Tools

Reported 8 GB and 10 GB

Software people in the cmpunlocker Discord use to inspect, test, tune and monitor CMP 170HX cards. The unlock itself (cmpunlocker and its forks) is on Driver unlock and Unlocks; the base of the server is https://github.com/amoghmunikote/cmpunlocker. Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-18 How to put the tools together: Acceptance checklist, Testing and burn-in, Monitoring.

Most tools on this page read the card's registers through BAR0 and need root. The ones marked Warning write to the card; read their page first.

Overview

Tool	What it does	Cards	Author	State	Link
Inspect a card
gpcprobe	Read-only kernel module plus gpc_probe.py (which GPCs and memory partitions are disabled or fused defective) and blackbox.py (InfoROM history: power-on time, Xid log)	both	@matstatman	Reported, one confirmation; last commit 2026-10-20	GitHub
hbmmon	nvtop-style monitor with per-HBM-stack temperature and identity, fuse map, PCIe, power	8 GB tested	@matstatman	Warning writes to the HBM debug bridge unless --read-only; last commit 2026-10-05	GitHub
Register probe script	Older script that reports defective versus merely disabled GPCs and memory partitions	both	unknown, reshared by @xanthefin	Reported	Source: @xanthefin, 2026-10-17
infinite.im SM table	Table of active SMs per NVIDIA and CMP card	both	@xeax	Contested: one row came from an AI and was questioned	site
Test a card
cmp170hx-testsuite	Acceptance tests: HBM step test, tensor and SM exactness, real inference with weight read-back, Xid check, error map; saves logs per serial	both	@boz._. (dev-boz)	Reported; single commit 2026-10-09	GitHub
club-170hx QC scripts	tensor-gate.sh (burn, cross-card matmul correctness, memtest, AER snapshot), compare_vram.cu, xid-watch.sh, pcie-check.sh, set-powercap.sh	both	PixelML (posted by @c133, @djpandaman)	Reported; last commit 2026-10-19	GitHub
memtest_vulkan	Vulkan VRAM test; run 5 minutes right after a cold boot	both	GpuZelenograd	Reported; misses some faults, see Testing and burn-in	GitHub
gpu-burn	CUDA burn-in; -tc uses tensor cores	both	wilicc	Reported	GitHub
mmapeak	Peak tensor throughput per data type; the test to ask a seller for	both	ReinForce-II	Reported; last commit 2025-12-09	GitHub
torch-performance-test-data	PyTorch GEMM benchmark with a table that includes a CMP 170HX row	both	zzc0721	Reported	GitHub
Tune
170tune	Clock ceiling and undervolt, live HBM clock, timings, refresh, each behind hot qualification gates; receipt-gated persistence	both (10 GB on a fork branch)	Cachenetics (studebaker8); fork by vektorprime	Warning writes registers; needs a matching unlock build	GitHub, fork
LACT	GPU control GUI; its curve editor accepts voltage and frequency curves 170tune refuses	both	LACT project	Reported Source: @vcore2191, 2026-10-07
nvidia-pstated	Daemon that drops idle GPUs to a low performance state	both	sasha0552	Theory: not tested on a 170HX	GitHub
Fuses (10 GB card, irreversible)
170hx-rir-tool	Dumps fuses and RIR records, volatile fuse overrides, permanent RIR burn	10 GB	@lxtend (lxwx)	Warning one-shot permanent write; last commit 2026-10-21	GitHub
cmp-170hx-rir-burn-util	RIR burn with preflight gates plus a PCIe Gen3 driver layer on top of cmpunlocker	10 GB	evanrodgers (posted by @hezz1891)	Warning one-shot permanent write; last commit 2026-10-20	GitHub
Serving, benchmarks and monitoring
llm-inference-bench	Prefill and decode throughput grid, scheduler stress, lil-bench, p2pmark, peer-read stall probe	both	local-inference-lab	Reported; very active	GitHub
tool-eval-bench	Tool-calling quality benchmark for OpenAI-compatible servers	both	SeraphimSerapis	Reported; run on 2x CMP by @nestaa51 Source: @nestaa51, 2026-10-14	GitHub
llm-visuals	Terminal dashboard: speed, TTFT, power, HBM temperature, throttle reasons, VRAM split	both	DingoOz	Reported; HBM readout verified on a 170HX by its author	GitHub
Grafana and Prometheus	Scrape vLLM's /metrics; lightweight	both	general	Reported Source: @matstatman, 2026-10-04
gds-nvme-patch	Restores GPUDirect Storage (NVMe straight to VRAM) on kernels 7.0 and 7.1	both	cachenetics	Reported; author-tested on one setup	GitHub
localairecipes.com	Recipe site and leaderboards, filterable by card type and count (hardware=170hx)	both	@mountains1605	Reported; much of the data is self-reported	site

