D900C/D901C/NP9262 Quadro 3700M help

Hey people. My 8800MGTX decided to crap out on me recently. I baked it and has been working alright. However, the fear prompted me to buy a 3700M.

I swapped everything out and tried to boot up but nothing. It was seemingly a new card sealed in a bag.

I tried putting the 8800M in the daughter bay and the 3700M in the parent bay. The system booted up but the BIOS said there was nothing present in the parent bay. The system doesn't recognize the 3700M at all. Can't even POST.

I updated my BIOS to the latest I could find around here and should be alright? I mean, I bought my 9262 mid into the life cycle so should have a BIOS that recognizes the 3700M anyway?..I think..

Any ideas guys? I don't want to really think that the 3700M is DOA because it'll be a pain to return since I'm overseas and I bought it off of ebay.

Thanks.

 

Pull out the 8800m from the daughter bay then try again.

Or maybe you got a Lenovo Fx3700m? Post a pic of your card if possible.

 

Tried all the possible combinations. 8800 daughter. 8800 parent. 3700 daughter. 3700 parent. 8800 daughter+3700 parent. 3700 parent+8800 daughter.

It's an HP card. BIOS revision ends with 10. I got it specifically because people reported that it flashed to the 280M without too much issue.

 

How about using a pencil eraser carefully to clean the card connector's gold finger which may be oxidized on the surface?
If it doesn't work, you might need an external monitor to perform a vbios flash.
BTW: I will get a np9261 in several months. It has a 8700mgt which I want to upgrade to a fx3700m. I shall keep an eye on your progress.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/523317-d901c-quadro-3700m-vbios.html
seafox22 used a Lenovo FX3700M in a np9261 , could post in an external screen. After a GTX280m vbios was flashed, the internal screen could be light on but ran into BOSD while entering windows.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...260-9262-pro-star-9191-owners-thread-113.html
satch420 used an HP Fx3700m in a np9262, could hear the windows welcome sound in the background. It seemed that his np9262 NOT come up with the latest 1.00.22 bios.

If a .10 HP FX3700m can be flashed in a GTX280m vbios without too much issue as someone reported. Then it shall light your internal screen and you would be able to enter windows I think.

 

Hmmm..seems like I have to test it with an external monitor but I only have my TV. I guess it could work.

But also, if I plugged in both cards and the internal display worked on the 8800M, shouldn't the system at least recognize the 3700M in the parent bay instead of no device found?

 

Strange enough that no device found, that is why I suspect an oxidization on the card connector surface and recommend a clean on its gold finger first.

 

I contacted one guy in a laptop forum
[ ]D901CÄ¿Ç°×îÐÂBIOS°æ±¾ - À¶ÌìCLEVO - ׼ϵͳ»ùµØ - Powered by Discuz!
who sent me this clevo Fx3700m vbios(62.92.5B.00.06).

Try at your own risk.....
I hope it will work.

 

thanks for that.
Update on my card. It seems now that the BIOS recognizes the card. I put the 8800M in the daughter and 3700M in the parent, BIOS recognized a Quadro 3700M.

I think I'll have to USB boot it and blind flash but left my USB stick at work so try tomorrow.

 

success!!!....sort of. Flashed that clevo 3700M bios onto the HP 3700M. Thanks. Card was recognized and got it to display on the LCD and booted into windows! Even installed the quadro drivers.....but now here is where the trouble starts..

It is completely unstable when trying to use the card for anything than basic windows desktop. Try to get GPU info from GPU-Z, crash....look at device manager...crash...play a video...crash...

Couldn't even get a chance to see if it'll run a game or anything. It's very unstable. I suppose the next step is to try and flash a 280M vbios and see if that can work....

However, I just tried and NVflash gave me a GPU mismatch error...I have to read up more about it to see what's going on but as of right now, calling it a night...

 

Boot into safe mode. Unintall all the video drivers complately. Some tools such as driver sweeper may be needed.

Then install a sager provided quadro driver and see what happen.
Software Upgrade

And what is your OS?

