G73JH running a MSI 5870m

Hey guys,

I've just done it.
I replaced the ASUS (JH) 5870m with a MSI 5870m.
The GPU is from my Medion X7811 (a GX740 barebone).

There are some places on the internet, where you can read, that a stock MXM 3.0 B card wouldn't work in a G73, because of proprietary design by ASUS.
Today I just wanted to find out the truth.

We already know the different layout of the 5870m in the G73JH. It is wider as the standard size. Maybe less PCB layer.

OK, here we go.
After disassembling i had 2 5870 GPUs.


After reassemble all the stuff I was thrilled a little bit.
But I got a picture. Wow.

I checked the temps a while, all was OK.
Next was a Furmark run.
The vBIOS was modded to 700/[email protected] before.

Load:


Idle (after load):



Conclusion:
A stock MXM 3.0b 5870m is working in a G73JH with little afford.
The Asus 5870 won't fit in the X7811.


Only (big) problem:
The fans (GPU + CPU) are running fullspeed all the time.
This is weird, because all temps are good.
BIOS issue?


Update:

No success in fan problem:
I tried:
- BIOS 211
- Flashing several ASUS-vBIOS's to MSI card

I've put back the Asus card. Fans are working normally again.

Pics:

Gallery (all pics)

MSI 5870m in X7811


ASUS 5870m


MSI 5870m


MSI vs ASUS


Mounted

 

Very nice, thanks for sharing!! What would be interesting is to see whether a card different than a 5870m works... I never thought it would be possible, but now there's some hope for G73JH owners who want to try an upgrade. (JW owners are out of luck... unless they can somehow build their own heatsinks).

The problem with the fans is probably because of vBIOS issues...

BTW, 700/[email protected] ... isn't that underclocked? I thought standard 3d clocks are 700/1100 (at least for the Dell cards... may be different for clevo cards)

 

Nice, quick question: are you using the MSI bios or the Asus bios on the MSI card?

Std clocks recommended by AMD are 700/1000, the stock one on the Asus card as well.

 

Nice one @tilla finally someone to confirm this thing. I had strong believe from before in that mxm slot in g73jh is indeed true 3.0b and now only problem is that heatsink is not fitting 100%.
About fans running at full what vbios you have on msi card?
When I bricked my gpu on my g73jh and while waiting for programing unit to reflash vbios chip I decided to try and asembly laptop without vga card inside and it started and loaded windows as I heard login sound but both fans were running in full. Which means that bios is programed to run fans at full in case of vbios not detected properly.?
Again nice work man +10 char.

Did you try and flash msi card with asus vbios? I am sure it will fix fans problem. Next we want to see someone change it with 6970m. Im sure it would work nice with slight temperature increases.

 

lol not likely, with 2x the TDW.

 

Thx.

The vBIOS is a modified one for MSI GX740 (v023).
This allows to undervolt (overvolt?) in a small range. I guess 0.8-1.15V(+)
The Asus one is hard wired to 0.95 and 1.15V!

This MSI card also works with 700/[email protected].

I think, BIOS gone wild because the brand in vBIOS isn't like the Asus one.
vBIOS label in BIOS screen ends with ".NOT" -> Not compatible?

Maybe flashing the Asus vBIOS on the MSI is an option to accept it. But will card still undervoltable?

 

I am pretty sure that asus 5870m vga card in ours g73jh`s draw 75 watts, so 6970m with 100 watt will probably work without problems.
Just look vcore voltage differencies between our and standard 5870m`s from other manufacturers. And vram chips draw more power to on asus 5870m thus why our cards run much hotter then other 5870m cards.

Yes becouse hardware components in asus 5870m are different thus not accepting so low voltages as on msi. But you wont be able to go over 1.15 volts with asus vbios on msi 5870.

 

Yeah, I've seen that. But I've also noticed that the system is pretty much at TDW load when under full graphics load. So yeah, you *might* be okay adding another 25w, but that's like overloading your desktop power supply. It generally works. But not always, and the price of failure ... well, no thanks.

