NP9170 with a troublesome AMD 7970M

So my 7970M in my NP9170 died completely a few months after the warranty was up (figures). Had a chance to RMA it at one point before it died and before the warranty was up, but allowed myself to be talked out of that working back and forth with Sager's techs via phone. Kind of annoyed at myself for that since I should've been more insistent they look at it. But I also didn't want to be possibly charged (shipping, etc) if they found nothing wrong since they seemed pretty sure it wasn't a hardware issue. The issues were intermittent and at the time fairly hard to duplicate. After a lot of troubleshooting (and OS reinstalls, trying different drivers, etc etc) it seemed to be behaving better. Then a couple months later started having intermittent issues again along with some new issues and died shortly after.

Installing the driver in windows now basically wrecks windows to the point where it wont even boot up in safe mode anymore to disable the driver (that shouldn't happen). So last time I installed Windows I made sure to not install that driver & block via group policy the update that installed a driver for the vid card. In Linux when I enable the 7970m it just spams "*ERROR* UVD not responding, trying to reset the VCPU!!!" then kernel panics and locks up. Sometimes it'll work for a few mins before locking up. If I go with nomodeset and leave the AMD card unused then the latpop works fine.

For trying to get it to work again I've tried just about everything I can think of driver & OS related along with of course making sure the fan works, everything is getting power, no dust buildup, new thermal paste, not overheating, etc. I was able to get it to work for a few days by removing it, redoing the thermal paste then reseating it all. That fixed it for a short period of time then it died again. I kept a close eye on the temperature when it was working again and it never got very hot, yet when playing an older game a few days later the screen went white and the computer locked up and it appeared the card had died.

I know I can try to "reflow" it and that might work for a while, but might also make it totally unrepairable too...that's my last resort if needed I guess. Figured checking here first would be a good idea before blasting it with heat.

For the past year+ I've been using just the onboard card, but it's not handling some of the stuff I need to be able to run very well so it's probably time for me to try to get a new card to try to prolong the life I get out of this NP9170. At the moment I can't spend a lot on a new video card so I'm hoping people here have some advice on what's compatible, reasonably priced, and if there's anything else I can try with the seemingly dead card first.

So my questions are...

1. Is there an unofficial list of decent video cards that will work (even if I need to use a different bios) on the P170EM / NP9170?

I know the official list only includes a few, like the 670M and 675M from Nvidia and the AMD ones of course. I'm not sure I want to go with AMD again considering all the trouble I had with that 7970M starting shortly after buying it and after reading about how many others died after just a couple years too. So I'm leaning towards NVIDIA this time and hoping to get something semi-decent for around $200 or less if possible. A little more is ok too I guess. It'll be used for some video editing, gaming, and just random work related stuff.

2. Any suggestions on possibly repairing the card and/or figuring out exactly what died on it? Any troubleshooting ideas involving the card itself would be greatly appreciated.

If I do end up needing to try to "reflow" it, would it be advisable to underclock it afterwards using MSI Afterburner to try to extend the life I get out of it or will that likely not matter?

Sorry for the long post and questions. I'm desperately trying to get a little more life out of my laptop so I have something decent to use until I can afford to purchase a new one or build a new pc. If anyone has any suggestions or info about possible replacements, anything on the 7970M I should take a closer look at or any suggestions to try to fix my current card I'm all ears.

 

You could reflow it with an oven, but that does have a significant chance of completely killing it making the system unusable. Put the card on a flat surface in an oven and heat it to around 225C, and hold that temp for 5 to 10 minutes. This is difficult to do because ovens do not have accurate temperature control. If you don't heat the card over 217C you don't reflow it. If you accidentally heat over around 240C then you flat out kill it. Even reaching proper temperature can still make the card worse, as we are hoping the heat pulls broken connections back together and solders them together, but it can instead drive connections further apart.

If the card has not been hot from gaming in over a month you will need to prebake it to remove moisture. Hold around 100C for at least 5 hours.

There are also many GPU upgrade options. You can put in any Nvidia 600 and 1000 series card that fits and it will be plug and play. 700, 800, and 900 series require bios mods to work correctly. Only AMD cards from Clevo will work, and nothing later than the 8970m will work.

Nvidia 700 and 800 series can only be made to work if you can get Prema to send you a bios specifically for those cards.

Your highest performing option is to get a low power 1070. Any 1000 series that fits will work correctly. Do not get a Clevo model 1000 series as it will not fit, and requires motherboard modification if you butcher the laptop to force it in.

