P3200 Compatibility with M6800?

[triggy]

Hello everyone,

I recently purchased an M6800 for $140 (plus an extra $20 for shipping). Its supposed to come with a i7-4810 and a brand new EDP display and new SSD. (Side note: did I get a good deal or did I get ripped off? 😅)

Now, onto the main topic. while I wait for it to arrive, I’ve been doing some research on the compatibility of the P3200 with the M6800. I’ve come across some posts showing Pascal cards have trouble running on Windows but work fine on linux. Now I mainly use linux, but this is a tad bit concerning as I do want the card to work on Windows for a handful of games (a whole 2 games to be exact).

I saw that the P5000 and those cards do work fine with the engineering sample vbios but IDK if that would work with the p3200. 

Additionally, I’m wondering if the card or heatsink would require any modification for the heatsink to work with the P3200, cuz i know for some cards you have to dremel a part out on the heatsink which i wouldnt be opposed to doing. Any insights or experiences you could share would be greatly appreciated! 

Thanks in advance for your help!

(also sorry if anything i say is wrong or im breaking any forum rules ((I couldnt find them 😞 )) im also a novice when it comes to working on laptops so bear with me.)

[Aaron44126]

AFAIK, there is no way to get P3200 working with Windows without resorting to pretty ridiculous BIOS shenanigans (you'd have to inject something early in the boot process to change the ACPI tables or some such; @jeamn did this at one point to get a GeForce 1070 booting).  You should however be able to use it with Linux with no issue.  And these days, running most Windows games on Linux is pretty straight-forward with either Steam+Proton, Lutris, or plain old Wine.  You might not need a Windows install at all if that is your only use case.

 

Yes, any NVIDIA GPU that is Maxwell or Pascal will likely need a minor heatsink mod to have it fit.  You'll need a dremel or similar tool to cut a little piece off of the GPU-card-side of the heatsink.  It hits the VRMs at the "top", which are in a slightly different position than they were for Kepler cards, and will be pretty obvious when you try to put the heatsink on.

 

This is assuming that your M6800 came with an NVIDIA GPU.  If it came with an AMD GPU, you'll want to source the NVIDIA version of the heatsink as well.

[triggy]

18 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

And these days, running most Windows games on Linux is pretty straight-forward with either Steam+Proton, Lutris, or plain old Wine.  You might not need a Windows install at all if that is your only use case.

 I use my current laptop's 2tb ssd on linux for all my games and have a separate windows partition with like 300gb just for like 2 games and anything else that is a real struggle to get working. I just really really don't want to have to seperate those games onto another system just to be able to play them.

[triggy]

18 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

AFAIK, there is no way to get P3200 working with Windows without resorting to pretty ridiculous BIOS shenanigans (you'd have to inject something early in the boot process to change the ACPI tables or some such; @jeamn did this at one point to get a GeForce 1070 booting).  You should however be able to use it with Linux with no issue.  

Hey i've been diving into the depths of the internet and found that i would likely need to solder on EEPROM to get it to work in windows using the engineering sample vbios.

 

Also, why is it that only windows has problems with these cards and linux doesn't? I Couldn't find a definite answer. But if it works perfectly on linux, I think it would be easier to just run a windows VM and give it direct access to the hardware, as the CPU and mobo supports VT-d and vpro from what i've researched. Idk how vbios and all that works through virtualization, but im hoping it would be easier to fix or get working (apparently i can have qemu load a custom vbios on the VM's boot).

[Aaron44126]

The problem is that there is no known "engineering sample" vBIOS that works with the P3200.  We only have such vBIOS images for P3000, P4000, and P5000.  (If there was, you could flash it under Linux using nvflash.  No need for extra hardware.)

 

The issue with Windows is it hits some bug with the BIOS ACPI tables that is triggered when you install one of these Pascal GPUs.  Windows is unable to get around it and crashes with a BSOD.  Linux doesn't care.  (There is a great thread by @jeamn on this issue but it was done at NotebookReview.  I'll see if I can dig it up later.)

 

You can indeed run Windows in a VM under Linux with direct hardware access to the GPU, @jeamn also did that successfully with a GeForce 1070.  I think then you need to have Optimus enabled and an external display though because you won't be able to "see" the GPU's output on the internal display.

 

[Edit]

Here it is -- https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/trials-and-tribulations-installing-a-1070-in-a-m6800.828000/index.html

[triggy]

37 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

The problem is that there is no known "engineering sample" vBIOS that works with the P3200.  We only have such vBIOS images for P3000, P4000, and P5000.  (If there was, you could flash it under Linux using nvflash.  No need for extra hardware.)

 

The issue with Windows is it hits some bug with the BIOS ACPI tables that is triggered when you install one of these Pascal GPUs.  Windows is unable to get around it and crashes with a BSOD.  Linux doesn't care.  (There is a great thread by @jeamn on this issue but it was done at NotebookReview.  I'll see if I can dig it up later.)

