Draft Guide for Safe Resizable BAR vBios Upgrade

[Mr_Savy]

I’ve yet to upgrade the vBios of my Asus 3080 OC TUF GPU for the fear of bricking it. Asus has now posted their 5th version of the vBios update executable. Many people have posted horror stories of bricked GPUs using past versions. I guess that's why they're on version 5. Since the first Asus vBios executable posted, I’ve scoured the internet for a guide and/or posts to avoid upgrade issues. Below is what I've extracted from posts for a safe upgrade. Probably some are overkill as folks may have successfully updated their cards doing a minimum of what follows.

My System: Asus Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, Corsair Platinum Dominator 64GB (4 x 16GB) 3600 MHz, Samsung 1 TB 980 Pro SSD primary storage, Asus 3080 OC TUF GPU, Corsair H1000i Power Supply, Triple Monitors in NV Surround Mode, Windows 10 Pro

REQUEST: Please provide your input on this “guide” to make it better. Suggest any re-ordering of steps, re-wording, adding steps, and removing steps. Thanks in advance.

Preparations:
1. Make sure your GPU supports Resizable BAR.
2. Make sure your motherboard with the appropriate bios update, supports Resizable BAR.
3. Make sure CSM is disabled in the motherboard bios.
4. Make sure the primary storage device uses the GUID Partition Table (GPT).
5. Temporarily enable “Above 4G Decode” and “Re-Size BAR Support” in the motherboard bios. For Asus go to “Advanced – PCI Subsystems Settings – Above 4G Decoding” and Enable. Set “Re-Size BAR Support” to Auto.
6. While in the bios remove any CPU overclocking.
7. Ensure any memory overclocking is stable.
8. Boot into Windows.
9. Download the most recent version of GPU-z (2.40.0 or later). Under the Advanced Tab select the “PCI-e Resizable BAR” in the pop down. Review the requirements. Make sure all are “yes”. Everything should be “yes” except the top “PCI-Express Resizable BAR” will say Disabled. “Resizable BAR enabled in bios” will say “No”. These will say “No” until GPU vBios is updated.
10. Within “GPU-z – Advanced”, capture the information under “NVIDIA BIOS”. This will tell you your original bios version (e.g. 94.02.26.48.AS13). You can use this information to identify the appropriate upgraded vBios version found within the “Asus Firmware Update RTX30xx_V5” executable. This could be used if attempting to manually NVFlashing the GPU during GPU Recovery if necessary.
11. Reboot back into the bios and disable both “Re-Size BAR Support” and “Above 4G Decode”.
12. Reboot into Windows
13. Disable NV Surround and only 1 monitor active (if applicable in your situation)
14. Upgrade GPU to latest driver
15. Disable all unnecessary 3rd party startup items. Use your discretion here. Focus on those that might interfere with GPU vBios update (e.g. iCue).
16. Remove any GPU overclocking.
17. Uninstall 3rd party GPU overclocking programs (e.g. MSI AfterBurner). However install Asus GPU TweakII (a user said the vbios upgrade relies on the Ring 0 driver found in the Asus app...whatever that means). Don’t know if this is necessary but seems like it won’t hurt. Other folks didn’t uninstall MSI AfterBurner but they had to set AfterBurner to default clocks and exit it completely before update successfully completed.
18. Have a plan to access computer if after vBios update system boots to a black screen. My plan: Enable and verify “Remote Desktop” access via another computer/laptop. Keep this enabled until a successful vBios flash.
19. Download NVFlash. Use commands to “Save” the original GPU vBios for both Performance & Quiet modes.
20. Save both vBios firmware, NVFlash executable, DDU, Asus vBios upgrade executable, and any other useful vBios upgrade documents to a flash drive.
21. Search for the TechPowerup document “How to recover from a bad video BIOS flash”. Put into a document and save to flash drive.

Execute:
1. Reboot into Windows with your minimal startup items.
2. Set your graphics card mode. Your choice: Performance or Quiet.
3. Flash your GPU with the Asus Firmware Update RTX30xx_V5 (e.g. RTX3080_V5)
4. After completion, reboot into the motherboard bios and set “Above 4G Decode” and “Re-Size BAR Support” to enable & auto respectively.
5. Reboot into Windows.
6. Launch GPU-z and verify Resizable BAR support is enabled.
7. Launch NV Control Panel and verify Resizable BAR support is enabled.
8. If everything works, re-enable 3rd party startup items. Reboot into the motherboard bios and re-engage your CPU overclock settings.
9. HOWEVER…
10. If upon rebooting, you get a black screen, use a “Remote Desktop Connection” to NVFlash your GPU either with the updated vbios found within the “Asus Firmware Update RTX30xx_V5” executable or with the original vbios.

[Mr_Savy]

Successfully (without issue) upgraded the vBios of my Asus 3080 OC TUF graphics card performance mode using RTX3080_V5. Nvidia Control Panel shows Resizable Bar enabled.

[BillBittel]

Thank you for this guide. I just installed my TUF 3080 OC and want to update the VBIOS to V5 but I am a bit nervous about doing it. There is one thing I am not understanding. When I ran GPU-Z, it reported that the current VBIOS is 94.02.42.40.66, which according to the TechPowerUP GPU VBIOS database, was released on March 10, 2021, but also on Nov 26, 2020. I don't know why there are 2 release dates for this version, but its the latest version in the TechPowerUp database for the TUF RTX 3080 OC. All of the TUF 3080 OC VBIOS files listed in this database end with 2 alpha-numeric characters (EE, EF, D8, 40, 41, 66).

94.02.26.80.EE - Released Sept 8, 2020
94.02.26.80.EF- Released Sept 8, 2020
94.02.26.08.D8- Released Oct 9, 2020
94.02.26.48.40- Released Oct 12, 2020
94.02.26.48.41- Released Oct 12, 2020
94.02.42.40.66- Released Nov 26, 2020, and Released March 10, 2021 (??)


I then downloaded the latest VBIOS (V5) from the Asus US site (after reading that this file worked but the same file downloaded from the global site was bricking GPU's). I unzipped the RTX3080_V5 .exe file so I can see the list of old and new VBIOS versions that are contained in the Testini.txt file. All of the VBIOS versions listed in this text file end in ASxx.

Example:
[94.02.26.08.AS15]
OldVersion = 94.02.26.08.AS15
NewVersion = 94.02.42.40.AS02

None of the VBIOS versions listed in the Testini.txt file extracted from the Asus RTX3080_V5 .exe file end with 2 alpha-numeric characters. They all end in ASxx, like the example above. I read that you can look up your current VBIOS in this Testini.txt file and see which one the Asus RTX3080_V5.exe file will replace it with. My confusion is that there are no versions that end in .66 which is what GPU-Z says my current VBIOS ends with (94.02.42.40.66).

I suspect that the "AS" in the Asus VBIOS list stands for Asus, and that they have their own VBIOS numbering system. So how am I supposed to know which version in the Asus Testini.txt is NVidia version 94.02.42.40.66 reported by GPU-Z? (none of the versions in the Asus Testini.txt file end in AS66)

I think it may be safer to do the flash update manually with NVFlash, but I need to know which Asus VBIOS version to flash. I can't tell that from the Testini.txt file because all VBIOS versions listed do not end in .66 (or AS66). If 94.02.42.40.66 is really the latest, then maybe I already have the latest version? Is Asus version V5 the same as NVidia version 94.02.42.40.66?

Thanks

[Lith1um]

At least with my 3090 Strix, the updater did not flash both bios on the card. I had to complete the flash procedure, reboot, shutdown, switch the card's bios switch, and run the flash updater once again to update the second bios.