Per Astra Ad Deum

Alright, so here's what I did: 1. I've installed Windows 10 on a spare SSD. 2. I've ran omgflash. It did work! All I had to do was acknowledge the risks of overriding the various protective measures by typing a variation of "yes". so far, so good. Here are my findings: The ROM you've provided has indeed a power limit far lower than that of my MSI/Dell branded card. While performing quite a bit worse than the original (4100 vs 4800 points on Unigine Superposition Benchmark), it draws significantly less power and temps are reduced by a whooping 10-15°C! However, there's the catch. Or more of deal breaker really. None of the outputs are functioning with the new vBIOS. No external monitor at all with this firmware 😞 So I had to revert the changes sadly. Nevertheless, thank you for your effort in finding that vBIOS and pointing me towards the flashing tool! If you ever run across another vBIOS or any means by which I could tweak mine, please reach out.

Well I tried overriding the PCI Subsystem ID with the "-6" flag. And it seemed to work. However, the Board ID seems to be a deal breaker 😞

Thank you. I've looked into these but it seems they are for windows only. Should I just try to override the error in nvflash? From what I gathered online it should be safe ...

Thank you very much! I gave it a try immediately, sadly it didn't work: I guess the ThinkPad X1 Extreme one is soldered, and thus considered a different card?

I've been spending some time now with the 1050 Ti Mobile and found it running pretty hot in the M4800. Sadly I can't control neither voltage nor power limit with the current vBIOS. So I thought about flashing another onto my card. Backing up my vBIOS worked with NVFLASH under Linux. However, I can't fine a suitable vBIOS! Neither for the preferred 1050 Ti Mobile Max-Q, nor for the regular 1050 Ti Mobile. The only one I was able to find was an unverified Dell 1050 Ti Mobile. This one was fitted with just two GB of RAM though. Mine has four 😞 If anyone knows where to to find a suitable vBIOS, please let me know!

Backing up my vBIOS worked with NVFLASH under Linux. However, I can't fine a suitable vBIOS! Neither for the preferred 1050 Ti Mobile Max-Q, nor for the regular 1050 Ti Mobile. The only one I was able to find was an unverified Dell 1050 Ti Mobile. This one was fitted with just two GB of RAM though. Mine has four 😞 If anyone knows where to to find a suitable vBIOS, please let me know!

I feel like I should further elaborate on this. The docking station will work just fine. You'll have a video signal on all outputs. There's just a more niche use case where you tick an option in the vendor BIOS (next to switchable graphics) that allows the iGPUs signal to be routed to the docking stations DVI/DP output. This way you can use an external monitor with the docking station without making use of the dGPU. This option however is not yet implemented in the coreboot port. There's an ongoing research to make this possible with coreboot, albeit without an ETA. EDIT: Have a look at this schematic. It shows how the video signals are routed:

Sounds reasonable. Can you provide a link to such a vBIOS? And could you elaborate on the Optimus part? I'm running coreboot and Arch Linux, so I guess there's no real option for that.

Hey guys. I've recently installed an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti on my M4800. Works flawlessly, albeit flashing coreboot was necessary (boot process hangs with vendor firmware). So far I'm very happy with the card, safe for two issues: 1. I can neither read nor control voltage or power target 2. After 5-10 minutes of Gaming the card starts hitting 90°C and reacts by throttling. Any ideas on how to address these issues? I'd be happy for any advice.

That isn't possible, I'm sorry! The coreboot image is build with a MRC.bin (closed-source binary for RAM initialization) that isn't legally redistributable. 😐 You can, however, build coreboot yourself. And you should do so, for various other reasons: For example, I've build coreboot with EDKII as a payload (open-source UEFI implementation). I don't know if your installation (Linux? Windows?) would boot with that (depending on whether you use legacy BIOS or UEFI). Also, in case you're running Windows, I don't know if it will boot without TPM support properly implemented. Also also, please be aware that you lose certain BIOS settings you've set in the vendor firmware. Thinks like display signal routing via the laptops MUX chip (and the docking stations MUX chip) won't work, so, depending on your use case, that might be an issue. As I've offered before, I can write a comprehensive How-To. But it will be focused on Arch Linux (I have never build coreboot on Windows, so I have absolutely no experience in this regard)

Ahh I see. No offense taken then! The port is fairly new (half a year old) and not yet merged. As you've pointed out, there are certain things missing. S3 is one of them, however another coreboot dev managed to get it working. I'm using his patches and suspend works flawlessly on my M4800. Here's his patch. Regarding screen brightness: that one works as well, although not with the keyboard shortcuts but from OS controls. Addendum: It is possible to flash coreboot without the need of external tools or even disassembling the device on the M4800. However I strongly recommend to at least have these tools (flash programmer, clip and wires) at hand in case something goes wrong (which usually means a brick). If you fuck up, you'll need to re-flash externally in order to repair the damage done by a faulty flashing. Here's the link to the tool.

Oh, come on! Why would I lie? To impress like five guys on an obscure notebook forum? 🙄 It isn't rocket science. Here's the M4800 port on coreboot. As you can read in the description, coreboot does support any GPU that is physically compatible with this laptop. The developer working on that port even states that he was able to boot with an 1050 (non-Ti apparently though) further down the description. I'm sure it'd work with an 1650, too. I'm not sure. I have an eDP board though. Addendum: If interested I can provide a rudimentary guide for flashing coreboot. But please be aware that flashing coreboot requires some tools, can put your hardware at risk, and does have some drawbacks.

