: 83C TOperating: 77C TLow: 64C Warning! Do not change anything else as the FAN speed IC values, you should not overclock your video card or change memory settings, do not change anything else than FAN speed IC values!!!!
This is what i asked XFX product support, they just should come up with a new BIOS. [ 10/8/2009 11:03:36 AM] At guru3d they found out that the FAN IC in the Bios of the XFX card i bought is programmed to simply do nothing until critical temp of 105Celsius is reached, however the found a solution. When will the new BIOS be availlable from your website? See other ticket 248012, here is how they solved the BIOS, by reprogramming the FAN IC. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3302925#post3302925 I expect a better BIOS, if people at guru3d can do it, XFX can do it better, please provide new bios. And this is what others have to say, it is from the problem topic linked to in the first post. Hi, This issue is not only with the XFX 275, but also with the newer XFX 260 models as well. I have 2 black edition cards, one is the 65nm version and this does clock down to 2d speeds, but the newer one based on the 55nm version of the chip has no 2d mode, and also gets extremely hot. XFX support has basically been totally useless. Why these cards do not downclock and then the fan problems as well. Using fan profiles also does not solve the issue, if the computer resumes from sleep they are never remembered, eventhough I have Rivatuner set to restore the fans. I eventually modified the card's BIOS with a far more aggressive fan speed profile and it seems to be a bit better. But running the cards in Sli there is a lot of heat. So in summary, it seems to be poor design by XFX. === So it seems XFX cards in general have there FAN speed IC in the bios programmed wrong.
msi afterburner can modify fan speed perfectly it auto sets itself in increments on 1% per 1 degree starting at 50% so 50c is 50% 60c is 60% ect best program i've used
WHY are you using the "Dynamic Speed" option for Fan control??? You should be selecting the "Automatic Speed" option, then all you have to deal with are the "TMin, min Duty cycle and TRange slope" settings ? With the original Bios settings shown at your first post meaning something like Fan should run 40% untill around 61C, at which point the Fan speed will increase over a 32 degree slope to become 100% at somewhere around 90C? Mind you there is usually a 8C compensation value built into these bioses. Which would mean everything is offset by plus 8C, ie, the Fan speed would therefore start increasing from around 69C. So you just need to set "min Duty cycle" to whatever min fan speed you want to start at, and set "TMin" to whatever temperature you want the fan to start increasing from ---> keeping in mind that the actual start temperature will also involve the built-in offset of 8C. So to have Fan speed increasing from say 55C, you would set "TMin" at 47C ? And best to just leave the "TRange Slope" value at 32 Degree !
my bios has an 8C compensation value but there is never more than >2C <3C offset for any temperature, thus your statement of "Which would mean everything is offset by plus 8C" is untrue or is not correct 100% of the time both for the default bios & a moded bios.
Are you specifically talking about the "8C Compensation" value's effect on "TMin" when running with the "Automatic Speed" setting ? And if so, then possibly means that, for the 275 at least, nVidia may have tried to change the Fan control circuitry design in such a way as to minimise/remove the "positive offset" effect that the "8C compensation" value was having on "TMin" with previous generation Cards... makes sense? Mind you, maybe I'm giving nVidia too much credit for trying to do the right thing? Of course, maybe my limited understanding of Fan control design and my experience of previous design cards showing almost the full "8C positive offset" effect on "TMin" was merely a coincidence/fluke ---> who knows, and does it really matter in the big picture of things? So, assuming your 275 is working to design, then appears that, for 275 users at least, the "offset effect" of the "8C compensation" value on "TMin" should not just be taken as being 8C... Therefore, as found by b101uk, the real world "offset effect" can only be determined by a user subtracting the Bios's "TMin" value from the actual GPU Temperature at which the Fan starts increasing in speed? And for those interested, you can generally use something like "Everest" to determine both GPU temp and Fan speed?
Very interestings, for now i however seem to be satisfied with how the BIOS now controls the FAN, however i still have to wait untill it is full summer to see what happens if the card becomes hotter than 81C and what the fan speed above that temps will do. Saw when i re-read the problem topic i hitted 94C before, and i should leave it this way i think at 81C with room temp of 20C. The slope value determines how steep fan rise is i think. The lower the sooner it will spin up for every degree that is why i lowered it to 20C. ---------------- edit ------ hey dude i did not use the automatic speed option because the bios came defaulted at Dynamic speed, however i gave it a quick look, and selected automatic speed instead of Dynamic Speed. Now i can only modify TMin:, min Duty Cycle: and TRange Slope: - It says: The fan will start at 45%. If the temperature exceeds 63° it will increase with the temperature and reach 100% at 89,4°. After the temperature drops below 63°, it will run at 45% again. If the temperature exceeds 105°, the fan will run at 100% until it drops below 105°. - But i did not program this in yet, if i become unhappy with the current settings i have i will give it a try.
Yes, if you select the "Automatic speed" setting, you only have the option of changing TMin:, min Duty Cycle: and TRange Slope: ---> which are in fact the only values that really matter for this situation? And the NiBiTor indication that a 55° value for TMin will cause the Fan to start increasing from 63° is not necessarily correct, since it assumes that the "REAL TMin" value (which is important to the Fan control function) is made up from adding the entered TMin value to the Bios's built-in "8C compensation" value (ie, 55+8=63) ---> thus essentially meaning that "REAL TMin" was always a 8° positive offset from Bios's entered TMin value? However, if you go back a couple of posts you will see that b101uk indicated a least one 275 type card where the "REAL TMin" value shouldn't simply be taken as a function of adding Bios's "TMin" and "8C compensation" together ---> since for that particular 275 it was found that there was actually only around a 3° offset between the bios's TMin setting and the Temp at which the fan started increasing. Which is why in my post above I concluded, for a user of at least the 275 card, that the real world "offset effect" value can only be determined by a user subtracting the Bios's "TMin" value from the actual GPU Temperature at which the Fan starts increasing in speed? So, if b101uk's experience is typical for 275, then a "Automatic speed" setting and your selections of TMin: 55C, min Duty cycle: 45% and TRange slope: 20° could more likely mean that the Fan of your 275 would run at 45% untill GPU reached around 58°. The Fan should then increase in speed via a 20° slope to max out at 100% around the mid 70's ? Which of course is something you, or any 275 user for that matter, can easily check by simply giving it a try ?
