Ivy Bridge GT60 with GTX 970m ...revisited

Hi,

A while ago i asked for advice about fitting a gtx970m in my old GT60 OND. To update since - I got a gtx970m card, got a heatsink from a haswell series (cpu bridge) GT and modded it to fit. The card is a clevo version and after lots of vbios tests, has its original vbios reflashed now.

Regardless of what vbios had been tried (i used an spi proggie to flash the mxm card directly) the machine wouldnt natively recognise the new gpu so i had to mod a file from the nvidia installer, then drivers installed and i've been using the machine for a couple of weeks now - playing games which look much better than they did with the old gpu, which was the point, so success ... well almost...

An issue with the optimus switching remains, despite nvidia tray reporting the gpu as being inactive, the laptops orange gpu light always remains on. If i go into bios, it will go white. It cycles white/orange at boot - soon as w10 loads drivers on goes the orange light but like i said, nothing is calling the gpu (according to nvidia tray anyway) and i've tried ddu, removing drivers, reinstalling original igpu driver from msi site (ancient) and earlier gtx970m drivers, all sorts of combinations and install sequences.. nothing helps.

I can mess about with nvidia settings but nothing will change that light to white...

The issue persisted with win8.1 before win10 was installed. The machine has fresh install of win10 pro currently. Bios of laptop is 51x and ec is t18. This bios was installed yonks ago for a gtx770m card that i'd fitted back then. I had wonderful help from Svet from msi forums back then and more recently to get this 970m card to function, and learned a couple of new tricks in the process. I cannot recommend this fine fellow highly enough.

Unfortunately, this gpu activity prob just laughs at anything thrown at it. The gpu is a gsync card and possibly the cause of this problem - i have no idea if this is correct but something thats been suggested.

If anyone has any idea what could be causing this gpu activity issue, or ideas how to query what exactly is calling up the gpu // even though the nvidia tray says its inactive - i'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance.

 

Try one by one all running programs to force to use Intel on Nvidia control panel, 3D settings. The general setting may not be enough. On my GT70 I had the same issue and found several programs to wake Nvidia up even not showing on Nvidia tray. Can't remember exactly which ones, Dragon Center, Windows Photos, Mailwasher, something else, too.

 

Hi buddy,

Thanks for the feedback, i've tried this with anything of relevence but i'll go through all again and see if theres anything missed.. pity the nvidia tray doesnt show, if i use anyting that calls up gpu, the nvidia tray reports it correctly. Odd.

Anyway, appreciate the help and i'll persevere.

Cheers

 

Did you correctly mod the inf file for Optimus?

 

Hi senso,

Thanks for the reply,

The nvidia driver couldnt install, i downloaded latest nvidia drivers and modded the inf file (changed a few values) and the drivers seen the card ok, and installed fine so i'm assuming the modded file is ok... but if there's further modding req'd for optimus, i havent did this.. where/what in the inf file would i be looking to change?

Appreciate the help, thanks again.