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[HARDWARE MOD] P150EM dGPU direct output WIP


Khenglish

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dGPU-3dm01.png

 

With lots of motherboard mods & Prema BIOS mods, The P150EM's single partially implemented eDP port is ALIVE. The 980 is now free of the shackles of Optimus!

 

But not without problems... no image on boot, 980 cannot run faster than pstate 5, no backlight control (always on 100%).

 

With the P5 limitation the best I can clock the GPU is around 825/5010. Basically only really old stuff can see a benefit from direct output that outweighs the 40% frequency drop, so here's 3dm01!

 

A big thanks to Prema for getting me this far.

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I now have backlight on/off control. Not sure how to approach the brightness selection issue. dGPU always says it wants full brightness & iGPU brightness selection just floats.

 

Mods done:

 

No P150EM eDP cable exists. Built one from 2 other cables.

Moved 10 small caps routing the iGPU to eDP to the empty dGPU circuit.

Added jumper to enable dGPU DP detection (I would have had this mod working over a year ago if I noticed this jumper missing sooner).

Shorted brightness control to 3.3V.

Removed iGPU backlight toggle & replaced with 3.3V short (dGPU backlight toggle not routed off of MXM slot & thus inaccessible).

eDP logic voltage changed from 5V to 3.3V. I did send 5V to the display and it survived.

 

Prema enabled the dGPU's DP port D in the MXM module in the BIOS, along with a lot of other things I don't know about.

Edited by Khenglish
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

BIOS image, and P-states faster than P5 are now working!

 

A vBIOS Prema made for my 980(m?) a while back that we thought was a failure actually fixes most problems for some reason. The eDP even works in Windows with an unmodified system BIOS, despite all MXM outputs flagged as disabled in BIOS and the iGPU set as the primary GPU.

 

Unfortunately this vBIOS clocks memory very poorly, with 6.6ghz set as default, which isn't even quite stable. Setting the card down to P1 and overclocking P1 works fine though, much better than overclocking P5.

 

But hey I now see on boot!

 

edp boot.jpg

 

Now since dGPU is the boss, I see Prema's vBIOS mod text.

 

edp boot 2.jpg

Edited by Khenglish
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So I figured out how to mod memory clocks (checksum location is different from standard 980m vBIOS). This let me drop P0 mem clocks to 6.2ghz, and from there I can overclock to whatever it can handle. 6350 appears to be fully stable max mem clock. So now I can use P0 for regular use, just with poor memory clocks.

 

The default voltage is 1.168V with this odd vBIOS. Since this is a 1.3V max voltage vBIOS & 980m load line regulation is all wrong, 1.168V drops to 1.13V under load at the voltage regulation, with at core voltage some unknown amount slightly lower. When topping out clocks for the voltage (~1320MHz) I've had the card hit 220W under full load... and my cooling capacity tops out at around 200W. This is a bigger problem than the memory clocks. Hopefully @Prema can save me.

 

I noticed on the 980m that over 2/3 of the voltage feedback reading circuit is missing, and this may be why the 980m voltage regulation is so terrible (At the VRM the 1.3V vBIOS is about 40mV too low, while 1.2V vBIOS is around 40mV too high). I have a dead 980m with still functional core voltage that I will test my ideas on (not gonna risk sending 3.3V to my working 980...). Unfortunately I do not have the 980m PCB schematic, but I do have the VRM schematic, so I have to guess a little at what's wrong.

Edited by Khenglish
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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, p150em_user said:

Hi, I have a p150em and want to drive a 4k monitor at 60Hz by connecting it directly to dGPU (7970m) via the eDP connector (only DP pins needed). Is this possible without any hardmare mods?

 

No, the 2nd post details the required hardware modifications.

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Can you please provide more details on the necessary hardware modifications? Looking at your post and the service manual it is still not clear to me what exactly needs to be done, from what I can tell I need to connect DP wires to lines which exist but are not connected to anything.

 

Edit: there is also a confusing "dGPU DISPLAY PORT" page in the service manual, which seems not be be connected to the dGPU at all

Edited by p150em_user
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1 hour ago, p150em_user said:

Can you please provide more details on the necessary hardware modifications? Looking at your post and the service manual it is still not clear to me what exactly needs to be done, from what I can tell I need to connect DP wires to lines which exist but are not connected to anything.

 

Edit: there is also a confusing "dGPU DISPLAY PORT" page in the service manual, which seems not be be connected to the dGPU at all

 

I can provide more details, but it will take a while to create something someone can follow.

 

A lot of the service manual is copy/paste from the previous highly similar P150HM, which was dGPU output only but otherwise extremely similar to the P150EM. Because of this some schematics are mislabeled.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/22/2016 at 7:21 PM, p150em_user said:

I'd just like clarifications on 2 things:

1. can I solder wires from a DP cable directly to the dGPU eDP lines?

2. why did you need to add a jumper? it seems the dGPU HPD is already connected to the same place as the iGPU HPD

 

1. You can, but that doesn't really help you and you may as well use the socket.

2. The jumper is present on the motherboard schematic, but pulled for actual production. In the motherboard schematic anything listed with a * means it was in design, but pulled for production.

 

Also I found on NBR where Darcoder modded a P375SM for 40 pin eDP for 4K displays that you can break up the glue on the eDP cable at the motherboard connector, and pull out and replace the wires as needed. He cut the glue with a razor then pushed the pins out with a needle. This seems to be much better than my cut and resolder method.

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  • 1 month later...

@Prema modified me another vBIOS for the 980 and now P0 and display on boot work with the 980 core switched over to an MSI 980m board (I damaged the clevo 980m board when switching memory chips). There seems to be something wrong with the P150EM system BIOS that is compensated for by a modified vBIOS. An added bonus is the memory now clocks higher than ever with 7.8 GHz usable in benchmarks. I got a 3K display, but am having problems getting a 40-pin eDP cable that's close enough to modify.

 

Here's an interesting picture from September where I was running both LVDS and eDP at the same time. Unfortunately the picture quality was poor.

 

20160924_131112.jpg

Edited by Khenglish
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