Hacking Nvidia's Drivers! #Helpful Post

okay come here c'mere c'mere c'mere okay

so this is our mining GPU that we're

using for gaming in spite of its

complete lack of any video outputs but

you've seen this before and the last

time we left you guys

we weren't recommending these things

even though they're like 75 bucks for

the equivalent of a GTX 1060 because the

only drivers we had for them were

modified by some Chinese driver

modification team and we had no way of

knowing exactly what was inside them but

today all of that changes first and

foremost we are going to manually modify

and videos drivers ourselves making this

completely safe to use second while

we're at it we're gonna kill in videos

telemetry that they build into their

drivers and third we are gonna run this

in SLI with one of these which is like

what what running a real gaming GPU with

a mining one in SLI they're not even the

same part number oh ed while we're at it

the ten sixty doesn't even support SLI

but we're gonna do it and you know what

else we're gonna do

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okay so here's the situation right now

we're not quite starting from scratch

but pretty close

so we've already disabled driver signing

and you can see how to do that in our

previous video here where we use the the

modified Chinese driver but other than

that we're looking at a pretty bone

stock configuration here so our P 106

mining GPU is installed in our system

but the drivers for it are not loaded in

any way we're in a in a completely blank

state and we are running entirely off of

the onboard graphics that are built into

our CPU here so Anthony's back hi before

we go any further I want to lay out what

our ideal scenario would be here because

in our last video we weren't just

relying on a driver of unknown origins

it was also a little bit on the older

side so in a perfect world we would want

our p 106 mining card here to behave

exactly like a dt x 1060 because

hardware wise they're the same thing

so that means gaining support compute

support and even n banc video encoding

support and all of that while being able

to run the very latest drivers however

we've run into some challenges and we

are gonna have to make a few compromises

here so what do we got well first of all

we won't be able to run on the latest

drive or at least not right now the way

it works right now and we're just

getting a code 43 error every time so

either nvidia has changed something or

they patched it or whatever either way

we're stuck with for 16 point 34 aside

from that as far as I know it's not

possible to get anything to work so so

you're stuck with quick sync which

fortunately you're gonna have to have

because you're running your onboard

graphics anyway in order to even get a

display output from this thing or x264

so with that out of the way Anthony's

going to start by downloading our own

fresh version of that 416 series driver

and then taking the Chinese one and the

Nvidia one and comparing what the

difference is between them so that we

can replicate the modifications that the

Chinese team has made

that allows the driver to be installed

without copying over anything that could

be nefariously hidden inside it so I'm

using notepad plus plus and the reason

for that is it's free it's pretty great

actually it's got a huge and of our

features including this compare feature

which we can access via this plugins

section here we just type in compare and

I've already installed it so it's in

here but yeah once you have that just go

to you load up your first file go to

plugins compare set as first to compare

I've already done that

now I will load up the other one which

is this Chinese driver plugins compare

compare so here we have a full listing

of everything that is different between

these two drivers so as we can see these

lines here have been modified so where

it used to say section 110 it now says

section 108 which is actually the same

if you look at these device IDs once e06

is actually the gtx 1060 1c0 seven is

our p 106 they have different sections

in the vanilla driver but in the chinese

driver they do not that is the primary

thing we're going to be changing here

okay now the final one of these sections

here we'll notice that it actually says

that it's 109 instead of 110 it's

dropped down a number the same is true

over here so we'll just follow here so

it'll be 107 Creech basically what we're

doing is we're copying the same config

from our 1c 0 6 which is our GTX 1060 so

we want section 1 0 7 for all of these

things now what we're doing here is

basically just tricking the driver into

thinking it's compatible we're not

actually changing any of the functional

files of the driver installation is that

correct

that's right and if we go down through

the rest of the comparison here there is

nothing different really so then it's

possible that our Chinese driver was

totally clean yeah possible but I mean

we don't know about the exe s the INF is

perfectly fine we can make some

additional changes while we're here

though telemetry isn't it convenient

that they just listed under env

telemetry yeah for those not familiar

telemetry is a feature of a software or

driver that reports back on your usage

to the manufacturer and a lot of the

time this is stuff that you can opt out

of but a lot of the time it's just baked

right in so there you go we

asked our compatibility check yep let's

go ahead and install it of course we do

not want GeForce experience also don't

care about 3d vision because we don't

actually have anything that we can

connect it to and hopefully we will get

the same exact thing we got the other

day but we did it for ourselves on a

fresh driver hey there we go alright so

that's it if nothing else we now can say

confidently that if you pick up one of

these mining cards and use this method

on this particular driver you will be

able to play games mmm yeah that that

monitor doesn't really have a shield on

its yeah the biggest criticism we had

last time is that we didn't actually

show the Intel integrated and how poorly

that perform oh really yeah oh it would

be worse than this a lot worse yeah this

is Deus Ex mankind divided running at

1080p at greater than 8 frames per

second so it's working now the thing is

even though we're having trouble moving

on to the latest drivers which would

give us support for things like oh I

mean I guess freesync doesn't matter

because you'd be you could actually have

freesync running off of Intel's onboard

graphics yeah you could never mind

depending on whether or not your onboard

graphics supports reason okay but still

there are good reasons to be running the

latest drivers now we're not saying it's

impossible we're just saying that when

we applied this same method to the

latest drivers even checking line by

line we weren't successful so it might

just be down to people who are a little

bit better versed in their driver

modification and Wizardry to figure out

