Graphics Card upgrade for M6800 ?

With the success of the P5000 in the M6800 by @DynamiteZerg, I went ahead and bought one to try in my M6700. (Got a really good deal on eBay.)

The card has arrived and I gave it a try. I was hoping to be able to boot up Linux to flash the vBIOS to the ES version that will work in these older systems. Unfortunately, I ran into the same problem as @iieeann way back on page 3 of this thread. With the P5000 installed (stock vBIOS), you can get to the Dell logo and BIOS screens (BIOS setup and diagnostics), but booting an OS doesn't seem to be possible. With UEFI, it just sits there for about five minutes and then reboots back to the Dell logo. With legacy boot, it sits with a blinking cursor indefinitely. I tried Linux, Windows, and DOS; no difference in behavior between them.

Because booting Linux to flash the card is impossible, I am stuck.

I purchased the cheapest M6800 that I could find on eBay (with some parts missing) and when it arrives, I will attempt to use that to flash the P5000 and then see how it works in the M6700.

 

Does anybody know how to repaste with pads the upgraded M6800 graphic cards ?
Any advise on pad thickness and brand?
Thanks

 

I picked up a generic 980M on ebay advertised as "for Dell HP MSI laptop". The upgrade went so smoothly (well, the GPU upgrade did, anyway) that I was second guessing the card. I had to mod the heat sink to fit, but it did not require any driver modifications and seems to be 100% functional (Optimus, external ports, etc)

I was starting to wonder if maybe it was a fake card, like you see with cheap desktop cards. Maybe an older card flashed with a custom bios to report a different model #. So I ran Time Spy/Fire Strike 3D Mark benchmarks and the results seem to be inline with expected results for a 980M:

FireStrike: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18076349
Time Spy: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/5987462

Everything was completely stock, I topped out a 73 degrees TDP and 110 watts (180 watts total from the wall)

I think I might tempt fate and try a 1070 advertised as "for Dell HP MSI laptop" as well. The photos of the card appear like the 980m heatsink modifications would fit as well.

 

Unless you have an eDP panel don't. Unless you are OK with reselling the card when it doesn't work.

I'm not sure if Optimus will act the same way as SG mode for Alienwares, but as with all things, nothing ventured nothing gained.

 

1070 will fit, physically (it is the same as 980M in terms of component locations), however the vBIOS is not likely to get along with the M6800. See posts from @iieeann in the first few pages of this thread with regard to how the upgrade with the P5000 went — the system boots, but will only BSOD when loading Windows or Windows setup. I haven't heard any success stories of the 1070 in the M6700 or M6800; the only success story we have from the Pascal generation is the Quadro P5000 with a special, early "engineering sample" vBIOS loaded on it. We don't have such an "engineering sample" vBIOS for any other card models.

Someone tried the GeForce 1070 in a Precision 7710 and that didn't even go so great (better than the M6800 though).
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-7710-gpu-upgrade.826060/

P5000 has the same specs as the GeForce 1070 so you could do what @DynamiteZerg did with that card, which is flash it with the "engineering sample" vBIOS under Linux to get it working with Windows; unfortunately, P5000 runs around twice as much as the GeForce 1070 on eBay, you have to patiently trawl to find one for a good price.

(I'll be trying the vBIOS flash from the M6800 on my own Quadro P5000, on Wednesday or Thursday when my M6800 shows up.)


Oh yes, Pascal only works with eDP, so you have to make sure that you have an eDP model M6800 (some are eDP and some are LVDS), or run with Optimus enabled.

 

I do have an eDP panel for my M6800 and mostly use just the internal display with Optimus enabled. The thing that spurs my curiousity is the fact that my current 980m card worked, other than the mechanical fit for the heat sink. For whatever reason, that vendor has flashed the card with a compatible vBIOS that just works.

 

There are no issues the the 980M, that has been known working for a while, I'm pretty sure it will work in the M6800 with just about any vBIOS that you find. The issue is with the Pascal generation, 1060/1070/Quadro P series. There's been a change there that breaks things for this system.