Sources for the rows without their own page:

• club-170hx: Source: repo github.com/PixelML/club-170hx by PixelML on GitHub, posted by @c133, 2026-10-20.
• memtest_vulkan and gpu-burn as used here: Source: repo github.com/dev-boz/cmp170hx-testsuite by dev-boz on GitHub, posted by @boz._., 2026-10-09.
• torch-performance-test-data: Source: repo github.com/zzc0721/torch-performance-test-data by zzc0721 on GitHub, posted by @jimtjames, 2026-10-11.
• nvidia-pstated: Source: repo github.com/sasha0552/nvidia-pstated by sasha0552 on GitHub, posted by @d3m3n7r, 2026-10-13.
• tool-eval-bench: Source: repo github.com/SeraphimSerapis/tool-eval-bench by SeraphimSerapis on GitHub, posted by @nestaa51, 2026-10-14.
• localairecipes.com: Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-06
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-27

The others are on each tool's page.

Notes on some of them

• Probes for the defective-versus-disabled question. @djpandaman: units marked defective have always proven truly defective; disabled units can be enabled. Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-17 The infinite.im table lists active SMs, so inactive ones may be reactivated if not defective Source: @xeax, 2026-10-18; @emogop questioned its 90HX row and @xeax said that row came from his AI and asked for corrections. Source: @emogop, 2026-10-18 No Windows or EFI tool shows disabled versus defective SMs on GA102 or GA104 yet. Source: @emogop, 2026-10-19
• A probe request for 10 GB owners. @sekkit_75019 asked 10 GB owners to run gen3_sku_probe.py; no results were posted. Source: @sekkit_75019, 2026-10-04
• localairecipes.com is run by @mountains1605. Recipes are links to git and Docker Hub with revision history; anyone can read without logging in, submissions use an email link, and bots are welcome. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-06
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-06 As of 2026-10-27 it had strong 2, 3 and 4 card recipes but only two single-card ones. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-27 Its bot had not been updating existing recipes well; speeds and contexts were due for revision. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-27 It also has a benchmarks page, and context length was being added to the recipe cards. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-17
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-20 Recipes on this wiki are on All recipes.
• Fan ducts. 170hx-fanduct is a parametric OpenSCAD duct generator; @c133 used it to make a duct from one 120 mm fan to three cards. Source: @c133, 2026-10-08
  Source: @c133, 2026-10-08 More on Cooling and power.

Engines and software people asked about

Short notes; engine and recipe details belong on the recipe pages.

