L502X modded bioses download (GPU voltages and more!)

So all I want to do is kill the nVidia card. On Latitude series there is an option to disable optimus (nVidia card) and only use the Intel one.

Linux works well on Intel card.

 

@capitankasar I changed my Msi Afterburner to 2.3.1, marked the options that you said to me. Nothing worked. 15 minutes and I get a crash. I really don't know what more I can do. ):

Edit¹: 0.85v/0.98v installed. Let's see what happens. Is there a way to make the fan start with full speed at low temperatures?

Edit²: The crash looks normal after all. Dead Space 2 and CoD: Modern Warfare might have the same problem. Anyway, can the 0.98v bios handle my overclock (1560/780/1080)?

 

To disable the nvidia, just go to device manager and it won't be used at all and total system power consumption will go down because we are disabling it in device manager.

 

I am using Linux. Of course there is a way to disable the nvidia card in Linux. However, I would feel better if I can disable in BIOS level -- just like what a Latitude E6520/6530 laptop provides.

 

@Vegetothe1st

AS5 should perform great

keep me updated ^^

@coolcfan

disable optimus in bios is not posible yet and I didnt noticed about any other hidden option relating that.

try the solution chris89 said

@chris89

what did you did exactly to get 1.1V working?

are you asking you got 900 mhz stable of core speed? that is amazing

did you hex modded the vbios like I said? or made anything else?, just curius ^^

@Mate175

I think your OC is very high, and since it doesnt handle it properly, try lowering it.

check also wich voltage perform better for you, (best stability and also if posible low temps too)

 

@coolcfan

If u just corrupt your nvidia bios and recompile, it'll disable it on a hardware level completely from the bios. Just gotta flash again if u want nvidia functionality again... Dump ur vga bios open in any hex editor find a nice chunk in the beginning and just write about 20 0's and your golden.

If I have the time and u send me ur bios u want modded, i can disable it for you. Meaning wipe out nvidia functionality in the bios no problem.

What are you looking to gain?

Are u having issues? if so maybe we can fix your problem...

@capitankasar

Yeah I did it a different way but with ur help u sent me in the right direction. It's 100% manditory to make sure the right values show up in p15 in nibitor via fermi voltage table. Otherwise so called "custom values" will only yield what's closest to the Voltage table, meaing 0.83, 0.98, 1.00, 1.10v etc. Doing the way u did didn't actually work since it messed up the p15 values. My way showed the new true value and no matter what it reports the exact voltage. Since EVGA reports bios voltage which is "So Called" correct, yet AIDA64 reports whats coming straight from the voltage regulator and it's different than what evga says.

I modded to 1.10v and it shows correctly in every monitoring software... still working out quirks since it seemed to never leave 1.10v p15 when the bios had all the proper states etc. Maybe I messed up the overclock since i wrote 900mhz, 1800mhz shader in the bios. Ran fast as hell for a while then artifacts and crashing. So it needs more than 1.1v... for 900mhz on any fermi will need at least 1.2v... I'll do some more tweaking it get it write.

Not 100% stable, needs maybe 1.18v because I wrote 1.22 and it disabled p15 but i think I just messed something up. Haha idk but it asked about efi locked "yes or no" idk what it was I said yes.... Made me do a disk check after flashing on boot which was odd...

@Mate175
Whats the issue? Instability? It's your temps they are too high i bet. Just set your vgabios in nibitor fan speed min to 100 max to 100 and i think it'll force it to 100% always no need for a hardware mod like I did... I may just plug the PWM pin back in and write 100% to the bios. The main issue with stability when overclocked is the back side of the motherboard... it gets too hot. need 100% fan speed to try and pull energy from the back of the board which is under the keyboard... I removed the keyboard and put a house fan on top of the back of the board at 100% and say 58C and it was completely stable beyond 800Mhz core clock.


@ Vegetothe1s
I run Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 it performs better for the longest and is not electrically conductive so no chance of shorting when paste spreads past the chip die.

Just write 100% min and 100% max to vgabios in nibitor and your temps will go way down....

 

Great... Seems that I completely destroyed my power ribbon there is no gold lines left and under isolation I don't see any of them 0_o there are two isolations?
S is there anything I can do with this ribbon or need to buy new (where)?

About Linux... You can disable nvidia by acpi call. But better try newest nvidia driver + xrandr + xorg that allows to use nvidia but it's not full Optimus yet.