Do feel free to try it and let us know how it goes... Just don't get your hopes too high :-\

 

I've upgraded my M6800 to a GTX 965m. It works fine but I I did have to modify the NVBLI.inf file within the Nvidia driver (Currently on the 417 series). What I'd like to know is if there is any way under these circumstances, to install using Optimus (As opposed to just turning Optimus off in the bios, which I have to do now). So far I've been unable to do so but if I could it would open up a great deal of possibilities for me in terms of configuration.

 

You should totally be able to use Optimus with this configuration. The trick is with the INF modification. Normally you do this by picking an existing device entry in the INF file and then changing its hardware/device ID to match the one being reported by the card in your computer. If you want to use Optimus, then the existing device entry in the INF file that you are adjusting must also support Optimus. It's not enough just to replace the hardware ID, if a few flags are not set in the INF then Optimus will not work.

Here is an example from mine (I'm using the Quadro M5000M — also Maxwell, like the 965M — on the Precision M6700 with Optimus enabled).

My hardware ID appears in Device Manager as:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_153F1028&REV_A1

I perform these "find and replace" operations in the INF file, to make the hardware ID of the Precision 7710 Quadro M5000M match the one that shows up in my M6700. These two "find and replace" operations are all that is needed to get the driver to load in "Optimus enabled" mode.

NVIDIA_DEV.13F8.06DA.1028 => NVIDIA_DEV.13F8.153F.1028
VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_06DA1028 => VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_153F1028

You should be able to perform two similar operations to get your card working; you just have to adjust the IDs on the left (the hardware ID of a card/configuration already listed in the INF file) and on the right (the hardware Id being reported in your system).

However, digging a little deeper, we can check and see about Optimus. There are actually two different M5000M entries in the INF file, one with a device ID containing "06DA" (underlined above) and another with "16DA". If I choose to use "16DA" instead of "06DA" when doing my find-and-replace's, Optimus does not work. (The driver seems to load fine but everything renders on the Intel GPU.)

Here are two lines from the INF file (before replacement).
%NVIDIA_DEV.13F8.06DA.1028% = Section172, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_06DA1028
%NVIDIA_DEV.13F8.16DA.1028% = Section176, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_16DA1028

If I search for "[Section172]" in the INF file then I find basically a list of flags, and near the bottom there is this one:
NvSupportMSHybrid = 1

This line does not show up in the "[Section176]" section.
Note, this seems to be an indication that Optimus is supported on this device but adding this line to a section that does not have it is not sufficient to get Optimus working.

So if you can follow that at all... Check your mod and see if the "section" that ends up being used has NvSupportMSHybrid = 1. If it doesn't, see if there is a different device ID that you could use to replace instead.

This was easy for me because I have a Quadro and I knew that there would be an Optimus-supporting entry for the Precision 7710. GeForce 965M never showed up in the Precision. If you can't find an appropriate ID for the 965M, try using:
NVIDIA_DEV.13FA.06DA.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro M3000M"
(GeForce 965M and Quadro M3000M are very similar, maybe it would work...)

 

Is it the subsytem id portion of the device id that prevents or allows driver installation? The device id for my 980m is "10DE 13D7 - 1028 15CD" The first 3 quads seem alright. Nvidia, 980M, Dell. But the last one is actually part of the subsystem id for the K*000M cards. Grepping the *.inf files shows this:

nvdmi.inf:NVIDIA_DEV.11B6.15CD.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro K3100M"
nvdmi.inf:NVIDIA_DEV.11B7.15CD.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro K4100M"
nvdmi.inf:NVIDIA_DEV.11B8.15CD.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro K5100M"
nvdmi.inf:NVIDIA_DEV.13B3.15CD.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro K2200M"
​

Is the '15CD' portion of the subsystem related to the motherboard/laptop version, or is that pulled from the vBIOS? I'm wondering if my 980M is reporting an altered subsystem id to allow driver installation...