P170HM & 780m / 8970m

Dear all.

I am currently a proud owner of a P170HM with a 6970m radeon card.
I am considering to update my graphic card (the bottleneck).

So far, carefully reading this forum, I came to the following conclusions:

a) I could upgrade to a 680m GTX (changing the *.inf, minor difficulty)
b) I could upgrade to a 7970m (blind flashing the vBios, losing the HDMI output, medium difficulty)

Now, I would like to brainstorm with you on some proper considerations:

c) upgrading to a 780m / 8970m

As far as I understood the MxM 3.0b format would be the same, power considerations similar, PCIe 3.0 retro compatible with PCIe 2.0....
Heatsinks should be compatible (someone to confirm this ?)
The problem would be on the vBios / BIOS side.

I am sure we have on this forum people able to tackle this issue (e.g. modded bios) or pressuring Clevo is the only way to go ?

I would have a conference call with some Clevo corporates (work related), I would be keen to understand this better, who knows I might get an insider to pass me over to its R&D department to help out on this ?

 

Considering the time it has been it may be up to asking clevo/sager at this point.

 

Is Prema still working on their mod(s)?

 

Flingin over in alienware tried a 780m to work with the r2 m17x.
No luck with standard screen but he did have luck with hdmi out from memory.

I thought it could be the screen (r2 run @ 1900x1200) but the clevo P170HM are at 1900x1080 so OP if you have $$ to burn do try it and let us know how it goes.
If $$ is tight then go with the 680m plugnplay with clevo vbios make sure it is flashed with it or the 7970m which will need blind flash as jaybee has posted in his very informative thread. Make sure you buy clevo cards and not dell as the EC controller of HM is incompatible with the dell gpu card series.

Good luck.

 

I would give it a shot, I have a conference call with the Clevo IR next week, I need to then ask for some contact at the R&D dept

Well I won't have the luxury (time more than $) to try out several solution.
Has anyone tried this board already: [GUIDE] NVIDIA VBIOS flashing - Page 2

If it is a white / black listing issue it should be doable to mod a bios ?

 

I think people would have found a simple whitelisting/blacklisting issue, it has been looked at.

 

Actually this guy got a 780m working with a p170em, I guess the p170hm should not be that far out of reach ?

GTX780M in HM & EM models...

 

Didn't Prema have success in getting it to work with the EM series? It looks like he is still working on the HM series (take a look at his response to trvelbug).

 

Oh wow, I totally missed that, cool. Props to prema for that.

 

tron2^ are you totally sure about this:

"Make sure you buy clevo cards and not dell as the EC controller of HM is incompatible with the dell gpu card series."

I have a p170HM and I was a clic away from buying a used 680M graphics card, and just read what you said. Now I'm note sure.

Would you enlighten me about this? haha

 

No source atm but it has been said several times around here that the EC controller in HM (all Clevos?) is incompatible with Dell/Alienware gpus. It will report it as overheating and shut down, you wont even boot into windows. Im sure someone else can give a more technical answer if you wish.

Iirc the 2 GB 680m is Dell, the 4 GB is Clevo. Anyone?

 

Hmm.. I should look for the 4GB one then. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 4

 

Yes only dell made a 2gb card.