• Reported Strata (GPU-as-cache MoE offload) ran slower than vLLM on a 170HX, and the CMP is not officially supported. Source: @_orrorin, 2026-10-11
  Source: @artistosu, 2026-10-11 Moving a card from x4 to x16 gave about 3 percent more decode but about 4 times the prefill. Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-07
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-07 About 48 GB of system RAM is the practical minimum. Source: @xtj7, 2026-10-07 Warning It pulls in further external libraries, unlike vLLM and llama.cpp built from source; one member had an agent audit it before use. Source: @kellertreppe123, 2026-10-14
  Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-14
• Reported tokenspeed (called tensorfold in the chat) required compute capability 8.9 or newer, so it refused the 170HX; @c133's SM80 pull request was closed by a bot as "won't fix", and it had no pipeline parallel. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-05
  Source: @c133, 2026-10-05
  Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-10-05 Theory On 2026-10-20 @alanoo relayed that TensorFold now ships sm_80 kernels; nobody reported a 170HX run, and the question whether it beats vLLM on these cards is open. Source: @voidgiraffe, 2026-10-04
  Source: @alanoo, 2026-10-20
• Reported ExLlamaV3 gained DeepSeek V4.1 Flash support and per-card expert placement through @anon33anon's pull requests, without tensor parallel yet; he found vLLM's EXL3 path much slower than native ExLlamaV3. Source: @anon33anon, 2026-10-12
• Reported Deepinfer-SM80 ports DeepSeek's DeepInfer kernels into vLLM for sm_80: +20 percent prefill, +6 percent decode, validated on 6 GPUs as TP2 x PP3. Source: @reala7096, 2026-10-20
  Source: @reala7096, 2026-10-20
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-20 Only kernels are ported, so the gains are modest. Source: @reala7096, 2026-10-20
• Reported Why EXL3 is slow on this card. EXL3 decodes its weights with integer math on the regular CUDA cores, and the 170HX has about a third of an RTX 3090's ALU throughput; a measured EXL3 GEMM used only 6 to 15 percent of the memory bandwidth, about the same for 1 or 16 tokens. Marlin INT4 is fast because its dequant is cheap and feeds the tensor cores. Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-13
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-14
• Reported vLLM run-to-run variance. Re-running the same quantization comparison gave results about 3 percent apart; @vektor_prime traced it to upstream vLLM and fixed it with a batch-invariance change in his recipe repository. Source: @vektor_prime, 2026-10-07
  Source: @vektor_prime, 2026-10-07
• Contested LMCache for spilling KV cache to CPU RAM: with it vLLM processed one request at a time instead of eight, and @c133 found it also wanted VRAM. Source: @nikhilr1696, 2026-10-05
  Source: @c133, 2026-10-05
• Theory EAGLE-4 speculative decoding was flagged as faster than MTP; nobody tried it on a 170HX. Source: @cibernox, 2026-10-20
• Theory flare-local-inference (NVIDIA) is built for Blackwell; a port to these cards would need a purpose-written engine. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-21
  Source: @dufrelic, 2026-10-22
• Refusal overlays. @mountains1605 uses msuiche's directional overlays (1 to 9 MB files that remove refusals at runtime without touching the weights) and finds tool use better than with uncensored fine-tunes; no measured data. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-09
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-09 He put such an overlay on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 after it refused reverse-engineering work. Source: @cmdrwaka324, 2026-10-23
  Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-23
• Harnesses and front-ends. Looping on GLM 5.3 is often a harness problem; omp, DSH and Hermes have their users. Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-20
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-20
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-21 Others named: maki, CadetCoder, Paseo, rameness. Source: @analyticeth, 2026-10-04
  Source: @c133, 2026-10-05
  Source: @phoenixone7, 2026-10-05
  Source: @tekkenz, 2026-10-21 For chat from a phone or browser: Open WebUI, AnythingLLM Mobile (one endpoint only), a Matrix server with Element X, or Mattermost with agents. Source: @segmond, 2026-10-24
  Source: @xeax, 2026-10-25
  Source: @nathang6866, 2026-10-25
  Source: @mfj4, 2026-10-25
• Persisting the power cap: a systemd service, a crontab entry or a sysvinit service. Source: @robbbbbb7973, 2026-10-15
  Source: @xanthefin, 2026-10-15 See Monitoring.

Bench tools for the cap mod and board work

How to do the x16 cap mod is on Unlocks. What members used:

• Hot air: an Atten ST-862D (1000 W) works but is slow; @globalapathy uses the medium nozzle at 15 percent air so the capacitors do not blow away, and finds the leftmost group by the mounting hole the hardest. Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
• Iron: a Pinecil or any 60 W or stronger iron with SMD tips; the Sequre S99 (USB-C, C245 tips, 100 W). Source: @civiloid, 2026-10-11
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-11
• Microsoldering tweezers are essential; the capacitors are almost impossible to handle otherwise. Clean with isopropyl alcohol, foam swabs, a brush and wipes. Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-10-11
  Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-10-11
• Microscope: @civiloid would rather have a QianLi Gorilla 6558 or Mechanic 6560T with a camera than work off a screen alone. Source: @civiloid, 2026-10-11 A used Vision Engineering TS-4 is another option; skip the TS-3. Source: @cmdrwaka324, 2026-10-14
• A solder stencil for the mod is in the channel pins, but making one needs a laser cutter. Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
• A video of the mod done quickly by a Canadian GPU repair YouTuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO2T4TgNzlQ Source: @_arcanum_, 2026-10-11
• Replacing 0402 capacitors is home work; reballing a die this size needs a repair shop. Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-18
  Source: @_orrorin, 2026-10-18
• Theory Laser soldering with a 1064 nm fiber laser was discussed; without temperature feedback it would burn through boards unless tuned on something of the same thermal mass. Nobody has tried it. Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-27
• Warning SPI flasher voltage. Flashing a VBIOS chip directly needs a programmer at the chip's voltage. Flash chips are 1.8 V or 3 V and a 3 V programmer fries a 1.8 V chip. Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-13
  Source: @wakeupmbrc1, 2026-10-13 A CH341-based programmer sold as 3.3 V was really 5 V; a CH347-based one selects voltages in software and is faster. Source: @ichundes, 2026-10-13 The 170HX VBIOS is signed, so flashing a modified image is a separate problem; see Unlocks.

Gaps

• No shared benchmark suite exists yet. Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-12
  Source: @boz._., 2026-10-12
• A community database of gpcprobe outputs was proposed, with a field for where each card was bought; GitHub submissions in a standard format were suggested. Not started. Source: @matstatman, 2026-10-09
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-09 @matstatman planned a script that reads out more than gpcprobe, and @globalapathy offered reports from four 8 GB cards. Source: @matstatman, 2026-10-09
  Source: @globalapathy, 2026-10-09

Related work on other NVIDIA cards

• Reported Zagitta/gpu-unlock: a Linux kernel module that removes the half-rate tensor-math limit on RTX 3090 class cards with the register approach the CMP unlocks use, without driver patching. It must load before the NVIDIA driver; it only matches RTX 3090 IDs by default. Gain: a few percent prefill when the engine uses BF16 to FP32 FMA; no core or SM unlock. Source: @zagitta, 2026-10-18
  Source: @zagitta, 2026-10-19
  Source: @zagitta, 2026-10-20
  Source: @zagitta, 2026-10-23 @sojun80 used the approach on a 3060 Ti, 3070, 3070 mobile, 3080 and 3080 Ti, and is building a generic unlock tool from cmpunlocker for the 30 and 40 series. Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-21
  Source: @sojun80, 2026-10-21 Details belong on Unlocks.
• Theory @djpandaman asked AD102 owners (4090, RTX 5000 Ada, 6000 Ada) to run a read-only fuse dump script; @zagitta posted fuse and floorsweep register values from two RTX 3090s for reference. Source: @zagitta, 2026-10-26
  Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-27
  Source: @djpandaman, 2026-10-27
• Reverse-engineering links people shared: a laser fault injection rig build (fraktalcyber/lfi-rig) and an agent tool whose list lacks NVIDIA Falcon support; an agent with Ghidra and radare2 can disassemble most things. Source: @mountains1605, 2026-10-09
  Source: @analyticeth, 2026-10-09
  Source: @dottoreargus, 2026-10-14
• Nobody has a fork that combines P2P and 170tune. Source: @gnasherrr, 2026-10-26

Longer write-ups on Discord

These are summarised here only until their authors agree to more.

• iff_apply.py, 170hx_sweep.py and bar0_write.py with their READMEs, posted as "untested": a longer write-up by @xeax and @scallion_9883 (Humvee55) exists; see Discord.
• Building cmpunlocker's vGPU-and-others branch: a longer write-up by @arabus_74064 (arabus) exists; see Discord.
• Speeding up model loading at startup: a longer write-up by @impactic (Impactic) exists; see Discord.
• vLLM checkpointing and fast model swapping: a longer write-up by @peter643 exists; see Discord.
• A video series on tuning the 8 GB card and on cmpunlocker v0.5: a longer write-up by @rh3dai (RH-3D) exists; see Discord.
• Driving a PC with an AI agent through an IP-KVM: a longer write-up by @con3po7016 (Con3po) exists; see Discord.

See also

• Monitoring
• Testing and burn-in
• Acceptance checklist
• Buying
• Unlocks
• Troubleshooting
• Cooling and power
• Which card do I have

Imported from the cmpunlocker Discord with credit; see Credits.