Forcing G-sync on 13D7 980M gpu's

EDIT: this same modification should theoretically also work on 970M gpus

Hey,

G-sync on non G-sync MSI gt72's...
I'm looking for any advice/help I can get on how to pull this off.
I have a MSI GT72 2QE dominator pro, 980m, 4720hq etc. etc., from 2015
I know for a fact that my laptop can use g-sync. That leaked driver fiasco in 2015 was great, and I really want to try to get g-sync to work again on newer drivers. The topic has gone underwater a little bit, and I wanted to shine some light on it again.

I've been gathering a lot of information about this subject and there seems to be a general consensus that this is in fact possible to do. Here's what I got:

From: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-980m-g-sync.779869/page-5#post-10068105

The differences between 13DF and 1617 980m's is apparently incredibly small. They're practically the same GPU, just with a different HW identifier.

From: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-980m-g-sync.779869/page-3#post-10065385
Again, the same story, but then from a sager rep:

From: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ios-on-a-non-gsync-980m.790981/#post-10246471

There doesn't seem to be any G-sync hardware in laptop panels anyway, so this HWID and cookie change could easily be spoofed with a little bit of modding...
I even managed to retrive the HW cookies from the gamenab blog: (broken English or not, the general consensus is that these cookies are real, so they might be of use unless nvidia decided to change them all (which is unlikely))

I haven't had any luck contacting Prema, but there seem to be a lot of other experts on this forum.

Here's information about my computer:
GPU: http://prntscr.com/ixzwx3 (notice how the hw id is 13D7)
Panel: http://prntscr.com/ixzwjb (I have the "-SPF" LG panel, instead of "-SPD", however I'm pretty sure they're nearly identical. The SPF panel also worked during the old g-sync driver, so it should work again if I can enable it in software. I'm not sure if there's G-sync laptops out there with -SPF panels, but that might very well be the case.

EDIT: there are plenty g-sync laptops out there that use this screen, so this shouldn't be a problem.)

Unfortunately, I have little to no experience modding this kind of stuff and there's barely any guides to be found. If you can/or know anyone who could help me with this, please send me their way. I might end up placing a small bounty on this if necessary. And hey, maybe I might learn something along the way too. I'm willing to use my laptop for testing. If you need any system info or anything please let me know.

 

If i remember correcly then the panel should be a gsync panel in order to work. There is something different about them I think.

Also your panel is a g-sync panel to begin with. Those are the same panels used in those asus G751JY notebooks where everyone is enabling gsync on them. I don't know if you can simply flash gsync vBios on your card and be done with it, maybe try it?

Also have teamviewer ready and let it startup with windows, so in case u get a black screen that you can get on teamviever from another notebook and revert back to old vBios.

 

I heard flashing the g-sync bios on the non g-sync card actually causes some weird problems, usually black screens etc. but I might be wrong about that. Thanks for the info though, I now know my screen is used in other g-sync laptops.

EDIT: that was the prema vbios mod, but I kinda want to know if this applies to normal vbiosses too before I try it. Changing the HW id to 1617 might actually be enough.

 

The newer models with Skylake use the same panel and are gsync models as well. So not only asus but also MSI as well.

And yes, the screen can be black. I think this was what you needed to enable gsync:
- Latest BIOS from MSI where they enable g-Sync
- GTX 980M MSI gSync BIOS
- The panel.

I think that was about right. Again, as already posted above, you can use teamviewer as a backup.

 

The teamviewer thing is actually a really smart trick. I'll give this a shot, however I have the Haswell GT72, so I'm not sure if they have a "G-Sync bios" for this specific model. You mean like motherboard bios right? I'll try flashing the 980m vbios for the Broadwell models tomorrow. I'm sure that all of those had g-sync enabled. I'll report back with the results.

 

The panels are the same, it just needs to be whitelisted in the BIOS/drivers/vbios.

 

I applaud you for trying but honestly you're wasting your time IMO. Nvidia has gone to great lengths to ensure the average consumer can't figure out how to "mod" their system to enable G-Sync unless you pay the Green Goblin a token. Take my Eurocom Tornado F5 for example, IT CAME WITH G-Sync, a 60Hz IPS panel. I wanted a 120Hz panel and swapped to that. This is the exact panel used in other systems and G-Sync works for them. Guess what G-Sync doesn't work for me anymore. So my system can do G-Sync, my vBIOS can do G-Sync, but guess what my panel isn't listed in the BIOS and therefore no G-Sync. It's a ridiculous requirement but one Nvidia feels is necessary to collect their fees where they can. Gotta keep those share holders happy amirite?

 

Yeah, well, that's exactly why I'm here. If there's any group of people that can do it, then it's the people on this forum. It would be a great problem to finally crack.
Why is no-one trying?
Or are there really only a handful of people capable of actually looking into modifying a bios to their needs? This is a modding forum right? If someone knows how to do it and charges for it I'll gladly consider.
I think my main problem is that MSI hasn't released a bios with a cookie in it for the haswell models. I could check if changing the vbios is enough in my case, however I don't really have my hopes up. And then again, if it works, it'll only be for my case. There's also many, many, people like you. I feel like it would be quite a novel goal to go after.

 

You can whiteliste the screen in your BIOS.

@ invertedsilence
This is the reason why I told you to update the BIOS, MSI whitelisted g-sync on one of the updates, at least for my model. Also there is a guy who did enable g-sync on his haswell model, so it is possible.

 

I can't seem to be able to flash the g-sync vbios to my 13D7 card, even with the modified joe dirt version of nvflash (I know that's only for certs, but it was worth a shot anyway). http://prntscr.com/iyiluf I know there's obviously a device ID mismatch... that was kind of the point.

Could you link me where you read about these updates? I've been googling around for them and I can't find it anywhere.

 

There are a 4(at least 4) resistors on the card under the black tape, you need to change those to change the card ID, then it will take the gSync BIOS, I read about all that for a while, decided that its not worth it.