 

And maybe flashing the Asus vBIOS will brick the card...

The G73JH tends already pretty hot afaik, and the heatsink doesn't seem to apply a lot of pressure on the die as far as I heard, so heat might be an issue.

However, there's not only the TDP to worry about, also the BIOS compatibility. Some examples... some guys put the 6970m in the Alienware M17x r2 and the card did work, but the fans didn't (good thing you can control the fans manually on this machine thanks to mumak). Inap tried to put a 470m in a M15x... but the card only stayed at 2d clocks and never got to 3d clocks... you see what I mean.

Only way to know it is to put the card in and try... you can't just say you're sure it will work.

 

Just flashed the Asus vBIOS.
No problems.
But fans still running full speed.
Damn loud
CPU @25°C GPU@31°C

Is this the ASUS-"Forget-about-upgrade-mechanism"?
Could this be affected by a wrong or forgotten reassemble part?

 

Hmm, you'll probably find out when switching back to the asus GPU. As for the 6970m, if i get a laptop with a 6970 then sure i'll try it but i won't buy the GPU just to find out it doesn't work with no possibility of returning it. 430euros at MXM upgrade. If i knew for sure it would work it would already be in the laptop .

 

True true. Nice reasoning but I did already explained why our cards run hotter then on other systems. For rest of your comments they are totally correct. Nothing is sure when we talk about laptop parts upgrading. Only way is to try and fail

Dont think so. What is shown in bios now in field of gpu information?

Maybe if you reinstall video driver and CCC

 

Thats good to hear man

Now were are all the ppl who said that i can not be done and it does not support the card etc. This is good to hear. This means that the HD6000 series will be a plug and boot up if we get a vbios. Now only need asus to get a asus notebook with the card.


And again well done. You realy have made my day

 

Isn't a driver issue. Fans running fast from turn on.
The EC thinks there is something wrong maybe. But it isn't temp related.
Uff...
Also tested BIOS 211 - the same.

For short I don't want to redo the Asus card. And when, i will left it there.

 

Then thats bad thing. Bios not recognises msi card fully. Can you compare device id before and after vbios flashing on msi card?

 

Now we are? we're? or where? Not sure.

Anyways, I'm here. I said it couldn't be done. And although it sort-of works, it's not quite a drop-in replacement, and it has only been shown to work with an identical GPU, different manufacturer. I still wouldn't consider this an "upgrade", and I'd still consider it "not-done" until the fans are figured out.

I'm sure others had tried, and there was one report of an asus card working in an MSI - so we already knew that asus didn't reverse MXM it this time. Now we have a report of an MSI working in an asus.

 

Well the fan problem might be only a vBios problem and might not be. As i understand then even if you send your notebooks to mxm-upgrade they would have to make a custom vbios or rework it.


The reason why bios does not recognise could be that asus might have but somesort of a lock(might be a hardware or a firmware lock) on it like some companys but a locked bootloader on android phones. But good news it that it can be cracked .....might not be the best example but what i want to say is. This is a small step to a fully functional swap.

The fact ppl said it will not even work was on reason why no one before even tried to test it. Now that it boots there is a nother step and that is to get the fans on. At leat ppl want to test new things. It might not happon today or in 2 weeks or might not even happon but at leat then we will get a full answer



Question to @tilla do the fans speed up as soon as you power on ?

 

Yes.

Which other option is there to try?

 

Hmm well as its asus who did not plan on having a nother card in there it could be hardcoded in to the motherboards bios(the fan speed) and for you with the MSI card it is running in safe mode. Its kind of like a cars ECU in safe mode, runs with a to rich fuel mix.

Migh as well be an extra thermal sensor on the asus GPU that MSI does not have or even a different type of thermal sensor ( but if thats the case then the temps should show wrong)

To me the MSI card seems to be in a safe mode, runs good but rich (fan speed).