 

I check the HP .10 vbios and clevo vbios using nibitor 6.0

I find that they have different Sub Verdor ID and Sub System ID (which I suspect causing the recognition issue)

And their performance table entries show different values(causing unstability when flashing a clevo vbios to an HP card???)

Here is a modified HP .10 vbios which I change the verdor ID and subsystem ID.

 

Windows 7 ultimate 64.

Tried clean sweep of drivers and everything. Safe mode, different drivers, WHQL, beta, and so on.

Running on standard VGA drivers, things work alright. However, with drivers installed, any stressed use of the video card causes crashes. Videos and even GPU-Z. I'll try that modified HP vbios before I try a 280M vbios.

At least the system recognizes the card now.

Also, for the future, the screws mounting the heatsink don't fit. They're too small for the 3700M. I made it kind of stick because the clamps are providing pressure to the sides and the screw is sticking but if you want a more secure permanent solution, you'll have to find other screws. The screws mounting the card to the system fit perfectly but....need them to mount the card to the system...

Will keep working on it.

 

Thanks for your information which is very helpful for my later upgrade.
Besides,if the modified HP vbios would not work,I should try modification based on the clevo vbios such as copying the HP vbios' performance table entries to the clevo one or reducing those entries from 4 to 2 and increasing the 2D frequency.

I think the problem is the driver could not make the card run on a higher frequency. Seems like a vbios issue that happens on some old desktop G92 chips.

 

what sucks is that i tried a blind flash but it failed to save a copy of the original bios....so I've lost that now. Any bios I have now has to come from elsewhere...

If you can, can you try to mod the clevo bios with HP performance like you said? Maybe that'll be better than using the HP as a base. However, I'll try the modded HP one first as I said.

 

Could not apply HP's entry 4(Extra) value to clevo's.

So I reduce the entries from 4 to 3.
HP entry 4(Extra) -> clevo entry 3(3D)
HP entry 3(3D) -> clevo entry 2(Throttle)
clevo entry 1(2D) not changed.

It is risky to flash such a mixed vbios, beware.

 

ok so funny thing. I come home and now it's working fine....even managed to get some game time going. Reinstalled latest from nvidia and no problems as well....this is quite strange.

I might still go for a 280M vbios to use the geforce drivers to get the best gaming performance I can though.

 

Hello All,

I'm having this exact same issue with a 3700M installation.

I've been scanning the forums here looking for the 'known solution' to little avail.

Can anyone tell me what the known working solutions for the 3700M installations on the D900C chassis ended up being? MagikalFly seemed to have a random result from the post history so I was unsure what should be attempted?

 

Me, I am being referred to lol.

The 280m vBIOS will give you no problems. Even if you have the wrong type of card, it will boot. The 260m vBIOS will also work.

I could probably tell you specifically what will work and what wont, but whether these alternate vBIOS will be stable for you depends on the original brand and make of your card.

 

Alright then.

Now I just need to locate myself a 280m Vbios

Any tips are welcome should someone have an easy reference but I'll see if I can't google one up.

Thanks mate!

 

Success of a sort

I managed to get the 3700m flashed as a 280m from one of the Bios i found here on the forums for 280m.

And now the integral screen on my D900c works.

The trade off is now the external monitor does not

The good news is that I could run as a 3700M for 'stationary mode' and then flash it for 'travel' mode if need be. But that seems like a lot of risky flashing

Am I missing something niff? Wrong Vbios for the 280m maybe? I didn't use the 'stock' one i found but a more recent posting of one.

Thoughts?

 

Hi,arrakeyn.

Two questions I want to ask:
1. What is your d900c motherboard revison? rev5.x or rev6.x?
2. Is your 280m vbios a 61.0kB one or a 60.5kB one?

How about flashing a 60.5kB 9800mgtx vbios?

 

According to CPU-Z rev. 6.

And as for which Vbios voltage, good question.

If someone can provide me one of each, I'll try both.

I haven't tried the 'Stock' one that is floating around here yet.

