Asus G50vt GPU upgrade. need advice.

I have a Asus G50VT (windows vista home 64bit) with the latest 2.13 BIOS version and my Geforce 9800GS is dead. I'm still able to use my laptop but without being able to watch movies full screen, and I cant play any games at all.

I've read about people upgrading their GPU to a GTX260M which look very tempting for me, so I bought one from Ebay and sadly it didnt work. After swapping the cards, my laptop just wont boot at all. I only get a blank/black screen, and pressing the power button only makes the laptop restart and then nothing.

I've done my research in this forum extensively, and from the information I have gathered I think there are 3 version of VBIOS for the GTX260M (1.2v, 2.0v and 2.1v). The one I have is a 2.0v and the one that people claimed can work in a Asus G50vt is the 2.1v. I am going to assumed that the only way for me to flash the 2.0v GTX260M is to put it into a Asus G60VX and then flash it. Since I dont have a Asus G60VX, I guess the next available way to get my GTX260M working is to flash my G50VT BIOS to a G60VX's.

I know how to Flash my BIOS using afudos, I know how to force-flash the BIOS, but I just have this gut feeling that if I flash my G50VT to G60VX my motherboard is going to heaven. The person who sold me the 2.0v GTX260M claimed that flashing my BIOS to a G60VX's can make the GTX260M work. I really need a seriously experienced person to tell me if this really works. Thanks in advance.

Note*: For those who said they cant flash their BIOS , afudos will prevent flashing to incompatible BIOS to avoid bricking the motherboard but you can still flash it using a certain command.

 

No BIOS flashing is needed, but you specifically need a G60VX/G51VX 260M since Asus uses a reverse MXM module.

Do not flash your BIOS.

 

Yes I do have a G60VX GTX260M, it fits perfectly into my GPU slot, but I only get blank screen when I turn my laptop on. The fan is running and the CPU is heating up, but the GPU is cold as if there are no electricity going through it. If I remove the card and switch on my laptop without any GPU, it shows grey screen which is normal from what I have read.

I have a 307.83 NVIDIA driver installed.

 

I've tried two 260m modules, one was an as-is card (we'll call it card 1), the other was from a functioning G51vx (we'll call it card 2) that had a broken screen cable, chassis, and keyboard.

Card 1 showed a black screen only, would not boot further, and after baking, showed the same result. I presumed it was dead.

Card 2 booted up fine but took some driver modifications including disabling 64-bit driver signing for it to work. I used stock nvidia drivers that I modded myself.

Personally I think it sounds like the 260m in your system is not functioning correctly, which is hard to troubleshoot as it may be anything, from not in the slot all the way, to dead. Make sure the contacts are as far in as they can possibly go, iirc it was a ridiculously tight fit if you didn't take the bottom cover off, but it's doable. Also make sure you didn't bend any of the MXM slot pins, which is also a possibility given the tight fit of the card installation.

If Samsung releases a NP-770z5e with an 8870m in the near future, I'd be willing to sell you my GTX260m which works, but has been through a lot (read: some artifacts on certain games at high temps). But anyway, you might consider securing a different 260m somehow to test. I ended up buying an as-is G51vx in poor physical but good electrical condition, and reselling it afterwards with a 9800m GS. I made a $10 profit from the whole ordeal.

 

I got a whole G50vt that has a bad mobo in it but good everything else. no power adapter or anything just the laptop, it was kinda left along after the laptop died.

 

I'm having exactly the same problem with my gtx260m in Asus g50v. Were you able to find a workaround? On the card the print says rev 2.1 but I'm still getting black screen during boot

 

Does the card have a vbios chip or did they integrate it into the system bios on this model?

 

The card is rev 2.1 which means it should work in Asus g50v according to my extensive research. But I have no clue about the vbios chip. When I take the card out I get grey display, whwn inserted I get pitch black screen.

 

With your original card is nvflash able to access it? Can gpu-z extract the video bios?

 

The original card is dead I actually have 2 Asus G50V laptops with dead 9800GS video cards. The GTX260M card gets hot when it is in the machine, I hear explosion during bootup (that's Asus' Republic of Gamers trademark) but the screen stays blank and black. So I don't know whether the card is faulty or I need to fiddle with bios. But how if I can't see anything on the screen

This is what I found in another thread:

So you guys achieve to swap the 9800GS with a GTX 260M pretty easily it seems, even without any kind of bios update.
I suppose GTX 260M has it's own vbios then, but what about the 9800GS, did it have it's own vbios as well or was it part of the main motherboard bios ?

If the answer is 9800GS doesn't have it's own vbios, then it's similar to a 9700GT from a G50V model, and the swap should be doable. If not, I guess I can just suck it up...
(Easy way to see if the gpu has it's own vbios is trying to extract if with GPU-Z : it's impossible to do with the 9700GT)

EDIT : Well it was easy to find that the 9800GS has it's own bios, so I suppose indeed I can just suck it up unless I have enough balls to flash my bios to a G50VT's or G51's bios, but I'm truely clueless regarding what this would result into...

 

So it is in the system bios? Well it depends how brave you are and how expensive recovery would be.