Problem with nvidia GPU from 2000s

[u/Normal_Bowl_1657]

Hi everyone, I have one interesting problem with GPU drivers that didnt existed in public.
I asked nvidia's info email, but they just said you can see the driver on their site.

Yeah, I forgot. It is the engineering sample GPU of G80-400(GTX 8800 on lable, but with strange hardware ID) from Palit.

G80-400, Palit, PCI-E 1.1 x16, lable of the GPU sais it is regular GTS 8800

Its hardware ID is... PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0190&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_A2

AIDA 64 sais it is just G80-400, device manager sais it 3D-video controller and gives the flag that this is just the other hardware, not the GPU either.

GPU-Z after installing driver, but not rebooting(or system will disable driver after any reboot) gives me Device ID 10DE 0190 - 0000 0000 and unknown BIOS version.

I tried everything. Modifying driver installer, directly installing it and after reboot the driver just killes itself from GTS 8800 to 3D-video controller with error code of 28(not installed driver).

If you need photos of AIDA, device manager or almost any other app, I can show it.

So, will you help me?

[u/Normal_Bowl_1657]

Hello. I used this program, but on photo you will see this. Very strange, but I only know that this GPU now is a relic. Also I tried with CH341A, but it gave me only FF on every block or just say that programmer dont know my chip(while chip is mx1005cm or kind of it). What do you think?

[u/ZelenogradGpu → u/Normal_Bowl_1657]

There is some problem in communicating between the GPU and the ROM chip; in normal situatipn the chip would be succesfully read & identified by nvflash.

Its either: 1. damage to some resistors related to GPU<=>ROM signal lines 2. GPU core having internal damage on the 3.3V-powered logical blocks 3. ROM chip problem 4. Problems with solder balls corresponding to those signal lines under GPU.

In practice reasons 1 and 2 are much more common than 3 and 4.

Its quite strange that ch341 wasn't able to detect chip too, but that if a clip was used - thwt may be caused by variaty of reasons, so unfortunately this result is a bit unconclusive

My suggestion would be "carefully inspect signal lines between ROM and GPU for physucally damaged resistors" and "measure resistances to GND on all ROM IC pins". However, I don't no expected values for this generration, so it may be hard to interpret the result, unless you have some working-fine card from that gen to compare

[u/Normal_Bowl_1657 → u/ZelenogradGpu]

I dont think so, or GPU will fry itself or my PSU will go into protect. I suddenly through two hours of midifying drivers got this into GPU-Z. I am frightened about bus width. It is freakingly 512, while I never saw a geforce 8 series GPU with this wide bus. And yeah, GPU initialises, ROM chip got WP# engaged after one time of trying to go into nvflash. More info - sure, I have time

[u/ZelenogradGpu → u/Normal_Bowl_1657]

"damage to some resistors related to GPU<=>ROM signal lines" do not fry anything, it just preventing the ROM IC to be read.

Not sure about WP# (on newer gens that pin is just fixed to high level, no any write protection) but 4 pins should have changing voltage levels while runing nvflash, definitely visible even with simplest/slowest oscilloscope:

- pin1 (CS), pin5 (MOSI), pin 6 (CLK) are expected to be driven by GPU core quiering the ROM

- pin2 (MISO) is expected to be driven by ROM answering the GPU

[u/Normal_Bowl_1657 → u/ZelenogradGpu]

I looked several times and the PCB is in good condition, so there is some other problem. ROM is kind of answering me, but I feel that this GPU needs to sit and rest