I tested with the one that Niff had in another thread where he thought he 'solved it' (28.zip I believe was the download tag). EDIT 1: Just checked all the Vbios files I have at present and they all show as 61KB. I can give you actual byte counts from Nibitor if that helps)

I'm currently flashed back to a newer 3700m Vbios while I research (which means I'm using my big 24 inch external monitor again).

I can try the 9800 bios and see what I get but I'll need to locate one. (EDIT2: Have tried the 9800M vbios i pulled from another thread here to no avail. External works, integral does not. Have reverted to a 3700M)

I was even pondering applying a Dell based 3700M bios to see what I get.

There is no doubt in my mind that my problem appears vbios related as why would the integral versus external port be accessible depending on which bios is in use?

Also Niff, the FX 3700M was one of the HP .10 series cards. Works great save the monitor issue

And before I forget, thanks for the help and interest in my problem guys!

 

Still haven't tried the 280m vBIOS?

Do that BEFORE trying a dell bios! lol. Dell bios = very bad idea.

Also, why don't you try the modded vBIOS saltius uploaded above?

I'd say, got 280m, go the Clevo 3700m posted above, then try 260m if all else fails (I can upload that for you).


Are you going to try running them in SLI?
I'm not exactly sure how you would do it, but the 9800m GTX vBIOS may be the only one that makes it work.

If you can get it working in sli on the d900c, then I think that is more important in the end You can always use a hardware converter with DVI, and if you do that, you could also potentially upgrade to an LED backlit screen. Just throwing that out there.

 

I did try the 280m vbios as mentioned a couple posts up. And it SORT of solved the problem. The Screen lit up on the D900C, but both the analog and DVI ports for an external monitor were toast. In fact, the Analog output posted a fractured image (think of a sliding tile puzzle mixed up where all the pieces are parts of the display). I tried the one you posted as 28.zip somewhere on the forum.

I'll try Saltius' modified Clevo tonight.

One thing I was wondering... to even get the card to detect i've been running it in the daughter slot, the same slot as the original 7950 GTX was installed. When I originally tried to move it to the Parent slot (pre-flashing) it wouldn't even detect it.

Would that be complicating the issue? Should I flash it in the daughter slot with the 280m or Clevo based 3700M and then move it to parent and see if it detects properly?

I've had to leave it in the daughter slot for flashing purposes (as it only detects there) but I'm wondering what experience you have had in whether that has had an impact.

Thanks for the follow up Niff. (And Dell Bios. Bad. message received <deletes it from machine> )

As for SLI was only working with one card so no SLI for me I'm afraid.

 

Have you considered that your parent MXM slot might be dead?

I think there is something wrong with the fact that you cant get it to do anything in the parent slot. Yes maybe you should try what you said, flash it and then try it in the other slot.
I don't have a d900c, I've just had a ton of these cards.

 

That thought is indeed occurring to me.

If that's the case though I'm betting the parent slot was dead on ship as they _shipped me_ this system with the 7950 GTX in the daughter, not parent.

Just took me 3 years to notice

Having said that, MagikalFly had the exact same issue with his configuration. Same HP FX 3700m showing unresponsive in the parent slot but working in the daughter slot, totally functional on an external monitor but not on the built in LCD.

It's proving something of a conundrum for me.

I find it especially interesting that the 280m vbios you provided on the forums reverses the issue, activating the LCD panel and disabling the DVI output (and swiss cheesing the analog).

I have now tried flashing to the known 'Clevo' Vbios on the card I have (provided by the vendor) which still doesn't let it detect in the parent slot.

Puzzling...

 

I am not sure whether the CPU-Z could report your MB revision correctly.
The most reliable way is to open the back and see those stikers on the memory slot.

The pictures below show a rev5.0a and rev6.2 motherboard.

I've heard that rev5.x motherboard not support Dual cards above 7950GTX/8700MGT, and rev6.x MB can support dual 9800mgtx.

If you got a Rev5.x MB, you may install only one FX3700m other than two.

That's why I ask you for the MB revision.

 

Understood.

