God bless this thread!
Successfully flashed to the Asus Gen1 BIOS (on page 5 of this thread) on my new Asus 8800GT and it now works in my 4Core Dual VSTA! Like I expected when I got it, it would power up, but nothing would show on the screen at all.
Got 8417 in 3DMark06 - not yet tinkered...