Nvidia Said We Couldn't Game On This Cyrpto Mining Card...#Helpful Post

t's a cryptocurrency mining experienced

let's call it a downturn let's be honest

a huge crash in 2018 so there is no

shortage of great deals to be had on

graphics cards that were used for

cryptocurrency mining on sites like eBay

but one class of cards that there

appears to be no use for other than to

melt them down and salvage the gold and

other valuable elements is crypto

specific cards like this one from

gigabyte this is AP 106 it's actually

very similar to a gtx 1066 pin power

dual fan cooler except for oh one small

problem it doesn't have any display

outputs and not only that but the

drivers have been locked down by Nvidia

so it can't be used for gaming because

these were designed only for

cryptocurrency mining but could this

card be used for gaming

well Chinese site Taobao has a seller

who says they can and is selling them

with a modified firmware that they claim

will work 67 US dollars that is under a

third the price of a gtx 1066 gig

will it work well I'll be damned if I

know but I'm sure gonna find out Oh

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so we're not gonna go through the whole

process yet because we won't know

anything that old by the way Anthony's

gonna be joining me for this video hi

he arranged the whole thing which was

apparently like a big hassle getting

this thing yeah apparently the seller

wouldn't actually ship to Canada I don't

know what the reason was not sure it's

legal or whatever but anyway long story

short Dennis had to contact on the

directly and in order to get it shipped

they had to put it down as a computer

mouse but it's here and it seems to be

exactly what we were expecting it's as

advertised including all the dust and

grime that's built up on it from

presumably months of cryptocurrency

mining in a dirty warehouse somewhere

anyway back to what I was saying before

we're not ready to rock on that just yet

because we won't know how it compares to

a regular gtx 1060 unless we go ahead

and run one so this is a run-of-the-mill

EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 superclub okay

it's not quite right of the mill so

we're gonna run just a quick shadow of

the Tomb Raider benchmark so that we

have a before to compare to our after

now we don't need to run a whole suite

of benchmarks because we're not

comparing cards across different

architectures different brands or even

different GPUs these are both running

the same graphics core on them so all we

need to know is did they cripple it in

some meaningful way or is it all just a

software lock and we need to get our

drivers installed for this puppy

speaking of which both the cars should

be six gigs so we should be looking at

the the full coup de coeur count so I've

installed driver version 4 16 . 16 which

is from October and I'll explain why I

did that a little bit later on but we're

gonna go ahead and fire up shadow of the

two raider we're running at 1920 by 1080

and at all hi except I turned off motion

blur because it's stupid so here we have

it average FPS 68 okay you can oh you

can see the specs of our testbench here

so this is kind of a best-case scenario

for the 1060 we've got a 9900 K in here

and our minimums were Oh

Wow oh yeah 56 okay that makes more

sense

so minimums of 56

that's very playable here comes the

Chinese mining card yeah isn't that a

great question you guys probably

couldn't hear that because Brandon was

like kind of mumbling come on over here

Brandon how are you going to plug it in

if it doesn't have bio so we're not

saying that this technique is gonna work

for everyone because if your motherboard

does not have graphics outputs and your

CPU doesn't have an eye GPU built into

it you will not be able to do this but

remember how we got free sync running

off of an Nvidia card before bypassing

the GPU power through the other card

that interfaced with the display well

with the modified driver the theory is

we'll be able to do the same thing here

not with free sync mind you but with the

performance of our graphics card being

passed through the output of our onboard

graphics this is a technology that

didn't really have any reason to exist

on desktops on their own but it's kind

of a carryover from laptops that have

onboard graphics that they run when

they're trying to save power and then

high-performance graphics that they

switch to in games so button because the

feature exists well we can take

advantage of it here so we're gonna go

ahead and install our 416 dot 16 drivers

at least we're going to try

is this supposed to work I didn't solve

that driver there's a different driver

that we need to install but if this

works then did it work if this works

then I'm a little confused I mean this

drivers theoretically already installed

on the system no okay so we do have a

problem it's showing up as P 106 100 in

device manager instead of GTX and 60

well let's go ahead and let's let's try

but this is not supposed to work so I

may have jumped the gun here yet like

yeah it's showing up as a P 106 but the

driver fully installed okay

Nvidia control panel is there but it's

in display settings that I would switch

to it correct

right under GPU or graphics graphic

settings down at the bottom there

graphics settings there we go okay so

let's browse for an app options here we

go high performance safe okay oh so it

doesn't pick up a P 106 as a high

performance GPU option well what happens

if we pop open the Nvidia control panel

here you are not currently using a

display attached to an NVIDIA GPU all

right

Anthony come on in here what do we need

to do okay and talk to the camera so

okay I'll move here oh that's just yep

okay okay okay okay what do I need to do

there's this little folder on the

desktop that you missed which is fine

because it's like in this honeycomb

pattern which is great it's called

mining

and in there is the actual driver we

need it is modified but if you try to

install that right now yeah chances are

it will error out okay so we need to

disable secure boot okay so that we have

to restart for now the benefit of secure

boot is theoretically that it prevents

malware from attacking your pre boot

environment is that about right yeah but

there's been an exploit on that so so

this is the boot options menu in the

advanced on the bias it's going to

change depending on what motherboard or

computer you have but long story short

we're gonna go into key management yeah

then we're going to go to is it clear

secure boot keys and it'll be like do

you really want delete them yeah we do

so now if we go out it's disabled I

remember the first time I encountered

this I was just absolutely furious

because it doesn't even register as a