But I'm trying to get ONE HP FX 3700M to work properly

I only have the one card and either i can get it flashed as a 280m and the integral monitor on the D900C works OR I can have it flashed as a 3700M and use it via an external monitor. I'll have a look and see which sticker I have if either.

EDIT: and you called it Saltius. It's misreporting the 5.0a as a 6.0. The sticker says 5.0a. So looks like the new card may not be as compatible hardware to hardware as I'd like. Though I still don't get why I can only get either the external or main screen to work depending on the vbios flash... that would imply this is solvable as i only want to install one FX 3700M.

 

How about this, 9800mgtx 550/1375/799 @1.00v.
And it is 60.5kb.

Besides, have you flashed the original 60.5kb clevo FX3700m vbios I uploaded above?
What is the result?

 

Have now done tests with the following:

Using the vbios you posted for 3700M:

System will not boot with the card in the Parent slot. Behaviour is difficult to quantify. Integral screen does not light up but htere are no beep codes. It seems to get stuck in a looping startup (I can see USB devices cycling on start up sequences over and over, like the mouse flicking on and off to life).

Integral monitor doesn't work with card in daughter slot.
External monitor works fine with card in daughter slot.

Original known good 7950 GTX in Parent Slot

Integral screen unresponsive, but system appears to boot normally.
This definitely supports that the parent slot likely never worked on this platform (as the system was shipped with the 7950 GTX in the Daughter slot there is no evidence to suggest this slot EVER worked.)

Using the 9800m GTX vbios:
Note: Only tested Daughter slot as this flash was post the 7950 test... no point in constantly swapping slots if the known GOOD 7950 card can't work in the parent slot either.
The 9800 vbios you sent is different than the one i attempted previously (clock speeds were different in nibitor as an obvious difference) so tried the one you linked here.

Boots with external monitor working, integral monitor not working.

Using the Stock 280m vbios found on the forums:

Boots with integral monitor working and external DVI output disabled. the Function F7 command to control monitor output (i.e. tell the laptop to mirror to or use the external monitor) has no effect on DVI.

BUT!

280m Stock vbios DOES allow me to redirect output to the ANALOG output on an Fn+F7 command. Nvidia control panel also allows me to extend the desktops.

This is certainly progress. Do I need a 280m Clevo specific Vbios and voila, my problem may be solved re-enabling the DVI port perhaps?

EDIT: Just did the Performance Test in DoW II (good game based stress test) with the Stock 280m Vbios to have it artifact out once everything got in motion, so no dice there. Have now restored one of the working 3700M Vbios' onto the card. This could of course be driver based issue what with all the swpas of vbios lately i'm sure my xp install is a bit schzophrenic for it's video driver. However, the Integral monitor not working with the 3700M installed is still puzzling. I know it CAN work, it just isn't with the Clevo vbios on the HP card...

EDIT2: So, after heating back from Magikalfly (thank you mate!) i know now that his case had it working in the Daughter Bay, not parent. For whatever reason the Daughter bay appears to the 'Master' bay (counter intuitive though it is). He apparently was able to get his case working with one of hte 3700M vbios listed here on his HP .10 card. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the difference here is save perhaps the Mobo revision I have now tried all the 3700M vbios's here and am hoping Magikal Fly can confirm which exact bios he used that worked.

I'll say this: This community is excellent and filled with helpful people. My thanks to everyone so far, I'd have been lost without the help!

 

Oh, I find just one thing I forgot to ask...Did you update your MB bios to the latest 1.00.22 one?

If you did update before,then the difference between your d900c/d901c and Magikalfly's is just the MB revision.

I believe he got a rev6.x one(=sager np9262 while rev5.x=np9261/late version np9260).

Besides, rev5.0a d900c can use one 9800MGT(8800MGTX).
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/474063-upgrade-gpu-clevo-d900c-mb-v-5-a.html

 

I did indeed update the BIOS and HN files.

Looks like I may be stuck with the partial functionality but it's still a major improvement at least.

Thanks for the help.