So, if I understand correctly, for Windows, all Pascal VBIOS are borked except for the engineering sample. But since there isn’t one for the P3200, it’s impossible to get it working on Windows without delving into the depths of complex stuff like ACPI tables.

 

Also, since the P3200 doesn’t have EEPROM to store the VBIOS (from my research it's on the mobo the card came with), and you’d need to attach an EEPROM to get the VBIOS on the card. So, how does the P3200 work flawlessly on Linux if it doesn’t have the VBIOS on the card?

Apologies if my questions are bad or annoying, I’m new to all this.

[Aaron44126]

11 minutes ago, triggy said:

So, if I understand correctly, for Windows, all Pascal VBIOS are borked except for the engineering sample. But since there isn’t one for the P3200, it’s impossible to get it working on Windows without delving into the depths of complex stuff like ACPI tables.

 

Also, since the P3200 doesn’t have EEPROM to store the VBIOS (from my research it's on the mobo the card came with), and you’d need to attach an EEPROM to get the VBIOS on the card. So, how does the P3200 work flawlessly on Linux if it doesn’t have the VBIOS on the card?

Apologies if my questions are bad or annoying, I’m new to all this.

 

For the first point, yes you are understanding it right.  Except I think that it is more like the Dell BIOS is borked but somehow "happens to work" with other GPUs and only these Pascal VBIOS are exposing the problem.

 

Regarding the P3200 and EEPROM to store the VBIOS, I think this is dependent on where the P3200 is sourced from.  HP tends to do this with many GPUs, storing the VBIOS on a chip on the motherboard rather on the GPU card, but I haven't heard of any other laptop maker doing that.  But yes, even to work with Linux, the GPU would need a VBIOS.

 

Are you stuck with a P3200?  You'd probably have an easier time with a first-gen Pascal Quadro card (P3000/P4000/P5000), or maybe even Quadro M5000M / GeForce 980M which is probably the easiest upgrade to do in this laptop.

[triggy]

25 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Are you stuck with a P3200?  You'd probably have an easier time with a first-gen Pascal Quadro card (P3000/P4000/P5000), or maybe even Quadro M5000M / GeForce 980M which is probably the easiest upgrade to do in this laptop.

Na, it's just i found an insanely good deal ($80) on one and it's comparable performance wise to a 1660 super while the only other """affordable""" ($180 so only if they accept an insane lowball) one comparable to it i could find is the p4000, which is around gtx 1060 (desktop) performance.

[triggy]

also another thing, i have a 2tb m.2 drive in my current laptop that i would like to reuse, would something like this work?

[Aaron44126]

7 minutes ago, triggy said:

also another thing, i have a 2tb m.2 drive in my current laptop that i would like to reuse, would something like this work?

 

You'll have to check what kind of drive you have.  That will work for SATA M.2 drives, but not for NVMe M.2 drives (...which are far more common).  You can't connect an NVMe drive to a SATA port with an adapter.

 

M6800 only supports SATA.  To get an NVMe drive to work you'd have to attach it with an adapter to an internal PCIe slot like the WWAN slot, and there isn't a whole lot of room.  Fitting a 2280-size drive would require mods if it is even possible.  And you wouldn't be able to boot from it regardless.

[triggy]

gotcha, seems like im gonna have to get a new ssd, which isnt that bad considering black friday sales are going on. 

 

Also, what are some ESSENTIAL upgrades you would recommend? I know i should get some good thermal paste and pads (I plan to get a PTM7950 for the CPU and GPU main die, but idk what to get for the smaller parts of them, what thermal pads would you recommend for those?

[triggy]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

GeForce 980M which is probably the easiest upgrade to do in this laptop.

So i did a little more research into the 980, and there's 2 versions of the 980M. Which one are you referring to? ( I really hope its the one with more cores) 

[Aaron44126]

The one that says 980M (not “mobile”). The other one is a desktop 980 in mobile form factor; the only time NVIDIA really did that for a high-end card, as far as I know. As you can see, the card is not a standard shape. It would be a challenge to use it. (It might even need an extra power hookup? I don’t remember.)

[nforce4max]

On 11/17/2023 at 1:45 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

You'll have to check what kind of drive you have.  That will work for SATA M.2 drives, but not for NVMe M.2 drives (...which are far more common).  You can't connect an NVMe drive to a SATA port with an adapter.

 

M6800 only supports SATA.  To get an NVMe drive to work you'd have to attach it with an adapter to an internal PCIe slot like the WWAN slot, and there isn't a whole lot of room.  Fitting a 2280-size drive would require mods if it is even possible.  And you wouldn't be able to boot from it regardless.

Fitting a 2280 isn't hard though requires a complete teardown and do some metal work but beyond that it works pretty well. Will need to tuck the cmos battery and will want some thermal pads to help with cooling.