change to the BIOS nothing like I was so

mad I was like what do you mean that's

how you disable it I don't want to

delete them forever necessarily like

it's not really a very clear terminology

anyway ya know and you can put them back

it's it's it's ridiculous anyway long

story short you can turn it off it's

perfectly fine you can put it back if

you want but we need to turn it off for

now okay now we're back in the

PowerShell we're gonna try that command

again so it's BC edit / hello / windows

still hasn't figured out how to not take

the focus away from a window that I'm

actively working on how is that even

possible it's very rude anyway / set

test signing on completed successfully

yay now we need to reboot what this

allows you to do is install drivers that

have not been signed so that means that

they may have been modified it might be

corrupted it might cause instability in

your system so it's not generally a good

idea but it is required in this case one

thing I am doing here is I'm going to

disable Windows Update and there's no

particular reason other than it annoys

me when it tries to reinstall the driver

so I'm just gonna go ahead and do that

you should probably turn it back on

afterwards if you're doing this

now you're gonna go to the vice manager

we're going to delete this driver that

we installed earlier yeah do we have to

DD you it or is that good enough I think

this is good enough we can DD you it

it's probably best practice to ddu it

but yellow anyway for those not familiar

DD you is a third party driver removal

utility that's actually freaking awesome

go check it out if you ever have a

stubborn driver issue and feel free to

throw some support those guys way

they've been at it for a very long time

it's a really useful tool I've used it

many many times here is so this is what

happens normally you would get an error

saying that the driver is corrupted or

modified or something like that but now

go ahead you can still explain it okay

but now what it came up with is this

software is unsigned so it just came up

with a warning because you're you've got

test signing mode on it means that

you're basically four window over all

windows knows a driver developer so

you're installing that driver anyway

again if you see that under normal

circumstances you should probably not do

that but it is required here do we have

any way of knowing that this driver is

not installing malware in the system no

okay yeah I haven't actually looked at

it so to be clear what we're doing here

we are actually not recommending that

you try it at home graphics drivers

installed so we'll just close that now

we want to do is look at this it still

looks like P 106 but if we go into

driver it'll say not digitally signed

here okay so that's what we expect

that's what we expect this is the not

signed driver it's running so now we go

into our display settings shadow the

Tomb Raider shadow the Tomb Raider

oh we might need a reboot yeah I came up

with the methodology here about two

hours ago

and when show started three minutes ago

oh that's what we're like 1,000% seat of

our pants right now

so we DD you'd at this time which it

turns out was probably a necessary step

and we're ready to go again so we're

going into here and there it is

high-performance GPU and vidya P 106 100

so let's make that the default and

shadow the Tomb Raider here we go

remember guys it's like after 70 US

dollars okay that's the important part

of this I'm so excited right now it's

worth remembering that this card was

basically destined for the recycling bin

exactly like it could not game there was

no possible way well could it be used

for compute other than game bar other

than mining yeah but it's a 1062 class

PP you so like it's not even worth the

PCI Express slot you put it in for that

kind of a thing yeah but here it is

maybe a new lease on life and just so

you guys know there's no there's no

smoke and mirrors here's our HDMI cable

there it is going into the bottom of our

monitor and directly into the back of

the motherboard there is nothing on this

card that is looking pretty good

actually

that might actually have been higher

than the superclone oh that is looking

real nice gaming on a graphics card with

no outlets feels good well we missed the

moment when it came up but that's fine

we've got our result and actually this

is as good as I would have expected so

we fell for FPS short in our averages

and then for our minimums we only fell 3

FPS short now you will see a slight

difference in performance when you're

running the compute or the the the

rendering of the game on one GPU and

then outputting it via another one and

this is pretty much consistent with what

I would expect from either that or the

difference in clock speed between a

super clocked and just a

regular 1060 cart so it worked yeah

pretty sweet but we are not saying at

all that we would recommend this so

Anthony there weren't really

instructions from the seller on Taobao

where did you end up getting the driver

you used shockingly enough from our

forum there are actually a lot of

different forum posts about this long

story short there was one person who

included a dock and a link to a Google

Drive folder with all the stuff we need

it which was great thank you very much

with all that said that is not a

recommendation for any of you to go

download that because there's no way of

knowing when you're installing an

unsigned driver if anything has been

changed other than the things that they

said they change unless you're qualified

to go through and examine exactly what

it is they changed in which case you

could just go and do it yourself so

right now there's really no path to

avoiding the scrap heap for these P 106

and if I recall correctly there were gtx

1070 equivalents as well yeah I think so

cards so really the onus is on Nvidia to

do something about it

because while I'm not expecting them to

run out and make this a supported use

case for any motherboard with onboard

video there's no reason that this

couldn't work if they weren't

specifically locking it out so I'm not

asking them to support it I'm just

asking them to not specifically disable

it because this is a serious waste

problem literally thousands tens of

thousands of these parts just useful for

absolutely nothing anymore when gamers

could be gaming on them now the next

stage is getting ourselves one of those

fancy solder alignment things that

rossmann has and putting like an HDMI

port on it I wonder if it would work

I can't think of any reason it wouldn't

like does it have the the actual chips

port

I'm sure there's I don't think these

guys modified their boards very much so

all that's left now is to thank

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