Lenovo graphic card in Acer

Hi,
Does anyone know if a Nvidia GTS 250m MXM-3.0A made for Lenovo would work in an Acer AS8735G? ( http://i44.tinypic.com/2ykymw4.jpg, http://i43.tinypic.com/169ovhf.jpg) Original card: Nvidia GT 240M; Current card: ATI HD4670.
The original card, GT 240m, was green. The card I'm currently using is red and so is this GTS 250m. From what I've seen on the internet, cards designed for Acer are all green and since the card I'm currently using is red I believe that it's not designed for Acer and the GTS 250m should work. What do you think? I've read something about some VBIOS incompatibilities and that concerns me...
The only thing that doesn't work with the HD4670 is the VGA output. That's not that important as I only use HDMI.

 

Colour of the PCB is meaningless.

Acer's tend to accept any standard MXM card so it's up to whether the card is standard.

 

I know that the PCB color is meaningless. It's just a thing I noticed. The card seems standard to me.

 

Why are u going to a GTS250 from a HD4670 ? I thought the performance diff is minimal if non existent

 

From what I've read, the GTS 250m is better. Besides the more powerful GPU, the GTS has lower TDP(28W instead of 35W), Physx, CUDA, DirectCompute, PureVideo HD.

 

Valid points

 

Well the 6770M is better still (can be twice as fast as the 250M), I wonder if Akbisw still has his to sell.

 

I agree, but at what price?
Edit: I've found the thread where he was selling the card and asked if he still has it. I'm waiting for a reply now.
Anyway, I'm expecting a high price. I want to change the 4670 with the 250m because it costs me almost nothing. After that, another 4G of RAM, and that's all I'm going to invest in this notebook. Btw, does it work with 8GB of RAM?

 

Er, what Lenovo laptop has the GTS 250m?
Lenovo has rarely used standard MXM cards in the past... The 3700m of the w700 while standard was the only card EVER to have a p610 PCB. Very powerful tho, people overclocked it to 700mhz core.

These are business class tho, there were a few MXM ideapads, but these were totally nonstandard.

On the mxm type A front, for best performance/price I really wish waresphere would get more stock... That quadro 2000m looks pretty awesome, if hot.

Anyway we were PMing about some things I really need to fix my test system, but reading this theres another card I can offer you.

 

Why would the 6770m score only 6.9 at Windows 7 Experience Index - Graphics / Gaming Graphics? With the 4670 my notebook scores 6.7.

 

The WEI is probably one of the worst measures of performance known to man, avoid it in comparisons like the plague.

The 6770m is going to give you a significant performance boost (very much worth in my opinion), but just make sure you save yourself a couple bucks and get the 1 GB version, 2 GB sees literally no difference at native res.

 

I am waiting now for a HD6770m from niffcreature.

 

Still waiting for the card to be shipped. In the meantime could someone please post an Acer VBIOS for this card, or some VBIOS that is compatible with Acer notebooks?

 

It is by default.

 

LOL im waiting for a 240M from niff so I can sell my 6770M!! lol. Since I now have a desktop monster I only require light gaming on my laptop. So no need for 6770!

 

Isn't your 6770m already sold on eBay?

 

Well i cant ship it until niff ships the 240m, cause i need the lappy for college. I sold it after 10 days

 

I've just got the card from niffcreature. Everything is ok. Thank you very much niffcreature!
Now I'm using my notebook with this card, but like it happened to others: I have no image on the notebook's screen. Now I'm using the VGA output.
Could someone please post a VBIOS that would enable me to use the screen?



This is what GPU-Z shows. It seems that this card is actually a HD6750m. I tried to flash it with a HD6770m VBIOS using ati_winflash_2.0.1.14 but I got "SubsystemIDs mismatch" error. Is there any way to flash it to HD6770m and get the screen working?

 

Start AtiWinFlash from command line, and add the switch "-f".

 

^ It bricked the card and I blind flashed it back. The card has 4 external display outputs and no internal display, this has nothing to do with the Acer MXM structure unless my HP 8740w has the same problem.

Do you have any ideas of how to route a display output into the laptop panel output, .Netroller?

Why do you say this? Don't you know that AMD only manufacturers the core, while there are 100 different companies that design and manufacture the PCB differently?
Just like saying "the 460m is compatible with Clevos" when obviously the Asus cards are not...

This card has a standard PCB which is a different revision than the 6770m or m5950 and a non standard vBIOS. The vBIOS reads 6650m even though the card is gddr5 so technically a 6750m.

 

I thought he was talking about the original source cards.

 

It actually *could* be an MXM structure problem (Acer is not the only brand affected; e.g. there is a Fujitsu mod in my MXM BIOS thread). However, I've yet to see an ATI/AMD card that uses the MXM structure in any way.

 

Does that mean that there's no solution to the problem?
I don't know much about vBIOSes but I thought maybe taking part of the 4670's vBIOS (that controls the screen) and replacing that part in 6770's vBIOS would work.
Is the problem related to how the GPU outputs are physically connected on the MXM connector (meaning there's no way of fixing it)? The 4670 I currently use seems to have the DVI output connected to my notebook's VGA output.


Edit: http://www.4shared.com/file/J7fRQEAB/MXM.html this is what I've found in SBIOS. Using mxmparser on OPROM05.ROM it shows "Found possible unknown mxm structure version 68.68 at offset 0x19A". In the archive there's also the SBIOS from which I extracted OPROM05.ROM using PBE.

