My tale of woe - Bad Flashed, Corrupted Firmware, and Soldering

I recently bought two GTX 970m's to replace the 7970m CFX setup in my p-377sm-a. I got the first card in the mail and installed it without any problems. It was essentially plug and play. The only problem was the throttling due to the TDP limit imposed by the vbios.

I decided to flash Prema's custom GTX 970m vbios which is supposed to take care of that issue.

I flashed the card, restarted my computer, and all I get is a black screen. The computer boots into windows fine, but the internal display is black. I plug the computer into an external monitor via HDMI, and it works. For some reason, after the flash windows stopped detecting the internal display.

At this point I decide to flash back to the original vbios to try and fix the issue. The flash was successful, but still a dead internal display. Next I try putting my 7970m's back into the computer and guess what, still a black internal display. WTF?

I reinstall the GTX 970m, and flash it to a different vbios. Upon restarting, the computer won't post. The vbios flash got corrupted somehow.

I put a 7970m back in the primary slot, and put the GTX 970m in the slave slot, upon booting, windows doesn't even detect the GTX 970m and nvflash is just as useless.

I take the GTX 970m out of the computer, and desolder the eeprom chip which stores the vbios. The only issue is the chip is sinking a TON of heat and it's very hard to get off. I finally get it off but the chip is destroyed. It turns out NVIDIA put a thermal well underneath the eeprom chip. Why the **** would you put a thermal well under a eeprom chip? It doesn't get hot - it doesn't need cooling! As a result, the chip sinks so much heat, that it's nearly impossible to remove it without destroying it.

So now I'm screwed . . . or maybe not. I have about 4 dead 6990m's lying around that all suffered from warped PCB breaking the solderjoints under the gpu itself.

I look at the eeprom's on those cards and compare them to the eeprom I took off of the GTX 970m. Different part number different chip.

However, according to the datasheets, they seem to be pin compatible. At this point I have nothing to loose, so I unsolder a few of the AMD 6990m eeproms (AMD didn't stupidly put a thermal well under the eeproms).

I pop the AMD chip into my flasher and flash Prema's GTX 970m vbios to the AMD eeprom to it. Everything seems fine and I proceed to solder the AMD eeprom to the GTX 970m.

Voila. It works!

Praise be to the eeprom gods.

TLDR: Fixed a bricked GTX 970m by soldering an AMD eeprom to it.

BUT:

I still have the issue of the internal display not being recognized by windows - not even turning on in the bios. Did the original vbios flash somehow corrupt the display firmware? If so, how did this happen? Prema, can you weigh in on this please?

Does anyone have any suggestions for either reflashing my display firmware or otherwise fixing the issue?

EDIT: Refer to techinferno forum post for updates.

Also I'm running Windows 7 - most recent windows updates installed on 7/31/15.
Windows 10 has never, ever been installed or run on this machine.
I have been using Precision X though.

 

EVGA Precision X & NVIDIA driver bricking another screens EDID!

Welcome to the club of bricked LCDs...there is an endless thread about this here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...illing-alienware-and-clevo-lcd-panels.779449/


Fixing his screen here:

http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/...ware-corrupted-due-evga-precision-x-help.html

 

Hmm, that's interesting that it wasn't Windows 10 that bricked this LCD.

 

Just finished fixing the issue. Refer to techinferno thread. Had to reflash the LCD firmware from Linux.

 

wow, quite the story. kudos for the amd eeprom chip exchange, amazing feat!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Wow great salvage.
The infamous Windows 10 EDID deathwish is certainly in full swing..

 

but... OP has never had Windows 10 on his machine... Oh god, Windows 10 is starting to spread and affect Windows 7 machines now too!!! Kill it with fire!

 

That or people are too quick to judge one change as the cause of their issues.

That's how you end up with the anti-vax crowd and people who thing cell towers are making them ill.

 

See above

 

My second card will be coming in the mail tomorrow. I've uninstalled EVGA Precision X. When I flash the card tomorrow, we'll see what happens.

I suspect the root of the issue is Precision X and/or Nvidia drivers. I didn't read through the official thread on this topic, but doesn't g-sync work by overwriting the refresh rate of your screen stored in the EDID or something very similar? I'm thinking something about g-sync support just being present in the nvidia drivers is causing the issue.

I can see why some people are saying it's bad hardware design, but I don't know if I agree. I like the idea of having access to the i2c bus for various components of your PC from the OS - it opens up more possibilities for modding/troubleshooting etc.

I think this is Ultimately a nvidia driver issue - if it happens on an outdated version of Win 7 on a system that has NEVER seen Win 10, then the cause of the problem can't be Win 10. It has to be something else . . . (Nvidia drivers).

Kind of ironic that after 5 years of being on the Red Team, as soon as I put a nvidia card in my system, all **** breaks loose. I though nvidia was supposed to be reliable and stable, and have better drivers. Obviously not.

Never had this insanity with ATI/AMD. I've even corrupted vbios's on AMD cards and never had to resort to unsoldering the eeproms. . .

At heart I'm a Nvidia fanboy, but I've stayed away due to prohibitive cost. Now after dropping $900 on a Nvidia setup, I'm met with this crap?

I've lost an awful lot of trust in Nvidia - makes me feel they don't really know what they're doing.

 

Oh, alright...

@Prema is MSI Afterburner okay or does that potentially cause problems like EVGA Precision X?

 

I am using NVIDIA Inspector as Afterburner has no voltage control.

 

Use NVInspector... it's your only hope!

 

I have to quit using Precision X?!? Ugh!!! I'm really starting to hate nVidia.

 

Uninstalled Precision X, flashed my second card. So far no issues.

 

No, if G-sync was constantly writing to the firmware of the panel the chip would wear out very quickly.

 

Quite the ordeal. Glad it appears to be over.

 

Alright but in theory is Afterburner okay or is that dangerous like Precision X?

 

No idea, we only use Inspector.

 

It is fine but no voltage control... Inspector has everything...

 

i thiiink what were trying to say here is....USE INSPECTOR!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Either that or just use Inspector...LOL

 

Figuring out what is stable and then flashing a custom vbios is of course even better

 

And did you resolved problem?

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-firmware-and-soldering.782750/#post-10112874