 

mmm, I dont see an easy fix, you can try rasp it a little but probably not work as desired.

try getting this:

Dell XPS 15 L501X Various Item Cable Length : 395mm, 12-pin Connector

it says it is for the l501x, but probably will work anyway.


meanwhile you can power on the machine by using something metallic and bridge some of the pins , I think I accidentally bridged them some time ago, but dont remember wich pins they were as my ribbon keep working after a small fix.

 

Ribbon connected to power button has 4 lines, so I probably should try to connect 4 pins...
It seems that there are only 2 offers about these ribbons - one US only on ebay and that one posted by you...

 

Capitan, did you see any big noticeable performance gains (or heat increases) from clocking up your RAM to 1400 from 1333? I was playing around with my GT540M last night and seem to have gotten it stable at 720/900, at least playing Batman AA. 750 and 770 caused crashes on the benchmark test within the game unfortunately. Even going up to 720 from 672, I only saw about a 6% boost in benchmark scores.

I tried upping the memory clock on the GT540M, but noticed that it's nearly maxed out already at 900. Running the Unigine Valley benchmark at 672/950 I only saw a ~1% boost in score over 672/900, so I'm not sure it helps much at all to mess around with the memory clock. Seems to be a lot more room for improvement on the graphics clock if not for the instabilities.

 

@Vegetothe1st

didnt spent too much time on benchmarks, but last time I did results went fine, the system was even comparable with higher clocks i3 proccesors.

yeah, there is some improvement with the system ram.

however with the GPU, the most noticiable performance boosts happens while focusing on OC the GPU core.

I can tell you there is a difference from the stock 600 mhz from the 525m and the over 700 mhz it have running now.

dont OC the GPU oc unless you ensured your GPU core OC is already stable.

 

The temperatures with 0.98v are around ~91 here, not all that bad. Anyways, is there a way to make the fan work at 100% all the time?

 

It seemed pretty stable at factory settings which is why I tried OCing it. I'll see how the current 720/900 settings hold up.

 

@capitankasar 0.98v bios mod installed, but now i'm using lower clocks (1510/755/900) which I think that should go fine with this bios. But now, CoD: MW2 crashes when I join the match. ):

 

relating with users feedback, the most recomended voltages for the 540m is the 0.83v/0.85v.

it keep the card on cooler temps and also make it more stable.

try with that version and lowering the OC a little more, like on 720 like Vegetothe1st did.

mine was stable on many games on 720, but since I play some competitive games like League Of Legends, I cant allow any crashes, thats why I lowered it a 700 core speed, no crash in any games exceppt dead space ones wich I am forced to remove the OC completly

 

On 540m I successfully used 720 for core. Only in Civilisation V it was crashing after some time. And I DON'T have repasted GPU or removed dust filter, so if you did something like that, you can OC more.

 

well, I tested my OC after repaste and dustfilter removal, and those were my results, like I said not all GPUs OC the same, I also like to leave some "safetly" values to make it trully stable because doing just 10 or 20 more mhz is not worth of facing the posibility of having random crashes even after hours of gamming

I would be able to deal with it on single player games, but on multiplayer and competitive games that each player is an essential part of the team is not funny to have a random crash in the middle of a decisive battle ^^

 

Capitankasar using boot rec we don't need to boot into winre am I right? And you wrote something about USB recovery. So it can be interesting way to power on my PC while no buttons it need bios cap file on fat32 partition in USB-esata port?

Edit. Oh and is it possible to make cap file with settings other than default (eg. UEFI enabled)?

 

well, I was unable to boot anything from usb in recovery mode, thats why I made the windowsPE recovery disk with the recovery capsule, the usb with a recovery is optional or for people wich for some reason is unable to load the bios capsule from the cdrom

relating your issue.

well, yeah it should be posible to power on the machine into recovery mode, then ctrl + alt + supr and reboot with the normal bios

the process should be something like that:

- put BIOS.cap file at the root of a usb stick (you can get that file from my Cdrom image)

- place it at the usb/esata combo port

- do the power and END key trick to enter in recovery mode

- the machine will load the BIOS.cap file , and will popup the dell splash screen, however this will reset your BIOS setup settings to default

- now do ctrl+alt+ supr to reboot the machine in normal mode

- enter in bios and set your settings, save settings and let the OS load.

- this can be a little annoying to do everytime you power on the machine,specially set the bios settings again everytime, but since your power button is not avalible, you can only bridge the pins or use this method to boot the machine.

 

So that's why I'm asking about modyfing default values
You know that there are only 2 offers with this ribbon (and one only for US, another from Singapore... 3+ weeks if even come to me) so I need something for this time

Edit. Which key is super? Win key as in alternative OS?

