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M17x R4 560m to 1060


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Let me clarify more. Right now, I am on bios A14, and currently everything works with my 120hz display. Windows boots ( I have a UEFI installation) and everything works. If i were to turn the "Load Legacy Option Rom" to disabled, on the 120hz LCD in the bios boot settings, then the computer will give me 8 beeps when it reboots with the screen black. The only way to fix this is to go and plug in my original 60hz LCD (Which will give me image), and going to bios and enabling the option to "Enabled"

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4 minutes ago, ajdrenter said:

Fascinating. And your A14 is modded? What GPU do you have now? I wonder if your BIOS is allowing you to turn off the legacy rom without checking if the card has a GOP driver in the vBIOS.

Not sure what you mean by that last bit or how to fix it, but yes my A14 is modded and my graphics card is GTX 660M

 

Edit: Would this issue prevent me from installing a 10 series card?

Edited by Crustieraxe
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9 minutes ago, Crustieraxe said:

Not sure what you mean by that last bit or how to fix it, but yes my A14 is modded and my graphics card is GTX 660M

 

Edit: Would this issue prevent me from installing a 10 series card?

If anything, I believe that once you install your 1070 you will be able to disable the legacy rom setting with your 120hz display. So that is good news! GOP is a boottime video driver for UEFI exclusively. Some MXM cards have both a legacy video rom, some have both types, and some (I have read) only have a GOP driver. This isn't a Windows driver, it's on the card itself. I believe your 660m does not have GOP on board which is why you can't boot pure UEFI with the 120hz. I'm not sure why the screen affects it's mode of operation but I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. GOP support started being included on these cards sometime during the GTX 700 series.

 

EDIT: I myself have a GTX 765m in my R4 right now. I bought this card because I was pretty sure it would support every video boot mode out of the box, and it does. When I got my R4 it had a dead card, so my first card for this laptop was my old R3 card, a 560m. That card definitely does not have anything other than a legacy video rom.

 

I just figured it out, I think. When your 60hz LCD is plugged in, the intel graphics reenable automatically. That is why you are able to boot when you switch back to that 60hz. Because the 120hz display automatically disables the intel GPU, there is no legacy rom on the only available graphics adapter (nvidia) and you get the 8 beeps.

Edited by ajdrenter
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I think the screen output is being affected because the 120hz screen solely relies on the Nvidia GPU and the GOP driver when the load legacy rom is disabled. When the GOP driver isn't there, and the load legacy rom is disabled, it has nothing to fall back on since the IGPU setting is automatically turned off when the 120hz screen is detected . While the 60hz display has IGPU on all the time and doesn't rely on the GPU. On the 60hz screen I did have this option disabled and booted just fine. This is what i belive is somewhat happening

 

 

Edited by Crustieraxe
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If you need to use UEFI then you'll have to reinstall Windows and change your drive to suit a pure UEFI environment. When I read the requirements for installing the 1070 in the M18x it said that it had to be pure UEFI so I went ahead and did it. I found out later that it wasn't required. I can't confirm on the M17x though.

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5 minutes ago, MattyB said:

If you need to use UEFI then you'll have to reinstall Windows and change your drive to suit a pure UEFI environment. When I read the requirements for installing the 1070 in the M18x it said that it had to be pure UEFI so I went ahead and did it. I found out later that it wasn't required. I can't confirm on the M17x though.

I have windows UEFI installed and at one point I assume I did have pure UEFI environment when I had load legacy option ROM disabled and was on the 60hz display. But I had to enable it because of limitations with the 660M GPU and the installation of my 120hz panel. 

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So I was able to find the solution to this problem. I have ro flash an updated Vbios so the GOP driver can be installed. The vbios that i would have to flash is the Dell 660M version Vbios 80.07.39.00.0F. That they provided with later 660Ms. The only problem is that I can't find that Vbios version anywhere on google. And the links to download that vbios on the forum are broken. But nevertheless is it possible to fix it

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Have you tried TechPowerUp? They usually have a huge list of vBIOS'. You may have to change the search to include unverified vBIOS' as I think it defaults to search for verified ones, which limits the options. 

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7 minutes ago, MattyB said:

Have you tried TechPowerUp? They usually have a huge list of vBIOS'. You may have to change the search to include unverified vBIOS' as I think it defaults to search for verified ones, which limits the options. 

I did, but i found out while i was making a backup of my GPU vbios that i actually already have that bios installed that supposedly has the GOP driver. So I'm not sure why its not booting with Load legacy rom off. 

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So I actually ended up going to TechPowerUp again did some more digging, and found a new driver for my 660m that was newer than the one the one I currently had. (this is the one I flashed)  https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/144032/144032 I successfully flashed it, turned off legacy ROM option in bios, and the computer boots up flawlessly on the 120hz screen! 