 

OPROM05.ROM is a VBIOS. The MXM structure should be part of an SBIOS module. What mxmparse is detecting is the routine that is supposed to parse the MXM structure.

ATI VBIOSes can be decoded and modded using a Linux tool called AtomDis - that should make it possible to enable the DVI and LVDS outputs, if they exist in the hardware.

 

I tried compiling the sources from / on FreeBSD but I get <"Makefile", line 40: Needed an operator> error. Any ideas?

 

Changed the OS to Ubuntu and now it's working. I'm now trying to figure out how to use atomdis.

 

On FreeBSD, you need to compile using "gmake" - "make" is the old Berkeley make utility, which doesn't support gmake's extensions to the makefile format.

 

In the link below is what I got from the LVDS table in HD67xxm and HD4670 vBIOSes. Would copying the panel settings from HD4670 to HD67xx vBIOS make the internal display work with the 67xx or I would just brick it by modifying the BIOS this way?

LVDS table.rar - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

 

I did a little experiment:
1. Found a M96 vBIOS.
2. Extracted the LVDS table from it.
3. Copied the values into the LVDS table of the HD6750's vBIOS.
4. Opened the modified vBIOS with RBE to correct the checksum.
5. Installed the HD6750.
6. Attempt 1: atiflash -p 0 bios.rom
Result: ERROR: invalid rom file. Press '1' to continue
7. Pressed 1. Attempt 2: atiflash -p 0 bios.rom -f
Result: flashed the card with the modified bios. Rebooted the system. 3 short beeps, no display (both internal and VGA outputs were dead).
8. Blind flashed the card with the backup vBIOS: atiflash -p 0 backup.rom -f
Result: Rebooted the system, VGA output was back to life.
9. Installed the HD4670 back and here I am...

In the link below you'll find the files I used and the file I made:
experiment.rar - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download

Maybe someone could tell me where I went wrong...

 

It can't be an MXM structure problem unless the HP 8740w and Acer 7738g have the same problem, soon I'll also test this on the Gateway nv78.

.Netroller, weren't you able to find a way with driver hacks on Linux to display on the internal LCD on an ATI MXM card without an EEPROM?

 

Yes, I even posted a patch for loading the VBIOS from file.

 

Could you please post a link? And if you have time, could you please take a look at my previous post and see what I did wrong?

 

Today wasn't a good day for science

Here is what I did:

1. Installed the new card

2. Flashed it with the original vBIOS modified for slightly higher clocks just to see if it would work then I flashed it back to the original vBIOS

3. Flashed the card with this vBIOS: techPowerUp! :: VGA Bios Collection: Acer HD 6770M 1024 MB
I thought...if something went wrong I would flash it back to the original vBIOS
I rebooted the system. No video output, just 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps. I thought I'd wait for the system to boot from the usb drive and just flash it back. The card was overheating rapidly and turned off my notebook. I let it cool down for a bit and tried a couple more times without success.

4. Seeing that there was no way of getting the new card back to life I installed the old one (HD4670). I turned on the system: 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps. No video output, no nothing. The computer does not respond to keyboard (Ctrl-Alt-Delete does not work, NumLock does not work, etc). The only way to restart the system is to hold down the power button until the system turns off and then turn it back on. In a desperate attempt of getting it to work I installed the new card again. This time...no beeps, no nothing. After installing back the old card...surprise...no beeps, no nothing. If I unplug the AC adapter and remove the battery and after waiting a few seconds I insert the battery and AC adapter back in I get the beeps. I turned on and off the system numerous times. Sometimes it beeps sometime it doesn't.
I even installed the old T6600 CPU back to see if the X9100 was causing the problem. No luck with that either.

I don't know what else to try... Is it possible that I somehow damaged the motherboard or the cards when I switched them? The system was off, AC adapter unplugged but I forgot to remove the battery before switching the cards for the first time today after the failed vBIOS flash After that I removed the battery every single time. I'm asking this because before proceeding to step 4 the new card was heating fast. Now it doesn't heat almost at all and neither does the HD4670.

Please help me!

 

Clean the MXM socket. Something probably doesn't make contact.

If that doesn't help, try booting with no MXM card plugged in. If even that fails (with lockup) -> it's motherboard.

 

I tried booting with no card. Same result: 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps. Does that mean it's the motherboard?
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I want to see if all three supply voltages are present on the MXM connector. Does anyone know where the +3.3V and +5V supplies are located on the MXM socket? I measured the voltage on the 2 rightmost connections of top of the card and there were around 16V which I suppose it is V_BATTERY.

 

Does it continue to boot after the beeps?

BTW, the MXM specification is linked in the Acer MXM BIOS modding thread. You can find the pinout there.

 

After the beeps there's some HDD activity for about 3 seconds (the HDD led lights up like it is reading something from the HDD and I can also hear the HDD heads moving) but still no response to the keyboard. After that nothing happens. To reboot it I have to hold down the power button untill it turns off and then turn it back on. If it powers on and doesn't beep there's no HDD activity.

 

Then it's the motherboard. Try a BIOS reset first, just to eliminate that.

 

Thank you all for your help! Maybe I'll have better luck next year

Merry Christmas!