P77xZM Prema BIOS help!

My laptop is a custom built Clevo P770ZM model with an Nvidia GTX 980M gfx card. A couple of years after it was purchased something went wrong and it wouldn't start up. We assumed the motherboard died but we're now pretty certain that the issue was down to the gfx card dying as 2 years the later (last month) the same thing happened and out of curiosity we pulled out the gfx card and the laptop was able to boot. Since the laptop is no longer under warranty my husband tried to get hold of a new gfx card, there's nowhere in this country or anywhere in the EU that sells them so he had to import from China. Last week the card arrived but to our dismay there was problems with that one. As soon as he started up the Nvidia drivers there was a mass of broken lines across the screen.

He's come up with the idea that the new motherboard (which was also from China) is probably incompatible with the card at full power or something like that, and he believes if we can slow the card down it might work. We heard about the Prema VBIOS for the 980M and had trouble finding one, took a lot of digging around to find one from some dodgy Chinese site although we're not sure what or if anything's been done to it. On enabling the Nvidia driver we were met with a green screen that locked the laptop so we had to disable it again. We couldn't find anything in the stock BIOS to allow us to change the settings for the Prema VBIOS and pressing/holding F2 only brought us to the stock BIOS, so we're thinking maybe what we need also is Prema's modded P77xZM BIOS.

Considering the cost and time it took for this card to arrive my husband said that he cannot afford to purchase a new one and risk that one also being faulty and there is no way we can return this back to China as the export costs would be far too much to be worthwhile, so we're stuck in trying to find a way to get it to work even if it's not going to be working at its best. The only thing is everywhere we've looked to find a copy of Prema's P77xZM BIOS or a legitimate copy of Prema's GTX 980M VBIOS is a dead end, even his sites either don't work or don't have anything on them. It's like he's literally dropped off the web and taken everything with him. If anyone is able to provide us with at least the P77xZM BIOS we would be extremely grateful as my laptop is crippled without a gfx driver.

 

Sorry to tell you but that sounds like you received an already damaged GPU and flashing a power unlocked vBIOS pushed it over the edge. Can you please post a GPU-Z screenshot of the GPU?!

 

All motherboards in this series will cope with any card sold with the unit, there were no value boards on supporting a certain TDP.

 

That's just it, we can't without the driver, and we can't start the driver without it crashing. It was also doing this the day we got it, that's why he started flashing it to try and get it working and the results are exactly the same.

 

It wasn't sold with this unit, it's a new card because the one that came with it fried.

We also had the same issue over 4 years ago with an MSI and no card worked with it except for a specific brand, and when we did get one it wouldn't even boot without the original card that it came with.

 

When I say sold with the unit I mean the series of cards sold with it.

So my np9877 motherboard for instance could be sold with a 1060 or a 1080 and motherboard wise there was no difference.

 

My apologies. It's the same model card that we purchased as the one that came with the laptop, a GTX 980M. This is why we're so confused to why it just doesn't work as it should. We've never had this kind of problem with a PC desktop but this seems to be common with laptops since this is the 3rd time we've come across this, they only seem to last a year or 2 before the gpu dies and replacement cards are both hard to find and often don't work. Either that or we've had the worst run of luck where 2 laptops have suffered from the same issue and inexplicably refuse to work with replacement parts of the same brand and model version.

 

Sadly tech-stuff sold online from that region has a higher tendency to be semi-functional.
It's a shot in the dark, but we can try a low power mod to see if it's usable at all...
For that we need to know the exact model.
What vBIOS version is printed on the GPU sticker?
Also please PM me the version you flashed and which ended the card.

 

There is no sticker. The BIOS that we had was the standard Clevo BIOS, 84.04.2F.00.79. The card was already dead out of the box, flashing it didn't cause it to die.

 

Still trying to find out what version you already flashed on the card for testing.

 

ok, well we tried a GTX980M 8GB MXM OC PM v2 BIOS I managed to find off some dodgy Chinese site, no idea if it had been modified though. Then we tried one from Tech Inferno after I finally got permission to download it, Nvidia GTX 980m VBIOS "OC edition" - rev0.

 

OK, that means that you have already tried an undervoltet version.

There isn't anything left to do then on firmware level.

@Khenglish

 

It sounds like the core needs to be resoldered. There's no bios or driver that can get around that. The one time it displayed a garbled image is highly supportive of a hardware issue. Crashing on driver load is also a sign of a hardware issue.

 

We are starting to think that ourselves. My husband will try and pull a few tricks this weekend to see if he can get it going, one last effort before resigning to this being a lost cause.

 

What part of the world are you from?

 

UK

 

There is a local seller on Ebay offering a 970m at the moment. No idea on their credibility but local is easier to deal with.

 

Hello guys. I’m new here. I looking for Prema custom bios for my p750zm. I don’t know how to contact him directly. If anyone can help me I’ll appreciate it.

 

You've done the best you can, he is around less these days.

 

hey can you share the bios with me i am really looking every where and i can't seem to find