Jimbo Mahoney

Ah yes... The comment was too subtle. It would have been better phrased thus: "OMG, u meen your gfx card isn't able to run steady b00sts at "1337" speeds?"

Yup. 1202 + 135 = 1337, which is the default that my card boosts to without a BIOS mod. I don't fully understand why the boost table only goes 1202.... Anyway, long story short, it seems this card is right on the edge anyway. With a BIOS mod, I was only able to achieve 1433 MHz on the core with a slight voltage boost (from 1.156 to 1.2 using nVidia Inspector). Because this only took my Bioshock benchmark FPS from 50.7 to 52.0, I'm not going to bother. At least I know that there's not much steam left in the 960m, at least not without boosting the voltage. I must admit, I've struggled with the voltage tables - I couldn't get it to increase the 1.156 voltage without using Nvidia Inspector. I didn't have the patience to keep tinkering with them, flashing, then investigating what they had done. I tried shifting them all to give a minimum of 1.2 V, but this made things unstable (graphics driver crashes) so I bottled out and flashed back to default. On the plus point, this was the highest 3DMark11 score (5500) for an i5 / 960m that I could see. I might revisit if I find the time to invest in understanding how the voltage tables work.

Success! I've successfully modded my 960m BIOS. I'm using FPT to read the BIOS, Andy's tool to unpack, Maxwell BIOS Tweaker to mod and then Andy's tool to repack and FPT to flash (after putting laptop to sleep). What a hassle!

Thanks to klem, I've managed to back up my BIOS, or at least the "BIOS" portion of it, using a different version of FPT. I think I'm now at the point where I can do the following: 1) Extract modules using "Andy's Phoenix Tool". 2) Modify the 960m vBIOS using Maxwell II BIOS Tweaker 1.36. 3) Repack the module using "Andy's Phoenix Tool". 4) Flash the BIOS using Acer's tool (I believe I can modify the ini file so that it will proceed even though the versions are the same). HOWEVER, I'm not comfortable doing this until I can recover from a Brick situation and sadly, I cannot seem to get the laptop to flash the BIOS in so-called "crisis" mode. I've also posted on the Acer forums about this, but here is what I'm getting: 1) Hold Fn + Esc keys while powering on the laptop. 2) If a USB flash drive is inserted AND it contains the BIOS file with the name "HadesSX64.fd", then it proceeds into what I assume is crisis mode - the screen stays black; the fans spin up briefly to max and the USB flash drive is accessed. However, it then simply shuts down again and does not actually flash the BIOS. If the file is any differently named or the USB flash drive is not present, then it proceeds to boot normally, suggesting that is indeed in crisis mode, but I do not understand why it's not flashing the BIOS. Once again, if anyone has any advice... If / when I finally manage this, I will be sharing my experience so that others can choose to unlock their 960m - I am frustrated at the +135 MHz ceiling and from what I can tell by the voltage and ASIC quality, this could be a great clocker...

OK, here is my current thinking, having tried to backup my current BIOS without success: 1) My BIOS has portions of it that are locked. (FPT gives an error 26 when trying to dump my BIOS). 2) However, the latest BIOS on the Acer website contains the 960m vBIOS inside it. 3) Since the BIOS from Acer is flashable to my BIOS without overwriting the portions specific to my system (e.g. Windows key), I should be able to simply modify the latest BIOS download. I'm going to learn one or both of the following: 1) How to modify the downloaded BIOS without "unpacking" 2) How to "repack" the modified 960m BIOS into the system BIOS for flashing... If anyone has any tips/advice, I'm all ears! Thanks!

Thanks. I'm going to continue the thread here, since this is primarily what I'm trying to achieve: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/8560-nvidia-maxwell-vbios-mods-900m-series-overclocking-versions-56.html

Thanks, but how should I back up the BIOS? What program do I use?

Hi everyone, I have an Acer Nitro VN7-591G with 960m. Am I correct in thinking that the vBIOS is thus part of the system BIOS? If so, how do I go about flashing it (and backing it up in the first place)? So far, I have got as far as this: 1) Download latest BIOS from Acer. 2) Extract components dumped using PhoenixTool. 3) Looking at the vBIOS with Maxwell BIOS Tweaker 1.36. Thus I'd like to know the following: 1) How to back up current BIOS? Is it possible to pull out only the vBIOS? 2) How to flash vBIOS? Does it involve modifying the vBIOS and then inserting it into the system BIOS and flashing the whole thing? Many thanks for any tips / advice!

I've got this laptop and can confirm the RW settings work great! I'm working on overclocking the GPU as far as possible, but stuck on +135 Mhz so far. Need a BIOS unlock... These are my results so far... New Acer Aspire V Nitro series | Page 168 | NotebookReview