Why some Clevos don't support past GTX 680M

So I was wondering, what is the reason behind some Clevos not supporting beyond the kepler 6xx series?

I've seen old Alienware notebooks with 1st gen CPUs supporting maxwell but apparently sandy bridge P150hm notebooks don't support kepler 7xx series?

Is it because of Clevo trash BIOS or EC Support?

 

dont quote me on this, but i think i remember @Prema talking about some pins in the MXM slot. Most of them are standardized in usage, but some are left free and are thus "OEM specific". Thus, an OEM / ODM can use those extra pins for their own stuff. Apparently, machines such as the infamous Alienware m15x dont use those extra pins whatsoever, thus theyre "blind" to whatever gpu is put into them and just run them!

a second thing is the implemented EC, which sometimes is not compatible with the thermal sensor on a GPU board. this inability to read out the GPU temp then causes a panic shutdown of the system,

as i said, this is kind of a "half-knowledge" on my side, but its what ive picked up over the past several years

 

I'm aware of the EC thing and the temps sensors, thats why the RX 580 cards don't run in clevo systems
But the P150HM for isntance just has a black screen when you put a 770M into it for instance. Can you explain why those pins would make a difference in terms of being detected or not? So far it doesn't sound logical to me why those free pins would cause the notebook to not detect the card.

 

Like all ODMs, Clevo needs to validate every GPU that they offer in every chassis. Thus it's not just a case of making the GPU and MB like each other on a firmware level, there's a whole process to go through with Nvidia or AMD for every chassis and every GPU - of course this costs time and money. Appreciate this isn't directly related to the questions, but I'm explaining from a practical point of view why it's more complicated for an ODM than it may sound.

 

as far as i remember, it had something to do with the specific functions those "free pins" were assigned to via the firmware. since different mxm gpu manufacturers like dell, msi, clevo, asus would assign different functions to those free pins, incompatibility could occur when trying to cross-install gpus from one vendor into a machine from another. same goes for newer gpus on older machines of one and the same vendor.

beware that this is a noob talking concerning this field, im definitely no bios/vbios wiz like @Prema

 

So what you're saying is that after the P150hm clevo basicially scrapped those free pins?

 

not necessarily. could be that they adopted a new system and stuck to it ever since. all speculation on my side, of course. for more details, we should probably ask @Prema , he would know the differences in detail. and i doubt we would even be able to understand those properly

 

Well, regarding of the pins or not.... its basically a marketing strategy so that you feel the need to buy a new product for the new graphic card...

therefor, marketing

Basically everything in the hardware world and so on, is marketing!

The main idea is:" Make the customer feel the need to purchase a new laptop for that so much wanted GPU/CPU power! "

Just look at intel 7 cpu's series and 8 series?

With a BIOS update you could have 8 series working on previous generations... Why won't they release the said modified BIOS? Marketing! lol

 

i agree in part on this... but theres always a bit more to the truth ^^ for instance, power delivery systems for the 6 core CFL cpus would not be sufficient on the 100 and 200 series motherboards. plus, the socket pins are different in their layout, with CFL using more reserved pins that have previously been dormant with SKL and KBL CPUs on socket 1151.

 

Of course there is always some differences but what i meant was the basic stuff, manufacturers forcing customers to buy new products in order to get profit, but yeah there are always differences

Oh by the way and this is kinda off topic:

[GUIDE] Coffee Lake CPUs on Skylake and Kaby Lake motherboards

 

Meanwhile AMD supporting same socket until 2020....

 

yep, that part is definitely true!

and yes, ive seen that guide before, it also states that it only works up to quadcore CFL (since theyre basically rebranded KBL cpus) and only on ASRock motherboards

 

Yep i know! But.. its progress

 

What do the pins do?

If its only pin state, or some i2c eeprom, it might not be too hard to use a small micro to fool the EC on what those pins expect to see?

 

They are used to read back values from the GPU, you might be able to trick it with a micro but it's going to be a clunky solution.

 

whoa! what just happened here?!?!?!



Ok, so ive been a member here on NBR for more than 9 years and in all that time not one single post has been deleted.

I would like to know exactly what went wrong here and I will not accept such a general, non-specific explanation. Preferably out in the open, so that everyone can learn from this.

Responsible Moderator, please contact me for clarification!

 

Insane @jaybee83

Ti Kanis phile ?

 

@jaybee83 You probably replied to a spammer by quoting him, who then got that warning.

The system will just show that deletion reason to you, but it won't affect your own account.

 

weird....thx for the clarification, i got worried there for a moment

ola kala re megale!

good to see you still around buddy

edit: alright, issue concerning my deleted post got resolved. looks like @Prema had a good intuition on this