what the additional things that nvidia

has changed whether just through the

course of changing things to make them

better or to specifically block this in

order to make that work either way at

the very least using a slightly older

driver we have a working gaming system

on the cheap but

that's not where we stop today for our

next trick we're gonna run this thing in

SLI now we're still gonna have to deal

with that same driver compatibility

limitation because one of the cards in

our system is one of these P 106 mining

cards but what it at least demonstrates

is that from a proof-of-concept

standpoint this can work

so you might think that this process is

as simple as throwing a real gtx 1060

into the system and then again forcing

our driver to install remember it's an

unsigned driver now so you got to do

that process manually but as we're about

to discover it did not it did not oh hi

mark

whatever the point is there's no SLI

option here whatsoever so now what some

kind of weird thing off the tech powerup

forum yeah what are we doing so it's a

program called different sli auto it's

currently in the downloads folder but

you guys will have the download and

extract that for yourselves and we don't

actually want to run the program

okay that would be too easy yes it used

to work but it doesn't anymore so no so

you'll want to go to see windows

system32 driver store and now we want to

sort it by date we want to copy the NBL

DD and it's the driver itself yeah I

couldn't find it earlier either okay

just in a sea of env pasted into the

different sli auto folder now you'll

want to open up in hex editor I

downloaded hxd it's free

should be there on the desktop you got

it you want to search for the strip for

the string of values seven five zero

five zero f ba oh I already had it there

okay cool there it is so we want to

change that so you'll want to go to the

beginning of that and type in yeah C

seven four three two four zero zero zero

zero two zero zero zero zero the hard

part's over okay so we want to go back

to the folder you got that driver from

we want to take the folder name itself

copy that and this is probably also

already Auto populated but if you go

back to the different sli auto folder

right click and install that CMD go to

edit see where it says the env design

apps that

up there you want to replace that in

every sin every instance so you can use

the replace function in notepad for that

yeah all right so then we want to

restart into safe mode oh lordy okay so

that work yeah sure all right next

you're going to want to go into that

holder again different sli auto and run

install that CMD as a minister well I

guess it's the same thing and it's a

funny way you know what let's just do it

okay

boom reboot now for changes to take

effect yep

so what have we done here sign the

driver really supposedly it doesn't

actually work okay that's something that

we can do though something that requires

a lot more but Singh around that we

don't really want to do right now it

does that copies the modified driver

that we change the bits around in yeah

to the proper locations in Windows yeah

and well that's really about it and then

just to clarify for the viewers out

there changing those hex values have we

done anything unsafe to our system have

we potentially compromised it not

compromised no but who told us to change

those values well it's actually a guy on

the tech power up forums okay by the

name of pretentious yeah there we go

that's the name yeah he's got a little

script that he runs that takes about an

hour or two to find where exactly the

string that we found yeah is in each

driver release and he just updates it on

the forum it's pretty great basically

what it does yeah is it disables the

check for SLI as far as motherboard

compatibility and you know the inter GPU

compatibility so to be clear you guys

aren't gonna be running in RTX 28 ET i

and a gtx 1030 in sli at least not to

any positive effect but over here in a

case where we have two GPUs that we know

are identical other than nvidia deciding

they're not our expectation is that we

would actually be able to achieve an

improvement in performance so here it is

the sli option is there in the driver

we're gonna go ahead and enable it and

bippity floppity

keyboard light just went off as it turns

out that SLI mod will not work with the

peep 106

unfortunately whatever maybe it's the

fact that it doesn't have outputs maybe

it's the fact that they have two

different Levi offices that are you know

for whatever reason right now does not

work if we could force the card to take

a different B by us that might work but

I haven't medial to get that to work

either I mean we can still run gtx 1060

s in sli I guess that's still fun all

right so what we've done here is we've

manually installed our driver again

moved our HDMI cable over to this GPU

and we're gonna go ahead and enable our

other device which got automatically

disabled somewhere along the way it's

kind of like a precautionary measure Hey

SLI enabled on the gtx 1060 where's my

deus ex at now beaches I'm actually not

sure what the skins would be like here

now the thing here is that there's

nothing particularly amazing about

running graphics cards in a multi GPU

configuration without a bridge running

between them in fact AMD has been doing

it this way for several generations now

NVIDIA though has stuck to their guns

saying that the available bandwidth over

the PCI Express slots is not enough to

handle the inter card communication and

has even gone as far as to upgrade the

original sli link to the new envy link

standard that you'll see on there our TX

cards with that said even though we

won't be able to speak to necessarily

you know micro stuttering and how this

solution effects something like that we

can see if we could at least get an FPS

improvement with this configuration and

we'll know pretty shortly here yeah a

benchmark only takes 90 seconds hey wow

that's a pretty nice little improvement

there isn't it yeah so once again our

experimenting with Nvidia graphics cards

video does come with some caveats this

isn't necessarily a configuration we'd

recommend SLI is in most cases not as

good an option as simply getting a

single higher powered graphics card so I

don't even know

necessarily disagree with Nvidia

disabling SLI by default on their lower

end cards it's just something that was

kind of fun to do and interesting to

show you guys just how simple it is for

manufacturers to lock down and or enable

functionality at least from a sort of

hex editor perspective now the QC that

would actually go into ensuring that

this would be an adequate solution for

their users that's a completely separate

story and maybe part of the reason that

manufacturers won't allow functionality

that they otherwise could but I'll let

you guys be the judge of exactly why it

is that this is locked out you guys can

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