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tracer1

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2013
240
38
SC
ActionMango..Have this card now, which I believe is the same as yours. This card has the 6 + 8 pin connector. You said your were using 2 6pin cables. Is it not ok to use the 6 & 8 pin, or does that draw too much power? In other words, what is the advantage/disadvantage of just 2 6 pinnacles vs the 6 & 8 pin cables.
Thanks View attachment 747877
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,613
6,909
ActionMango..Have this card now, which I believe is the same as yours. This card has the 6 + 8 pin connector. You said your were using 2 6pin cables. Is it not ok to use the 6 & 8 pin, or does that draw too much power? In other words, what is the advantage/disadvantage of just 2 6 pinnacles vs the 6 & 8 pin cables.

Just use 2x6-pin cables. No adapters. In my experience there is no difference with this particular card.

If you feel weird about it, then fine, use an adapter.
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,613
6,909
ActionableMango.....Yes , no problem in running 2 6pins, as I do also. Just wondering what purpose the 8 pin served. Maybe overclocking, if possible with this card? Not into that stuff, just curious, that's all.

The FTW model is already factory overclocked. It never exceed 2x6-pin spec power draw even when running Furmark.

I imagine that it serves the same purpose as cars that show four chrome exhaust tips even though two of them aren't connected to anything...marketing MOAR POWAH.

By the way, if you flashed the ROM then you've gone back to base model clock speed and lost the factory overclock. If you want your FTW clocks back, you'll need to do that manually with Kepler BIOS Tweaker.

P.S. I want to make it clear that most cards actually need all pins connected to power. When I say it's okay here, I'm referring to a specific model.
 
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tracer1

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2013
240
38
SC
No I haven't flashed it yet, don't know if I will, that flashing stuff really scares me. Still using my Radeon HD7970, which IMHO, is a very good card. I've been running it in my cMP for a few years & never have had a problem with it. The 6 & 8 pins cables are connected. I also have a Asus Strix 970 & so far the 7970 stays pretty close with it. Only difference is the 7970 draws more power but like I said I've never had a problem with it.
On your P.S.....that was my next question to you. And what made you decide to just try the 2 6 pin cables instead of using the 6 & 8 cables?
 

owbp

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2016
719
245
Belgrade, Serbia
It is common thing with some NVIDIA cards.
Gtx680, as some 970s and 980s, have unnecessary 8pin connections. Furthermore you’re flashing it with reference card rom , which also has two 6 pin connections.
My previous Gtx980 had two 8 pins ( MSI Gaming) but it was working great with just 6 pins. No adapters or power issues (it was using less than 180w during Furmark).
Marketing or for overclocking headroom? Who knows...

P.S. Majority of cards, especially AMD, won’t even post if sense pins (7th and 8th) aren’t connected.

P.P.S. On the second thought, I think that it depends the most on reference card layout and how lazy manufacturers were at creating their rom.
 
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tracer1

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2013
240
38
SC
Thanks for the info owbp.

Not " worked" up about anything, just curious, that was all.
 

owbp

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2016
719
245
Belgrade, Serbia
As promised, here's the Zotac ROM. Same EFI as before (so all ports working, but no injection in OS X), just built around the stock Zotac ROM file.
This ROM, sadly, didn't work for me.
I've got boootscreen, but couldn't boot into macOS (black screen) and Windows loaded with something like 800x600 res, GPU fans on max, lots of snow artifacts on screen, which i could "clean" a bit with my mouse movement, just enough to see CMD and to right click "run as admin" so i could blindly go to folder and flash back the original ROM.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that BOIS is different, as i could see that TechPowerUp lists two of them, 09.00.E4 (mine) and 47.00.3A. When looking at the ROM in Hex editor, i could guess that Zotac rom that you made is out of the later one.
techpowerup.PNG
I'll try and go through them both and attempt to copy the EFI part in my original one, but i've never touched Nvidia rom before, just good old AMD...

Just one question, how hard or easy is to brick GTX680? :)
Was too paranoid afterwards to attempt flash with "regular" 4GB rom.
 

owbp

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2016
719
245
Belgrade, Serbia
Anyone who could check if it is ok or just plain & stupid edit of the rom that won't work? :D

EDIT: Scratch that, KeplerBiosTweaker reports checksum error.
 

