Open-source UEFI tool unlocks Nvidia's GPU AI limiter on Windows, boosting FP16 performance by up to 65%
The newly released nv-uefi-unlocker tool bypasses Nvidia's AI performance limits on RTX cards via USB boot, requiring no VBIOS flash or driver patches.
A new open-source UEFI tool called nv-uefi-unlocker has been released, which can unlock the half-speed AI limiter on Nvidia RTX 20, 30, and 40-series desktop and laptop GPUs by booting from a USB drive. The tool runs before Windows loads the Nvidia driver, allowing the tensor units to run at full speed and boosting FP16 math performance by up to 65%.
Unlike previous methods, this tool does not require flashing the card's VBIOS or patching the driver. It uses the community V67 payload with read-back verification to trick Nvidia's signed Booter firmware into opening the write lock on two speed-selector registers. Because it must be run again on every boot and requires the system to be booted in UEFI mode with Secure Boot either off or set to trust a self-signed EFI, the tool cannot bypass Secure Boot requirements for games that use anti-cheat software.