Alright guys, here's the update. First things first: it did work. Currently running a NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti Mobile in my M4800. However I did have to flash coreboot for it to work. Wouldn't boot with the original vendor firmware. The MXM-A-GPU makes use of the same hole spacing as the AMD cards, so no new heat pipe is required for the switch. Performance is as expected. It blows the WX 4150 easily out of the water. Performance is nearly doubled according to Unigine Superposition Benchmark, while I even see FPS triple in some games. There are some issues though. Power management is not available for this card. Power limit is reported as 5000 Watts! (yeah...) Say, @MELOCODI, did you ever find a modified vROM for a 1050 Ti? 😄

I'm using Linux, but the 1050 Ti is actually meant to be passed-through to a VM. Will see how that goes. I'll report. Do you have any insights in performance? Before I was wondering whether the difference would be that big given the fact that the 1050 Ti would likely be locked down to 35-50 Watts TDP in the M4800. Edit: I've just ordered the 1050 Ti. Do I need a different heatsink? Does anyone know?

Hi @KMikhail, the 1050 Ti will work in the M4800, but it might be necessary to flash coreboot first. I'd prefer to have it run with vendor bios though, since I can't control the MUX's with coreboot (yet). About the thermal pads: see my posting in this thread on that topic, I think I used Gelid 1mm for both GPU and CPU (VRMs). The best fan is apparently the cone-shaped Delta-Fan.

Hi there, time for an update: I got the WX 4150 unlocked with the BIOS @MELOCODI provided. спаси́бо to you for that! However, the results were pretty disappointing. Got another 5% out of the card before it started to show heavy glitches in the Unigine benchmark. I guess I'll go for the 1050 Ti then. There's just one thing that bothers me about that. The 1050 Ti is rated at 75 Watts TDP according to the GPU database at techpowerup. If assume it's pretty restrained in a M4800, meaning the vBIOS has the card probably locked at somewhere between 35 and 50 watts TDP. If I look at benchmarks comparing these two GPUs, I can see that the 1050 Ti is faster by a significant margin. There are no indications on whether these GPUs ran at the same TDP limit though. Long story short: will a 1050 Ti still be significantly faster if being run at the same TDP than my WX 4150?

Thank you for providing these ROMs! I have absolutely no clue about ATIFlash though. The last card I've flashed with it was a R9 Fury, back in my days of desktop PCs and using Windows. I'll see if I can get it to work in a Windows VM!

I'd really appreciate that! From what I can tell there's definitively room for overclocking/tweaking the card. Barely hitting 60°C under load, and only drawing about 20 Watts. Though it's always at maximum clock (~1050Mhz), which is why I believe another vBIOS would be the most feasible way of maximizing performance.

Thank you for the suggestion. I've looked up that site and it seems like it's in Russian only?

Chiming in on the discussion on GPUs with a question on the WX 4150. I got one of those and to be honest, its performance is pretty lackluster. Are there any ways of boosting its performance? Like flashing the vBIOS of the RX 560 for example? Anyone got experience with that?

I can report full success. With the new paste (Honeywell PTM7950) and new thermal pads (Gelid Solutions GP-Ultimate) I can run the i7-4940MX at full speed without throttling safely at around 87-92°C. This is without the Delta fan (already on it's way) and without undervolting (don't be fooled by the window title in the screenshot, `sudo intel-undervolt measure` is only being used to depict power draw, core temp and clock speed) Needless to say, I'm very happy with this!

Yeah I've looked into the various off-brand and DIY solutions and none was to my liking. So I guess I'll just wait until one of those genuine caddies pops up somewhere on ebay. 😀 Another issue: I'd like to replace those thermal pads, does anybody know the precise thickness of these? UPDATE: The correct thickness is 1.5mm. It's the same for the GPU as well.

Thank you for your insights. I've settled now for a 240 watts charger for the docking station at my desk and a 130 watts charger for traveling! Next question: does anyone know the FRU (or how's it called with Dell) for the HDD caddy in the CD-Drive bay? Thank you!

Thanks for your replies! From what I've gathered, the 120 hz panel that keeps being mentioned here is the Innolux N156HHE-GA1, that features eDP 1.3. Since that one is confirmed to be working, I'll assume that anything up to eDP 1.3 will work on my M4800. Another quick question: if fitted with a i7-4940MX (57 Watts TDP), will the M4800 even start with a 90w charger? Thank you.

It's simply beautiful. I personally think that the M4800/M6800 are among the most meticulously crafted notebooks out there. Very well designed! Gonna upgrade the panel as well. I was smart enough to look out for eDP mainboard. I'd love to install one of these panels here: 1. BOE NE156FHM-N53 (10-bit-color-range, eDP1.4b) 2. Sharp LQ156M17W02 (8-bit-color-range, high brigthness, high contrast, eDP1.2) 3. Panda LM156LF1F02 (8-bit-color-range, 144hz, eDP1.4) Do you know if any of these will fit? Thanks again!