Seller Note “Crashes on driver load”
Summary
- The card is this one https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/msi-gtx-1060-aero-itx-oc.b4257
- The resistances all appear normal
- VCore – 2Ω
- VMem – 114Ω
- PEX – 77Ω
- 1.8V – 5.6KΩ
- 5V – 30KΩ
- 3.3V – 32.2KΩ
- 12V – ~5MΩ (slot), ~2MΩ (ext)
- All voltages are present
- This card seems to have issues being detected
- Once, the driver did load as a second card and then on reset, the card was detected and partially worked:
- Passed Kombuster HD
- Played Subnautica briefly, then the fan went high and a blank screen resulted
- Now back to detection issues
- As a second card, code 43 in device manager can also occur (crashed on trying to access gpu-z)
- On a subsequent test as a second card, the BIOS ID appeared to be missing in GPUZ, so I want to check for a possible BIOS issue, which might also explain the detection issues.
- I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a secondary core-related issue, but hopefully still worth some analysis time
- I measured all PCI lane capacitors and all but one (200 nF) were close to 200nf, so hopefully OK.
BIOS Investigation
I’ll try using a CH341 programmer on Linux to flash on a new BIOS. There was only one BIOS file on GPUZ. So going with that.
oem@oem-XPS-13-9300:~/gpustuff$ sudo flashrom --programmer ch341a_spi -w MSI.GTX1060.6144.170116.rom
flashrom v1.2 on Linux 5.15.0-46-generic (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
===
SFDP has autodetected a flash chip which is not natively supported by flashrom yet.
All standard operations (read, verify, erase and write) should work, but to support all possible features we need to add them manually.
You can help us by mailing us the output of the following command to [email protected]:
'flashrom -VV [plus the -p/--programmer parameter]'
Thanks for your help!
===
Found Unknown flash chip "SFDP-capable chip" (512 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Error: Image size (250880 B) doesn't match the flash chip's size (524288 B)!
Trying to pad the file:
cp MSI.GTX1060.6144.170116.rom MSI.GTX1060.6144.170116.pad.rom
dd if=/dev/null of=MSI.GTX1060.6144.170116.pad.rom bs=1 count=1 seek=524288
oem@oem-XPS-13-9300:~/gpustuff$ sudo flashrom --programmer ch341a_spi -w MSI.GTX1060.6144.170116.pad.rom
flashrom v1.2 on Linux 5.15.0-46-generic (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
===
SFDP has autodetected a flash chip which is not natively supported by flashrom yet.
All standard operations (read, verify, erase and write) should work, but to support all possible features we need to add them manually.
You can help us by mailing us the output of the following command to [email protected]:
'flashrom -VV [plus the -p/--programmer parameter]'
Thanks for your help!
===
Found Unknown flash chip "SFDP-capable chip" (512 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents... done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
Verifying flash... VERIFIED.
On testing as a second card, the card is now not detected in windows Device Manager. I am not sure if I have worsened the situation now e.g. wrong new BIOS flashed or if the BIOS chip itself is actually faulty?
Just to check the card core is still trying to read the BIOS chip, pin 1 shows activity, which is good to see at least.
The BIOS chip is MX25U4033E https://html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/575669/MCNIX/MX25U4033E/2538/16/MX25U4033E.html
This is a 4Mbit chip, which I don’t have spares for. I do however have a donor GT1060 with a hopefully compatible chip https://www.issi.com/WW/pdf/25WQ020-040.pdf
Update 16/10/2022 – Replaced the original BIOS, detected again and crashes PC on driver load
I flashed back the original BIOS, and this improved things in so far as I could see the card as ‘working properly’ Device Manager, but the machine locks up!
Next steps
- Test with MATS (crashes before it can run)
- Try measuring the VCore phases (all look clean in standby mode)
- Possibly replace the BIOS chip – replaced with a brand new reprogrammed BIOS chip, made no difference to the cards behaviour.
The consistent behaviour now seems to be:
- The card probably detects, but no picture.
- As a second card:
- The system will crash when the drivers load or as soon as windows is accessed if drivers have previously been loaded.
- MODS crashes before any tests run.