Might even be a chip on the GPU that tells the motherboard "yes im a ASUS GPU" . Best solution ?..... Trial and error method

 

So, i've put back the Asus card.
All is working normal again.
It must be a detection mechanism over pin or something else which let the board (BIOS) to switch into a safe or error mode. But it's strange. The gpu is fully working. Powerplay, no slow down. Just the fans gone wild.
This isn't really satisfying in the name of upgrading to the 6970m. Imo you can't be happy to have it run probably with the lack of this issue.

Will update the first post with some more information and pics soon.

Btw:
I must have done a really good paste job now (MX-3).
Furmark after 15 min.
TSS0: 73
TSS1: 79
TSS2: 74
GPU fan max. 3700rpm

 

Welcome to my world.

 

Out of curiosity Chastity what method did you use for repasting the I7? The line or pea method?

 

Where in the world is hellcry????

 

Nice! @tilla you are one brave person. You deserve a +1 rep for this!

I have a question, you mention that the MSI retention clip has larger nuts. Do you think that the MSI heatsink gets greater contact pressure because of this?

 

ICD7 when cool is thick and really doesn't work in a line. I used a 3mm pea.

 

I think you get enough pressure on the Asus one too. The spring at the screw limits the maximum.
The difference is the screw diameter. The MSI heatsink has thicker screws and the retention thicker nuts. At first I thought it would be an easy part. I've just put the MSI card in the G73 slot. But the screws of the Asus heatsink are thinner and I wasn't able to tighten them.
Firstly I was disappointed. Paste was applied, I almost destroyed the heatpipes by some raw power. And I still don't known if all that crap even will work
I looked at the bracket and saw that it is hold just by strong elastic tape. The MSI one was little horror. Strong like the double sided stuff from the keyboard. I used a hair dryer to warm it up and was able to remove it.
OK. I attached the Asus bracket to the MSI card and pushed the card in the slot. Remember that the Stock MXM 3.0 size is smaller in width. So the right screw holder for the card was useless. Even by loosing the backward screw on the mainboard, the holder was firm (maybe soldered).
But the one left screw holds the card in place too. No problem.
Because the retention nuts of the MSI one sits behind the PCB, the screws of the MSI heatsink are little bit longer. The retention nuts of the Asus one fits in the holes of the PCB. You can see it on the pictures. But the Asus srews were long enough to reach them. Next steps were reassembling.

Sry if something is funny to read. I'm german.

 

@tilla can you post your msi 5870m vbios here please.

 

Of course.
I had made a package before.
5870m ModPack

Remember that the Asus card may not run with 700/[email protected].
But I've flashed the 0.98 one without problem. Might round to 1.15 automatically.

 

why don't you run the MSI vbios on the ASUS card?
or you are using it already
if no - why
if yes - personally what are the differences for you

 

No difference at temperatures.
HDMI and VGA output may not work. I don't need to test it.

 

Ok so you were flashed msi vbios on asus 5870m? What hapenned with fans then if you did it?

 

Fans were normal.
There must be a hardware detection or some other spy chips

A 6970m in a AW M15x results in similar fan problems.

 

Indeed... It's pretty annoying, but I can control them manually until I find a solution.

 

I think the GPU fan on the Asus is controled By the laptop bios and not the Vbios.
That is why you have those problem with the fans.

 

Would have been nice to know if the HD 6970M upgrade would work. Maybe a local HD 6970M owner could hook up with a G73JH owner for testing purposes?

 

I believe that was done with a JW and not a JH. Someone already stated that a Geforce GTX 460M did not work in a JH, so there's obviously a difference between the two systems.

 

A quick look at your recent posts in these forums makes it quite obvious that you're a troll, so there's no point in arguing with you about this matter. However, I think I will be "wishful" awaiting someone to test it out for a fact, but most likely I'll be upgrading to an Alienware M18x at some point, so more or less I'm mostly interested in seeing what people are capable of achieving.

 

Firstly this attitude is not wanted or appreciated here, this forum is for people wanting to learn and share ideas and advice, the admins here will only put up with so much - see my public profile and that red dot with an infraction that was me with your attitude when I first came here.