 

Edit: if anyone else stumbles onto this post, and has the same problem as me and doesn't know how to flash a vbios, watch this video

 

 

I can confirm it this vbios and this method works!

Edited by Crustieraxe
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello Guys, I am back again with another question. I have decided what 1070 to buy, But I don't know if it will work since i have not seen anyone talk about this specific model of the 1070.

 

Aetina M3N1070-NN Embedded MXM GPU Module

 

Are all of the 1070 MXMs compatible with the M17x R4?

 

This is the only website I could find talking about this 1070 

 

https://www.review-displays.co.uk/products/embedded-solutions/embedded-computing/embedded-peripheral-modules/gpu-products/m3n1070-nn

 

s-l500.jpg

Edited by Crustieraxe
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I'm not sure about that one. It looks to be a standard MXM 3.0b card so in theory it should work. My guess is that the vBIOS will be wrong but it should be easy enough to flash another one. Wouldn't want to say for sure though. The 1070 is usually on a black PCB.

I'd suggest to check with the guys on NotebookReview who may have more experience with this card. 

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Luckily I haven't had to do many vBIOS flashes in my lifetime but this means that I have very little experience. A bad or incorrect flash can brick your card so I'd hate to give you the wrong information. There aren't a lot of active Alienware guys on here anymore so your best bet would be NotebookReview. 

I would say that a Dell vBIOS would be a good one but you will have to work out if it's a g-sync or non g-sync card as you'll need to make sure you don't flash the wrong vBIOS. I believe the 1BA1 card is non g-sync. If you install the card in your machine you can check your hardware ID in Device Manager before installing a driver and it should tell you which one your have. GPU-Z should also tell you.

 

EDIT: When I got my 1070 for my M18x I had all kinds of issues until I realised that someone had flashed a g-sync vBIOS on my non g-sync card. Luckily a Dell non g-sync vBIOS solved the problem for me. 

Edited by MattyB
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So, what i understand is that if my card has a G-Sync vBIOS on a card that isn't supposed to have a G-Sync vBIOS  then I would have to flash this vBIOS ( This is the one you most likely might of flashed it with) 

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/209886/209886

 

(Oddly enough, it says UEFI is not supported?)

 

If the card is a legitimately G-Sync card, then I'm guessing i can't do anything there, but return it.

 

Edit: As a side note, I also found no mentions G-Sync anywhere in the manual or the product specifications below

 

 Support DirectX® 12, OpenGL® 4.5 ,OpenCL® 1.2, Vulkan, HDMI 2.0b, NVIDIA Optimus™, NVIDIA BatteryBoost™ , NVIDIA Ansel, NVIDIA GPU Boost™ 3.0, Direct Compute and VR Ready

 

So if it does have another v-BIOS that is not a G-Sync one, my assumption would be that I wouldn't have to flash a Dell vBIOS

 

Edited by Crustieraxe
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I'm not exactly sure how it works but I read once that you can brick the card if flashing a g-sync vBIOS on a non g-sync and vice versa. Someone managed to do it to my card though and I managed to flash it back to how it should have been. 

I'm not 100% sure but I believe the UEFI it refers to on that page is a vBIOS UEFI. There is a UEFI checkbox on the GPU-Z main screen and I believe mine is unchecked even though I'm running my M18x on UEFI. I'll have to take another look tonight.

 

I don't know a whole lot about it though, sorry. 

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Alright, So In the manual, it says "This card is based on the standard mobile PCI-express module version 3.1 specification, delivering the latest and leading edge GPU benefits for your embedded system" meaning that it is not a 3.0b card? Or is that something totally someting different and I'm mixing 2 different things together that don't need to be mixed at all. Sorry for my noobness in this area.

 

And i found out that this card is non G-sync  varient due to the the device ID 1BA1 so i don't think I will need to install a dell v-BIOS

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It may still need a Dell 1BA1 vBIOS. It depends if its current vBIOS is compatible with a Dell machine.

 

From a quick search, I found the following statement. It's from 2012.

 

"Ok so MXM 3.1 has been released as of last night, so now that its a published standard we can post about it.


MXM 3.1 adds the following things:

- Support for PCI Express 3.0
- Extra Debugging (Mostly to support 3.0)

Here's also what we know, that mostly this is a validation standard change, there are a few NEW pins used on the connector (They were previously "Reserved") so there is not a physical connector change. 3.0 Cards WILL work in 3.1 slots, and 3.1 Cards WILL work in 3.0 slots. The only change is that if its a 3.1 card it won't work at PCI Express 3.0 speeds (Only 2.0 or 1.0)"

Edited by MattyB
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