Does the Clevo X7200 have a GPU whitelist for the MXM master slot?

[SuperMG]

Hello.

 

I've been intrigued a lot about why anything above GTX 680M Kepler won't work on this LVDS X7200 laptop?

 

For example Quadro K3100M, GTX 780M, 880M, 970M, 980M won't work in the master slot, despite having the same LVDS port for the internal screen. 

 

These cards do support legacy and legacy oprom.

 

Even I got a GTX 970M, 980M and Quadro P5200 to work in the slave slot! With Legacy and UEFI VBIOSes. The BIOS recognized them as the 2nd NVIDIA GPU. Even the RTX 4070 MXM was detected!!

 

So my point is... There's maybe a whitelist of GPUIDs for the master slot.

 

But some could say that the GTX 700M to 900M needs some partial support for UEFI in order to work and display... Even though these generations support both legacy and UEFI.

 

It's not about the LVDS port. It's about the BIOS.

 

Is there a way to remove the GPU whitelist from that Phoenix BIOS? So we can add a GTX 980M as the best card in terms of LVDS compatibility?

 

I see that the Alienware M17X R3 and M18X R1 could support up to an GTX 780M and GTX 880M for the master slot. Even the 1st gen core i M15X can support up to a GTX 980M...

 

Any bios modders? Prema? Svl7? Baked?

 

Here's the BIOS that was taken from the SOP8 F25L16PA chip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CPea1hd4nSIi4TAWSp7sILjDmHuhZhEN/view

 

Edited March 16 by SuperMG

[SuperMG]

The M15X is from 2010, uses the same first gen core i technology (45nm and 32nm) as the X7200 and it's able to use the GTX 980M or Quadro M5000M as the master card without any Intel Optimus.

 

The M15X didn't have UEFI too, it's full LEGACY.

 

So why can't the Clevo X7200 do the same? I'm sure there's a whitelist. A GPU whitelist that was updated when the Kepler 600 series were out.

 

Presumably they added the whitelist because of the newer version from Clevo that was coming out, the P570WM. The P570WM LVDS could allow up to a GTX 980M and the P570WM3 could allow up to an RTX Ada in eDP.

 

Which means that the P570WM doesn't have a whitelist for sure.

 

How can we remove the whitelist? with a BIOS editor?

[panda_zzz]

There is no whitelist for graphics cards. Older Clevo laptops often have issues running non-native graphics cards due to the address of the graphics card's temperature sensor on the SMBus. Possible solutions include replacing the sensor on the card, connecting an external sensor to the MXM slot's pins, or modifying the laptop's EC controller firmware.

[SuperMG]

Well no one knows yet.

 

It could be a BIOS/EC issue actually.

 

The M15X works with Fermi cards all the way up to Maxwell cards in LVDS. 

 

The X7200 laptop could boot even if it can't detect the GPU's temperature sensor.

 

For example, I tried with an AMD card. It displays and boots. Then, after 10 seconds, the laptop started to beep and went into panic mode. At the end the laptop shutdown because of the temperature sensor of the GPU.

 

The slave slot of the X7200, I had no issues with the EC fan controls for the 970M, 980M and Quadro K3100M, no panic, no beeps, fan works.

Edited March 14 by SuperMG

[SuperMG]

Hello here are the files I extracted from the chips, I needed to disassemble everything.

 

Random chip that's probably the KBC, not an EC (MX25L512E, U44): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1si8vA-aMM6DynJNbjdEk2OcA8I06v3aE/view?usp=drivesdk

 

BIOS (F25L16PA, U45): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CPea1hd4nSIi4TAWSp7sILjDmHuhZhEN/view

 

There's also a U48 chip, 512kbit too but I can't seem to read it...

 

I would pay someone who succeeded into removing the whitelist or removing/updating something that's limiting the Kepler 700M/800M and 900M GPUs in the master slot.

 

Edit: I removed the GOP/UEFI image from the GTX 970M 6GB VBIOS, it was successful because GPU-Z reports it as a non-UEFI Vbios (tested in slave slot). However in the master slot, it doesn't work. Laptop doesn't post and stays on. No backlight, just stays on with idle fans. I sense some fan control on the CPU side so that's strange.

 

I even edited the Vbios GPUID to a corresponding Fermi one. No success...

 

First the computer powers on, waiting 2-3s then does one blink for the HDD status (like with Fermi and Kepler 600M). Now the computer stays on, fans at idle. I tried to force boot with HDMI only but no luck.

 

Even someone got the 980M to boot with the X8100 (mobile socket, 2009-2010) what; https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/clevo-x8100-mit-gtx-980m-keine-hdmi-bildausgabe.1801599/

 

Someone got the 980M to boot with the M980NU (mobile socket, core 2 45nm, 2009): https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/hardware-components-and-aftermarket-upgrades.27/CLEVO X8100 SAGER NP8120 GTX-680M Graphics card upgrade/ @poprostujakub

 

Why can't the X7200 do the same?

 

Edited Friday at 02:47 PM by SuperMG

[SuperMG]

Hello some news. I don't know but I think there's no GPUID whitelists, because I couldn't find IDs for any Kepler 1 GPUs. I could only find IDs for 200M, 400M and 500M Fermi GPUs and the dumped file wasn't a whitelist either. Or maybe the whitelist is hidden and I can't find?

 

So I think the only way, it's to remove the GPU checks during the POST. Because maybe the BIOS throws some "errors" for the GPU so that's why the laptop doesn't post. I have no idea on how to to this sadly...

 

As mentioned before, the Clevo X8100 (2010) and the Clevo M980NU (2009) are both using the same Phoenix SecureCore bioses from the same era! But these two laptops support up to a GTX 980M, so anything related to Maxwell and Kepler 2 will work flawlessly... So they just ignore the GPU checks and boot. Just like the Clevo P775 for example.

 

Edit: I made the VGA errors set to IGNORE but.... The laptop doesn't boot with the Maxwell card in the master slot...

Edited 16 hours ago by SuperMG