The 900 series will have driver issues unless you flash Prema's v3 bios, which he does not have publically available. Without this bios you will need to run a driver older than the 361 series, and performance will be lower than expected.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll dig around on eBay and see if I can find something reasonably inexpensive. I'm looking forward to hopefully having my laptop working well again & not having to use the onboard card for gaming anymore.

If I do end up purchasing something like an nvidia 870M that require a bios mod is it still possible to get the bios mod from Prema? It looks like the files and download sections on his site are no longer there. The reseller I purchased my laptop from is a Prema partner as far as I know, but I'm not sure if they'd have the bios mod I need for an older laptop or if the Prema partners just do the mod on new laptops they're currently selling. I'll check with them, they've always been very helpful.

As for cooking my 7970M if I do that I'll use my heat gun and my IR thermometer to try to make sure I don't over-cook it. I haven't had it gaming in quite a long time but was able to get it to work for a few minutes a couple days ago in Linux. Ran glxgears a bit to see if it was truly working again and make sure the temps were good. Got the temp only up to around 60C though then stopped glxgears. A few mins later when the computer was idle and the temp was fairly low the computer locked up again and it wouldn't work anymore with the driver loaded for the 7970m. I guess that was the 5 mins I get for this month with it working

Looking around at cards that would work (with or without a bios mod) I'll likely have to go with one of the earlier series due to the prices. I did find an 870m, some 765s, a 660 and a couple others that were 200 or less used and allegedly working fine. If I find a used card in the 600, 700 or 800 series will it need to be a Clevo or will an MSI or Alienware/Dell one work? From what I've read it sounded like MSI (or obviously a Clevo one) would be my best bet for cards in those series, but I'm not too sure, just started looking and reading through old threads on that.

 

For 600 series you can get any card except ASUS. Clevo, MSI, and Dell/AW will all work. The Dell cards just tend to have less memory, which very rarely matters.

IR thermometers tend to be pretty inaccurate. Mine for example reads 20 to 25C too high when over 200C. It's better than nothing though. In general using a heat gun is more stressful than an oven because heating is less even and more rapid.


In general a 1060 is considered to be the best bang for buck upgrade. It will be around twice as fast as your 7970m.

Even for the cards that I say are plug and play, if it's not something that was sold with the system originally you will need to .inf mod the driver.

 

The 1060 would be a nice upgrade, unfortunately it's a ways out of my price range at the moment. More looking for the best bang for my buck at around the $200 area that hopefully will not be too big of a downgrade from what the 7970m was when it was working. Saw a few posts (one from just a couple months ago) where it was mentioned that 700 and 800 series won't work at all in a p170em That's too bad I found an 860M (clevo) and an 870M (MSI) for under 200.

Been looking at the 680M but even for a fairly old card like the 680M most of them on ebay seem to be in the 250-350 range. Haven't looked too much at sites like aliexpress / alibaba since I'm not sure if it's a good idea to buy a video card there or not.

Will keep looking around on ebay. Thanks again for the help! If anyone has any opinions on what the best I might be able to get (with or without new bios would be fine either way) spending $200 or less to get things working reasonably well again with a decent video card that wouldn't be too big of a downgrade from what the 7970m was, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

The next best bang for buck card will be the 970m. It's around $250 while being around 20% faster than the 7970m. For the card to work right though you will need to have a Premamod V3 bios.

Going for even older cards doesn't really save you much money.

 

Yeah I noticed that with laptop video cards. Older doesn't really make it much cheaper. I gotta get the desktop / server mindset out of my head when trying to find replacement parts it seems. This is the first laptop I've owned that wasn't just a cheap one that wasn't worth replacing parts in. So until recently I hadn't looked too much at video card replacements. Was a bit of a shock.

I'll check out the 970M and see what prices there are out there for it on ebay, and maybe the aliexpress/alibaba sites. Will also see if I'll be able to get the Premamod V3 bios before I purchase a 970m. Hopefully it's still something that I can get for the p170em Will be nice having my laptop back to being able to handle games better than with the onboard card.

 

hello . have you decided on the video card replacement ? i`m in the same situation with a 7970M , looking for a cheap replacement only to make my P170EM work , thanks

 

Yeah, I decided that I'm going to try to get a 970M if I can get the necessary bios to use it on my P170EM I haven't bought anything yet though since I haven't had any luck getting the bios. The reseller I bought my NP9170 through only has the bios for the current models they sell so nothing for the P170EM unfortunately.

I'm not sure what I'll go with if I'm stuck with the stock bios that's currently on there.