There is a good chance that the 6970M will not work in any G73 model but that does not prevent the want of trying, without trial and error we would be nowhere in this life or this forum because it would be such a massive victory for people that have the G73 model and want to keep it and extend the life of it. Without people daring to do these things my JH would be back in the stone age they put their laptops and cards at risk doing this.

 

Thanks for the support, I'm glad you're finally showing some positive attitude.

 

I can list you several posts from people with fixes provided by this forum for the G73 their help and advice has helped me without doubt to get my G73 running perfectly and for that I thank them. I can reel off names of the people that have provided advice that has led to these fixes being implemented properly if you wish, your argument is non existent.

 

Sharing is knowledge, and if my opinion helps one person on this forum that is a job well done whether it is using someone elses information that they where unaware of and singing their praises is what counts (for example how many times has Chastity's driver page saved me time and effort).

This conversation is long since done and I refuse to abuse the OP's post any longer trying to show you why we should all extend a courtesy to the other people on this forum who spend their time helping others. Lets hope you do the same.

 

Just to note, the first actually fix, for EVERY JH owner with the GSOD problem came from my idea of flashing the vbios, Asus took months to finally make the solution official and coming out with a new revised vbios.

The way I came up with the idea, was trial and error, before that, Asus was just switching out the cards for a whole new one, which ppl would still get it back only for it to GSOD still.

I seriously believe that Asus wouldnt have released a vbios if it werent for the first initial spark that I caused proving that a simple flash could fix the problem.


On topic, I agree with your 6970m statement, it will most liekly take someone to go in and edit the bios/vbios for it to actually work, but we all have to start somewhere, so popping it in and seeing if it works without first editing anything doesnt hurt.

 

The problem is, you think you are the only one who knows what's going on in the world of computers and call others as liers.
You don't accept experiences of others if you are not able to reproduce it.
I advice you to sell any of your Asus devices (if you have one ) and leave this forum. I can't hear all these BS anymore.

 

@tilla +1 REP
I just go to user CP and add the name to the ignore list, laptopfan... sorry if you consider this a work around!

 

Yes, without trying it it you can't say anything for sure... Some people don't get this.

The JH is not the same as the JW, you should know this. Even if the chances are small it's worth a try. Putting it in the JH will be easier as you only need to modify the heatsink a little bit, you don't have to buy a different heatsink as with the JW.

I see you're a frustrated customer... you can still sell you Asus and get a different machine. Your posts aren't helpful at all.

I know how to modify the vbios, I don't consider myself an expert but I've done a couple of things and can modify a vbios. However, the card is not cheap at all and I don't want to screw it up.
Blind flashing is a possibility and can cards from most bad flashes, but it's certainly not my prefered way to flash a card.

That's right.

Because theoretically the BIOS only needs a way to get the vbios... the BIOS itself is not needed to explicitly support the card, that's the idea of MXM.
However a lot of manufacturers make some restrictions for whatever reasons, so it doesn't work in the way MXM is actually meant to work.
As the JH is confirmed to work with a non Asus card (and a different hardware ID) chances are that it somehow can work... and before starting to mod the vbios you obviously will try to make it work without any modification.

It wouldn't be a disaster at all, only power users would do the step and upgrade the card. The G73 is a real pain to disassemble and most users won't even change the HDD by themselves, the users that are posting here on NBR don't represent the average user at all, probably not even 1% of theG73 users would even consider disassembling the machine and upgrading the GPU.




Back to the topic. The JH seems to be able to work with a non Asus card (and a non Asus vbios)... there's a small chance that other cards will work as well, but someone will need to try it.\
I'd really like to help out, but I guess there's no JH NBR user in my area, lol.