 

yeah, having to do this everytime you power on the machine would be crazy, but as for a temporal way to boot the machine while the ribbon arrives is acceptable ^^

oh, I didnt saw your edit, no, I dont know how to modify the default values.

 

And supr key? It's "win logo" or something else? And WHEN I need to use this shortcut?

Edit. Already rebooted by entering into setup. But shortcut would be more usefull. Thanks for cap file

Edit2. And after I make reboot, I can remove pendrive from esata and connect BD, am I right?

 

the windows key is not the supr key , they are different ones, I think the one you was looking for is the end key, the one I told you to enter in the recovery mode, you have pictures and detailed instructions at the first post ^^

 

OK if that works, I'm stupid
And interesting thing: Using bios.cap DOESN'T restore default settings

Edit. It seems to me that it loads config from bios in notebook 0_o because booted from pendrive (bios.cap) and F12 - saw only options allowed by me for internal bios (CD and esata)...

 

mmm, are you sure it doesnt reset default settings while booting the BIOS from BIOS.cap file?

it did for me everytime I used it

 

Hmm... Maybe because I now tryied with connected laptop battery? It actually gave me only 2 options in boot manager - these that I allowed in previous boot...

And I don't know how to use shortcut
Maybe it starts oryginal BIOS in default? And when bricked, uses its own?

Edit, Ooops! I dismounted battery some boots ago

 

not sure what you mean with "shortcut"

mmm, I dont think battery have anything to do with that.

 

That 3 key combo to reset i just Enter setup and select save
Yes battery doesn't matter as wrote in edit.

 

oh, you mean ctrl + alt + supr


well, ctrl is at the bottom left key of the keyboard, alt is at the left of the space key, and supr is the top right key of the keyboard.

basically you must press:

ctrl key and hold it

alt key and hold it

press supr

relase all the keys

thats it ^^

 

TOP right? You said end key It's second lowest... I'll try later.
Finally writing from l502x Now change all settings to suspend when close lid and I do not need power button as much as previous

 

no, it is crl + alt + supr

END key is used to enter in recovery mode with the power cord trick, but if u want to reboot the machine when it is booting, do crl + alt + SUPR

 

You told me that it's end key

 

yeah, for recovery mode, but not for rebooting the system like u want.

arrgg, this is becoming confusing lol

 

Bad news! Batman AA crashed for me on 720/900. Guess I'll back it down to 700/900 for now and see if it's still crashing...

New mobo should be installed tomorrow or early next week, so I'll need to try factory with the default BIOS for a while there to see if the new board is any more stable.

 

@Vegetothe1st What bios mod are you using?

 

I'm currently using the A12 0.83/0.85V BIOS.

 

@capitankasar let end topic about restarting
Actually I have other sad news: seems that lid closing detection is connected to same pins :/

 

thats why is importante to get a replacement ribbon and replace it, the solutions we talked about are only temporal stuff

there was a way using the bright buttons near the power button to poweroff the screen, however since that is also connected to the same ribbon you are out of luck until the new ribbon arrives

 

To get the voltage right, just open nibitor fermi voltage table and look at the hex on top. Then search for at least the first 8 to 10 numbers. Find the say 64 value, thats your max p15 value. Increase that value to get more voltage.

I have found no matter stability actually at all at 1.30V right now... 1.00V is the true max, so setting anything other than whats in there to begin with will only truly render the max original values of EXACT 0.83, 0.98, 1.00V.

So the only way to undervolt is to run your 3d clocks at 2d voltages of 0.83V and clock it to where it's stable.

So when u did it ur way it was really ever going doing the stock clocks so idk if u guys noticed a Placebo effect but I have for SURE witnessed one heck of a placebo effect.

THANKS

The True max stable that you could really EVER achieve on the GT540M is 797Mhz, 1594Mhz Shader, 900Mhz memory.

Any values out side of that range are useless. It goes 797 to 810 but evga reports 670mhz at 672Mhz so it's quite annoying.

It's weird 670, 720 is correct, but 740 reports 737... can we find out the variable here for math purposes?

gtx 470 goes 16 X 50.1875 = ur true clock according the evga and msi afterburner.

 

Sorry about going a bit off topic but could you please tell me how to edit this .rom bios file to change the voltage of my gt540. My computer is the Samsung RC530. I have managed to extract the .rom file from the .exe.

