Need help soft vold modding a Gigabyte GTX 260, having trouble with it

[nukesgoboom]

Greetings. I have a GIGABYTE GV-N26SO-896I GeForce GTX 260.
Link on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125294

I'm having difficulty changing the voltages for this card. With NiBiTor 5.2 bios editing utility, the highest I can get the voltages is 1.18V, but I desire to get about 1.36V if possible. The voltage IC button is greyed out for me and I can't access it.

I was trying to use the hacked EVGA Voltage Tuner by AgentGod but it simply doesn't work for me, every time i click apply on a new voltage the meter simply resets and nothing happens. This is strange because people claim to get this hacked evga voltage tuner to work on Gigabyte GTX 260's.

I also tried to use rivatuner to use MSDOS to change the voltages but the Voltage regulator output doesn't show up for me like it does for other people. Even with the loaded VT1103.dll it doesn't show up. I've heard that all of these voltage methods are based on the VT11xx Volterra equipped cards, but I thought that the GTX 260's have these chips in them? Why am I having such a hard time modifying these voltages?

Ironically, Gigabyte has thier own set of video card overclocking software called the Gamer Hud Lite which claims to offer voltage tweaking, and i have seen screenshots of it where it DOES offer the voltage tweaking section, but when i install it it doesn't offer that section of the menu - it doesn't offer the voltage tweaking section at all!!

After some research on a program called Voltage Factory, the author claims it won't work on a GTX 260 with a 55nm manufacturing tech, which is what mine is. He says the soft volt mod will only work on GTX 260's with the 65nm tech. Is this because the 55nm GTX 260's don't have the Volterra voltage chips? Or do they?

Is there any way I can soft volt mod this card? Any help is greatly appreciated!! If it's not possible to soft volt mod this card, do you think I would see any major performance difference in getting a EVGA GTX 260 and soft volt modding that if the stock speeds were similar to the card I have now? Can anyone point me to the correct EVGA GTX 260?

Here is the bios of my card: http://rapidshare.com/files/313178077/GigabyteGTX260.rom

 

[Guest]

I apologize for going off topic (somewhat) but I noticed your post was quite recent. I have been trying to purchase 2 of these cards and cannot find them anywhere. Newegg has it listed as "deactived" and Zipzoomfly has it listed as "notify me."

The "deactivated" makes me nervous. Could you say where and when you found the card? thanks so much.

 

[nukesgoboom]

I found the card on Newegg about 3 weeks ago while browsing through combo deals for a gigabyte motherboard I wanted. I ordered it about November 9 2009. I bought this card because the motherboard I wanted, a gigabyte model, offered a combo discount of $25 off the card as a savings bundle. This brought the price down to $175 and it also had a native HDMI port which I liked. Also, it had considerably higher stock speeds than the EVGA card I was looking at, and it was $25 cheaper! So it was really a no brainer for me.

I am equally shocked to learn it was deactivated. I know that it was a recent card, the bios date on it was August 2009, the GTX 260's were released around June 2008 if I'm not mistaken.

I've been playing around with it and I finally finished overclocking it further in Rivatuner:

Gigabyte Geforce GTX 260 driver forceware 191.07 55nm tech
Core: 743 Mhz
Shaders: 1638 Mhz LINKED
Memory: 1282 Mhz

That's as high as I got, a single megahert more in any of those catagories will cause errors in furmark. I got 19294 3dmarks in 3Dmark06 paird with my e8400. I'm happy with the card, it's just that I wanted to experiment with the voltage changes that every other GTX 260 user is able to do as long as they have the 65nm version of that card. The only hope left to change the voltage is to modify the bios, but as I said above NiBiTor has certain options that are greyed out for me for some reason, I think because the bios is so new.

I posted over at the nibitor forums in the hopes that someone would help me. http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,34/func,view/id,57026/catid,13/
but I'm willing to accept this card for what it is, the other cards that have a working soft volt mod have lower stock speeds and are based on the 65 nm tech which consumes more power which means more heat for the same clocks. All in all i'm satisfied with it but i really wanted to play with the voltages as under load for 10 minutes at 100% fan speed it's only 63C which is rather cool for a stressed video card. I figure I have 20C at least to play with.

I've also heard from reading various forums over the past week that some cards don't respond well to voltage increases, for example some cards can't increase thier shaders past a certain point no matter what the voltage is. This also helps me feel better.