Whether you have an old video card that you want to keep for a while longer or you just want more performance out of your new video card, overclocking is a sure fire way to accomplish that. If you have an Nvidia card, the best way to save your new clocks and settings is by flashing the vBIOS itself – and nowadays, it’s easier than ever.
Flashing the vBIOS on Nvidia cards from within Windows
It used to be that flashing a vBIOS or even a regular BIOS required you to create a bootable disk and use the DOS command line to do all the work, but nowadays, you can easily flash the vBIOS of Nvidia cards from within Windows – using NVFlash.
A short, step by step guide to using NVFlash in Windows
Now, NVFlash is still a command line tool, but the commands are as simple as it gets, and all you need to do is get the tool, have your edited vBIOS prepared (I won’t go into the details of extracting and editing it in this article) and issue the command. Here’s the step by step on how to do it:
Step 1. Download the latest version of NVFlash for Windows from the official page: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/BIOS_Flashing/NVIDIA/ and extract it into a folder anywhere on your computer.
Step 2. Place the vBIOS file you want to flash in the same folder (where “nvflash.exe” and all the other files are located):
Step 3. Now, double clicking on “nvflash.exe” will only display a list of commands and some useful information (which you should read if you have the time). The way to actually use NVFlash is to open a command line in that folder manually.
It’s really easy – just hold the SHIFT key and do a right click anywhere in the folder. You will see the “Open command window here” option, which you should click:
Step 4. The commands are really simple – unless you have a dual video card setup, the only thing you need to type is “nvflash [bios-file-name].rom”. Of course, substitute [bios-file-name] with the name of your file, which in this case is “geforce_vbios.rom”. You can also save a copy of the current vBIOS using the command “nvflash –save [file_name].rom”.
Once you issued the flash command and pressed “Y” to confirm, you will need to wait until the process is finished – DON’T shut down your computer or do anything for at least several minutes. The display may go blank several times – that’s normal.
That’s it – once you see the “Verifying update” and “Update Successful” messages, everything went well. Assuming you edited your vBIOS correctly, you will either have the new clocks/voltages right away or will need to just restart – it’s that simple!
Conclusion
Flashing the vBIOS of most Nvidia cards is very easy without the need for a USB flash drive and rebooting into DOS mode – just use NVFlash from Windows. Of course, flashing the vBIOS is a pretty dangerous thing to do – with incorrect settings, your computer may not start, that is why I suggest you be very careful and learn the basics before attempting to extract and edit your current vBIOS!