This is one that is read straight from my current installation
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjm54sabfx3pbkd/AmericanMegatrendsInc.-06WD.M016.20121119.PSA.rom

And here one extracted from the .exe
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgx5t9yimcmjnbn/06WD.rom

 

Ribbon cable issues? Welcome to the club! These laptops are so cheaply made they break if touched... My power ribbon cable failed once, had to replace. Now my touch pad ribbon cable failed twice now, haven't replaced it yet using external mouse atm. To power the laptop on with no RIBBON cable just use a flat head screw driver and bridge the pins and it'll boot right up every time. Try to shut down via windows obviously.... do the same everytime.

vga bios mod... whats not available in the fermi voltage table is not available in hardware so u can only use what values are available. A GTX470 or MXM Video card I think has tons of voltages available etc... these cheap on board gt540m gf108's are ultra limited cheaply made only 3 voltages available. 1.00V yields max overclock of 797mhz core for 24/7 stability and its the peak max pinnacle and theres no chance of running any higher than 797mhz... u could write 800 and it reports 797. You can go from 797 to 810 but 810 is unstable when utilizing 99%, yet 30-50% is stable at beyond 797 or 810. I even successfully wrote a new p15 value of 1.30V from 1.00V and it didn't do a single thing. It seems to pull more fps some how but no more overclocking ability with 1.30V... that's 300mv over stock and is gigantic. It's only really doing 1.00v though since it's only a placebo effect...

if its larger than 64kb then u need to open in hxd and do a ctrl e and i think the op said it's start offset 4741c to end offset 5721B. Ctrl C to copy, open new file then paste that data, then save as vgabios.rom. Open with nibitor it may say integrity is yellow, save and overwrite then open again. Integrity is green now. Now go to temperatures tab, set as min to 100, max to 100 for optimum temps. Then go up top to the Fermi Voltage Table and set P15 to 1.00v. Then save and overwrite. Go back to hxd, and open ur new modded .rom. Edit, Select All Ctrl C to copy. Then go back to ur big main bios file and make sure that same offset is highlighted, then paste, and save it to a different location. Now with PhoenixTool with the options to edit modules etc the op stated before. Select ur manufactuer and slic etc, then click go. It'll ask to add new modded stuff, copy and paste and overwrite the original with the new modded file in the dump and click ok, ok, ok, and it should say successful. Now reflash and your golden.

thanks to the OP for the help.

 

@chris89 using boot recovery makes it easier - you don't need screw driver, just power connection and pendrive And that's true: these ribbons are terrible. Who invented idea of these connectors?!

 

Wow really? I didnt know the pendrive recovery could boot the system without a power button. How do u boot the system? what button?

Since my bios wasn't corrupted and my system was fine, I just used the flat head to boot it up while my power ribbon cable was faulty.

I know right who invented these? they built them for maximum profit and minimal quality. If you want a high quality laptop with Quality over Quantity, Eurocom is the only way to go. Best desgined laptops over all other manufacturers. The engineers at Eurocom build nothing short of works of art.

Later bro

 

You have instructions in the first post Just put bios.cap from cd to USB with fat32 partition and plug it in USB 2.0 (esata) port. It needs AC but doesn't need to open notebook.

 

How can I keep my fan working at 100% all the time? D:

 

You can create an RWE script to write values to EC in a certain way. There is a bit that is being set to 1 when performing fan tests in ePSA to trigger the fan at 100%, will try to recollect whats it was exactly.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

When the fan turns on for the first time the register 0x60 will have a value of 40, which is fan automatic control via thermal table. You have to set this register value to 00, which will trigger manual mode. Then you have to set it a value of 80 which will enable the ePSA test bit and make the fan run at full speed at all times, no matter what you do. Set register 0x60 a value of 40 again to revert this behavior.
Close RWE when you've done the trick or it will produce huge amounts of lag due to constantly communicating with the ITE chip.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

Here is how it wold look:


Yo can make an RWE script to execute these commands in series.

 

Hello,

I read this topic about the modded bios but i can't find an answer to my question.
I have installed the A12 modded bios with the advance menù and I still can't disable my Integrated Intel Card. If I set PCI in the Primary Display Selection the PC starts with the Intel Card and if set PEG it starts with Microsoft Basic Display Driver. I don't know how to do to make my XPS L502X starts with the NVIDIA card

Thank you and sorry for my english ^^'

 

You can't disable the Intel card as it is the part of the chipset (well, not technically chipset, but CPU rather) that is connected with your internal display. nVidia is being used only as graphics accelerator and doesn't drive your LVDS panel, hence if you or anyone ever manages to find a way to disable iGPU on an Optimus or AMD SG laptop the screen won't show anything and will remain blank.