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iamraunaq

macrumors newbie
Oct 9, 2017
4
0
After scouring the web I located a modded rom file for the 4GB version of the card. It’s obviously the rom from the 2GB Mac card, same one that’s been posted here on Mac Rumors. Version number and date are identical. However it’s been modified to work with the 4GB card. So I flashed my cards, one at a time to be safe, and low and behold I have my beautiful EFI boot screens back. Didn’t really know how much I missed them but so glad to have them back.

At this point there’s only one issue. My stock speeds of 1085MHz GPU & 1150MHz Boost have now dropped to 1006MHz GPU & 1059MHz Boost. These are the stock 2GB reference card values. Boooo….

I spent several hours combing through the hex of the rom in an attempt to locate the errant bits. Although familiar with hacking hex it’s a process that is tedious and can make your head hurt and eyes cross after a few hours. So I took a break and turned to scouring the web again for Nvidia Rom Hacking information. I found on a German web site a wonderful win utility with GUI for editing the clock speeds and several other parameters of the BIOS imbedded in the rom. Kepler BIOS Tweaker v1.25.exe

Here’s what I didn’t know. Will both the BIOS section and EFI section of the rom need edits to restore my clock speeds? I figure probably yes. This was a Windows utility to edit the BIOS so I thought at best I’d have my clock speeds restored in Windows but still have the slower clocks when in OS X.

I did the edit to both cards restoring my clocks to 1085MHz & 1150MHz and wrote the roms back to the cards. Rebooting to windows showed my clocks back to normal. Now booting to OS X was the surprise. The clocks are now back to the higher speeds in OS X as well! So the EFI needs no edit only the BIOS.

These cards are working awesome, full boot screens, full clock speeds & PCI-E 2.0. Just as if you walked in an Apple Store and pulled them off the shelf. (If you could…)

Good Stuff..... Enjoy ! ROM and utilities attached below for the adventurous.

The rom is just as I found it with reference card speeds. But you can tweak it with the included utilities.

7.jpeg
[doublepost=1518148485][/doublepost]
After scouring the web I located a modded rom file for the 4GB version of the card. It’s obviously the rom from the 2GB Mac card, same one that’s been posted here on Mac Rumors. Version number and date are identical. However it’s been modified to work with the 4GB card. So I flashed my cards, one at a time to be safe, and low and behold I have my beautiful EFI boot screens back. Didn’t really know how much I missed them but so glad to have them back.

At this point there’s only one issue. My stock speeds of 1085MHz GPU & 1150MHz Boost have now dropped to 1006MHz GPU & 1059MHz Boost. These are the stock 2GB reference card values. Boooo….

I spent several hours combing through the hex of the rom in an attempt to locate the errant bits. Although familiar with hacking hex it’s a process that is tedious and can make your head hurt and eyes cross after a few hours. So I took a break and turned to scouring the web again for Nvidia Rom Hacking information. I found on a German web site a wonderful win utility with GUI for editing the clock speeds and several other parameters of the BIOS imbedded in the rom. Kepler BIOS Tweaker v1.25.exe

Here’s what I didn’t know. Will both the BIOS section and EFI section of the rom need edits to restore my clock speeds? I figure probably yes. This was a Windows utility to edit the BIOS so I thought at best I’d have my clock speeds restored in Windows but still have the slower clocks when in OS X.

I did the edit to both cards restoring my clocks to 1085MHz & 1150MHz and wrote the roms back to the cards. Rebooting to windows showed my clocks back to normal. Now booting to OS X was the surprise. The clocks are now back to the higher speeds in OS X as well! So the EFI needs no edit only the BIOS.

These cards are working awesome, full boot screens, full clock speeds & PCI-E 2.0. Just as if you walked in an Apple Store and pulled them off the shelf. (If you could…)

Good Stuff..... Enjoy ! ROM and utilities attached below for the adventurous.

The rom is just as I found it with reference card speeds. But you can tweak it with the included utilities.

7.jpeg
Can I Use This Method To flash Palit GTX 680 4gb jetstream edition?
 

Fl0r!an

macrumors 6502a
Aug 14, 2007
909
530
Just one question, how hard or easy is to brick GTX680? :)

Using a pre-built, tested ROM: Very unlikely to happen. You can get various glitches because of mismatched VRAM timings / fan curve / port definitions / etc. but it should be easy to restore.