 

@laptopfan88:

You missed the entire period of March thru August, the Days Before Fixes. During this period, people were surviving on workarounds that actually helped people obtain a stable working machine. I contributed with using overclocking to obtain stable clocks with the new AMD drivers and old stock timings with C1x cards. Another workaround involved crashing Creative Audigy MB software. When any of the filters were enabled, like say Bass Boost, lockups and freezes were commonplace. Before we had the X-Fi MB 1.1 software and patch, and the later Audigy Win7 Update, I figured out (based on my years of reviewing Creative hardware) that the crashes were from the audio streams not being in Creative's preferred format for their EAX Effects Engine: 16/48. (A legacy parameter from the good ol' AC97 days.) By enabling CMSS-3D, and setting to Minimum, this forced the EAX Engine to be enabled all the time, and the streams were always resampled to 16/48, preventing the crash.

As for the upgrading of cards, well, Asus' current business model is based on self-contained units sold in the $1000-$1500 sweet spot. They used to be into barebone systems with upgradable components, but feedback had shown most users never did that, and it was more profitable to just have users buy new models. I'm also sure Asus is getting a nice price break on components for being a nvidia-exclusive partner. The GSOD fiasco made AMD seem unreliable to the ignorant within Asus.

So to review, we had 6 months of Hell with our JH's (and I remember fondly of Viscious' posts about only using beta drivers for stability ) during which the non-responsive Tech Marketing Manager was replaced with a new one (Gary) who suddenly felt responsible about legacy owners and decided to get the flagship laptop models working properly. As for PowerPlay, well, AMD coded the vBIOS for Asus according to Asus specs, so don't put the blame entirely on Asus for it. I remember waiting for AMD to recompile the vBIOS during the beta development, which was too slow in my opinion. Then again, I wanted a fix badly, so I may have been biased.

In a nutshell, if you want upgrade-ability, buy another brand.

 

i think it is time for another change

 

Gary just doesn't come 'round much. Can't say I blame him - he seemed like a nice guy that was being held back by the bean-counters at HQ. He did a lot to make me feel like I wasn't completely ripped off.

Still not 100% I'll buy another HIGH END asus. I'll keep buying their cheap stuff, because it's well made and when it breaks (or isn't supported properly), I know that I bought something inexpensive and don't really expect a lot of support.

I won't be buying another $2k machine shortly after it was released, only to see it go on massive sale because of all the refurbs and problems that they didn't fix immediately. Yeah, it's eventually been (mostly) fixed. So, I'm (mostly) happy.

Since I don't think there will be a next time (Next time I need a high powered computer, I'll have space for a desktop) ... asus didn't really lose me as a future customer. But they did lose my "Get an asus" recommendation that I used to ALWAYS give to people. Asus earned a lot of good will by providing me with inexpensive but good computers... and lost it all when they sold me a computer that was unfixable (and sent off to RMA 5x over 3 months ... starting 9 days after purchase). If only the problems had started 7 days after purchase ... I'd have just taken it back to the reseller.

Now, I recommend apple. Not because I like apple, but because their apple care warranty is so easy to use. (For the record, apple products are only good for word processing and pretending to look different - but when someone doesn't know what brand of computer to get, it's not like they'd be using it for heavy work anyways. Most people who have a $2k MBP would be perfectly happy with a $400 hackintosh so long as it looked pretty). I don't ever want to recommend a computer like the g73 to someone, and then have them blame me for recommending an unfixable computer.

 

i am recommending G73 to people i know that don't have the money to buy it

i can't complain too much ... i love my lappy
unique cooling
no problems except the lack of proper vbios but i can live without it too

 

Nice job, interesting to know it still works, even though the fans are bios/mobo controlled and thus stay on full load which must be a pain to listen to... +rep.
Wonder what compelled Asus to move away from their reverse standard on the last few gaming models if they still didnt intend to make them upgradable...
Does HDMI/VGA out work with this?
Also the coils on top are differently positioned on the MSI card... I see one is not cooled at all - its not even under the heatsink and how are the other two; are they the same height and cooled properly?... If those arent properly cooled the GPU might fail after a while... no sensors to indicate that either...
If you ever get around the fan problem and HDMI/VGA out works i might consider shoving a MSI into mine to finally get my GPU to a fully working state (still missing HDMI/VGA out now with Asus card and MSI vBios).