Resolved nVidia GPU's: examining MVC Rom's

[cococheaf]

What I found in the ROM is the Alien Driver and the Alien Blocker.

I assume the later is used to implement a form of copy protection that blocks dumping of the full rom file from the EEPROM.

That brings up the point that the ROM you posted may not be the full ROM, but it looks complete to me, tho I maybe wrong.

I'd be very careful to flash this rom to a PC card, as it may not be complete, and could result in a bricked card. Also the ROM looks to be bigger than a 256k eeprom, so it may also require a lager EEPROM to be added to the card.

Thank you!

To make sure nobody is getting a brick when installing a rom, i have removed it from the first post.
If anyone likes to have that rom for testing, i can share it via PM.

BTW, i have dumped the rom via nvidia-flash also as with an SPI flasher.
I then compared the two checksums, and the both were ok.
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My understanding is that the new MVC V2 EFI's with DP 1.4 support are still in development and not yet released.

MVC writes: 'To start, the 1070Ti will be our first new cards, and the first cards shipped with the updated rom.'
http://www.macvidcards.com/blog/mvc...nvidia-uefi-updater-on-your-mac-flashed-cards

An MVC 1070 Ti is not yet released, and no current MVC card has the new EFI. A new EFI V2 just does not exist yet.

Okay - thanks for clarifying that - i was not aware of that because in my anger i possibly have overseen that or misunderstood the blog text.

 

[DearthnVader]

Thank you!

To make sure nobody is getting a brick when installing a rom, i have removed it from the first post.
If anyone likes to have that rom for testing, i can share it via PM.

BTW, i have dumped the rom via nvidia-flash also as with an SPI flasher.
I then compared the two checksums, and the both were ok.

You may have missed this, because I edited a post on the last page, in the decompressed EFI rom I found:

/Volumes/Media/Clover/cloverefiboot-code/Build/Clover/RELEASE_GCC47/X64/Clover/ContainerDxe/ContainerDxe/DEBUG/ContainerDxe.dll

This tends to indicate MVC used portions of CloverEFI in their EFI ROM, or at least to compile it.

If you are lucky, they only used it in the creation of the Alien Blocker, and if you are double lucky we may be able to figure out how to remove that from the ROM, as I think it is only a form of copy protection.

Tho it maybe a pure coincidence that this APFS verbose code happens both with MVC ROM's and Clover.

 

[macsforme]

My understanding is that the new MVC V2 EFI's with DP 1.4 support are still in development and not yet released.

MVC writes: 'To start, the 1070Ti will be our first new cards, and the first cards shipped with the updated rom.'
http://www.macvidcards.com/blog/mvc...nvidia-uefi-updater-on-your-mac-flashed-cards

An MVC 1070 Ti is not yet released, and no current MVC card has the new EFI. A new EFI V2 just does not exist yet.

When his mail-in flashing prices went up by $20, and then another $20, all within the last few months, I thought it was because of the new EFI (although he didn’t respond on his blog when I asked). Not sure though... very interesting...

 

[Synchro3]

When his mail-in flashing prices went up by $20, and then another $20, all within the last few months, I thought it was because of the new EFI (although he didn’t respond on his blog when I asked). Not sure though... very interesting...

I expect an official statement, and I guess when a card has the new V2 EFI it would be clearly indicated in the description.

I have a here a few Nvidia cards laying around waiting for the new EFI.

Since the announcement in the blog last summer only radio silence from MVC to this topic, maybe they underestimated the complexity of the project. I can imagine it's a hell of work to rewrite functional EFI's for all MVC Maxwell/Kepler and Pascal cards.

 

[cococheaf]

You may have missed this, because I edited a post on the last page, in the decompressed EFI rom I found:

/Volumes/Media/Clover/cloverefiboot-code/Build/Clover/RELEASE_GCC47/X64/Clover/ContainerDxe/ContainerDxe/DEBUG/ContainerDxe.dll

This tends to indicate MVC used portions of CloverEFI in their EFI ROM, or at least to compile it.

If you are lucky, they only used it in the creation of the Alien Blocker, and if you are double lucky we may be able to figure out how to remove that from the ROM, as I think it is only a form of copy protection.

Tho it maybe a pure coincidence that this APFS verbose code happens both with MVC ROM's and Clover.

I have checked the rom again, but my knowledge is too low as i could figure out anything helpful.
I have now tried to reflash the code via nvflashx64, which worked perfectly.

Altough, please do not flash if you don't have a backup bios switch or if you don't know how to spi flash the gpu bios.

 

[cococheaf]

Just for reference, regarding the spi flash, i have attached two photos (thanks google ) of a gtx 1070 factory pcb and then a pcb of msi/asus. Both designs seem to use a 4mbit (512kb) Winbond 25Q40EW 1.8V SPI Flash.

 

[cococheaf]

Hi all,

so here's the deal.
i got some insider information from someone very experienced in coding, which is explaining the following:

... the mvc mac-efi is implemented into the rom like a spidernet and contains beneath the uga efi part the complete gop uefi part. it checks the checksum in several places so that nothing can be manipulated. using the nvidia rom update tool or flashing any dump/copy of the mvc rom will definitely brick the card.

given that circumstances, and to prevent many bricked cards, i will close the thread now.
i also will stop responding to pm's about sharing mvc roms in respect to not being responisble for bricked cards.

thank you all for your input.