When trying to build your own ROM: Can happen easily, especially as long as it's installed inside a Mac Pro (corrupted EFI might/will prevent it from booting).
 

owbp

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2016
719
245
Belgrade, Serbia
but it should be easy to restore.
That was the thing that saved me, Mac at least booted into Win, so i could restore original.
Tested original ROM from this topic and it works fine, so before going any further I'll have to find a PC with BIOS that could boot without GPU check before i go any further.
 

iamraunaq

macrumors newbie
Oct 9, 2017
4
0
After scouring the web I located a modded rom file for the 4GB version of the card. It’s obviously the rom from the 2GB Mac card, same one that’s been posted here on Mac Rumors. Version number and date are identical. However it’s been modified to work with the 4GB card. So I flashed my cards, one at a time to be safe, and low and behold I have my beautiful EFI boot screens back. Didn’t really know how much I missed them but so glad to have them back.

At this point there’s only one issue. My stock speeds of 1085MHz GPU & 1150MHz Boost have now dropped to 1006MHz GPU & 1059MHz Boost. These are the stock 2GB reference card values. Boooo….

I spent several hours combing through the hex of the rom in an attempt to locate the errant bits. Although familiar with hacking hex it’s a process that is tedious and can make your head hurt and eyes cross after a few hours. So I took a break and turned to scouring the web again for Nvidia Rom Hacking information. I found on a German web site a wonderful win utility with GUI for editing the clock speeds and several other parameters of the BIOS imbedded in the rom. Kepler BIOS Tweaker v1.25.exe

Here’s what I didn’t know. Will both the BIOS section and EFI section of the rom need edits to restore my clock speeds? I figure probably yes. This was a Windows utility to edit the BIOS so I thought at best I’d have my clock speeds restored in Windows but still have the slower clocks when in OS X.

I did the edit to both cards restoring my clocks to 1085MHz & 1150MHz and wrote the roms back to the cards. Rebooting to windows showed my clocks back to normal. Now booting to OS X was the surprise. The clocks are now back to the higher speeds in OS X as well! So the EFI needs no edit only the BIOS.

These cards are working awesome, full boot screens, full clock speeds & PCI-E 2.0. Just as if you walked in an Apple Store and pulled them off the shelf. (If you could…)

Good Stuff..... Enjoy ! ROM and utilities attached below for the adventurous.

The rom is just as I found it with reference card speeds. But you can tweak it with the included utilities.

7.jpeg
Can I Use This Method To Flash Palit GTX 680 4GB Jetstream http://www.palit.com/palit/vgapro.php?id=1880&lang=en&pn=NE5X680010G2-1041J&tab=ov
 

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
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m4v3r1ck

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2011
2,607
554
The Netherlands
Last edited:

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA

There's a good chance it will work but you should check to see if anyone has actually flashed the same card with success. Unless you want to be the first...

I did find this info:

"Note: Some people also mentioned the Palit GTX 680 2GB (NE5X68001042F) working, but there was a 10-second delay before the boot screen appeared after the chime"

I'd give it a shot. Save your stock ROM first and have a backup card handy if you need to flash it back to stock PC ROM.
 
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tracer1

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2013
240
38
SC
Trying to flash a 2GB card but no luck. One question though, when I down load & unzip nvflash ( 5.134), it shows up as just nvflash. Isn't it supposed to be nvfalsh.exe? Big problem is I don't know anything about Windows. BTW, this is on windows 7, bootcamp, 32bit. Card is EVGA 02G-P4-2682-KR.
 

tracer1

macrumors regular
Jan 6, 2013
240
38
SC
Thanks ActionableMango. Sorry about that. I will try to explain as best as I can but like I said, not a windows person.
OK, made a new folder ( shows up on desktop) & named it temp flash, had to Google that to find how to even do that.
Downloaded NVFlash, extracted all file to temp folder. Downloaded rom, extracted it to temp folder. This is what I have in the temp flash folder:
gtx680mac.bin bin file***
NVflash.doc doc file
NVflash Application file
NVflash text doc
NVflash 32.sys system file
NVflash 64.sys system file

***I renamed bin to rom & it shows as gtx680mac.rom & now a rom file.
When I renamed it, it showed a window..."If you change a filename extension, the file might become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it. I did but not sure of it.

So went to Adminstrator: Command Prompt:
C:\windows\system 32> cd C:\temp flash
and I get this:
The system cannot find the path specified. So I have no clue as to what I did or how. Hope this helps a little.
Thanks
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,613
6,909
cd C:\temp flash

When you have a space in the name of a folder, at the command line you have to enclose the folder name in quotes. Give this a try:

cd "C:\temp flash"​

Or, alternatively, rename the folder to tempflash (no space) and you can continue with the steps verbatim without using quotes.

Based on your post, I've updated my instructions to recommend that people don't use spaces in their folder and file names.
 
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