 

Anyone Can Help Me?
I Buy Fx3700m For D901C Because My 8800M GTX is Fried
I Found It Very Strange, When I Slot Fx3700M Into Daughter Bay, My Laptop Cannot Boot (Only Black Screen), But If I Reheat My 8800M Gtx Then Slot It With Fx3700M In Parent Bay, My Laptop Can Boot Normally

Now, If I Want To Turn On Laptop, I Should Slot 8800M Gtx First, After Diagnostic Screen Is Displayed Then I Remove 8800M Gtx...

Try To Flash Fx3700M With Any Bios (8800M GTX, 9800M GTX, 260M GTX, 280M GTX) But The Problem Still Occurs

Now Im Using The Latest Vbios Fx3700M (V10) And I Can Play Game Normally, But The Booting Problem Still

Anybody Can Help Me?

 

I have seen differences on the PCB's from 3700M and 8800M GTX (some tiny IC's). There might be differences even between Clevo 3700M and HP 3700M, but I cannot say for sure.

 

Just wanted to let you guys know i've purchased a HP 3700m .10. It was working fine(even recognized in bios) but the DVI didn't work.

Using the Bios Saltius posted VGA & DVI work perfectly ! Thanks a lot.

Edit : It doesn't overclock very good though. Using the GTX 280M it works fine even at 285M Clocks.(1,03v vs 1,05v)

 

The built-in screen on rev5.x D901C won't post with any 9800mgtx/fx3700m vbios flashed on the video cards.

So I'm pretty sure you have a rev6.x D901C shipped with 8800mgtx/9800mgt/9800mgtx originally.

BTW: If you have a 9800mgtx as well, you may consider making Non-bridged SLI between 9800mgtx and FX3700M which may be possible.

 

Yep it shipped with 8800m GTX. Thats an interesting Idea! Too Bad its nearly impossible to find a second gpu cooler at an affordable price :/

 

I can see someone selling VGA heatsink and fan on ebay.

Sager Clevo D901C, D9C 9262, 9261 GPU Heatsink 6-31-D90CN-500 | eBay
Sager Clevo D901C, D9C 9262, 9261 GPU FAN BS6005M2B-VGA | eBay

But I should say they are a little overpriced indeed..

And we don't know the compatibility between your FX3700M and some 9800MGT/9800MGTX vbios(the vbios which make non-bridged SLI possbile on D901C).

 

So my 9800m gtx crapped out on me, stuck it in the oven for until I get a new card. Found this on ebay.

A few questions, it's a Lenovo based card, would that work in my d901c/np9262? I have a 3700m quadro bios from this thread, the 9800m gtx bios from the card in my system, and a 280m gtx bios from http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/510622-wanted-gtx-280m-mxm-2-1-vbios.html that thread. Would those bios work for a Lenovo based card?
My machine shipped with a 9800m gtx, so I know its rev 6.x. However I am not sure of the motherboard version. How would I check that?
I'll be using Nibitor to flash thats the right program correct?
Finally what about performance? Assuming I get it working correctly as a 280m would it perform similarly? What about as 9800m gtx? Or if I can only get it working as a quadro 3700m, how do those perform as compared to a 9800m or 280m? Thanks!

EDIT: Downloaded Nibitor 6.0.3, but it isnt working...anyone know why?

 

No one having a rev6.x machine ever made a test of Lenovo FX3700M on D901C.

And seafox22 who was a rev 5.x D901C owner can confirm that 280m vbios is not compatible with Lenovo FX3700M.

You may try flashing 9800MGTX vbios to the lenovo FX3700M but not sure whether it works.

You should use nvflash other than Nibitor to flash the vbios.

 

Crap...well...i'll give it a try as the guy takes returns so I guess we will see...

Can I fry the card by trying these different bioses out on it???

 

Fry it? Probably not. Brick it though? That is entirely possible.

 

If your defective 9800mgtx can at least let you boot into DOS, then no need to worry.

Once you brick your new card, put 9800mgtx in daughter(master) bay and bricked one in parent(slave) bay, then use nvflash to flash the bricked one back.