Precision 7720 GPU upgrade

[jeamn]

I recently upgraded the GPU of my 7720 and was pleasantly surprised how easily it went.   I already had a P3000 GPU in the laptop and to be honest, it was perfectly fine for what I typically do with the laptop.  But, well, you know how it goes....

 

I shopped around on ebay for MXM upgrade cards.  I thought about trying one of the non-standard MXM cards but ended up settling on a $280 P4000.

 

 

The card itself looks basically identical for my current p3000.  It does appear to be coated with some sort of epoxy over all the surface mount components, including the VRMs.  Hopefully that doesn't impact thermals (More on that later).  I have done some board repairs on both GPUs and motherboards in the past.  Clearly that's not an option with this card.

 

In typical Dell Precision fashion, disassembly to get to the GPU was pretty easy and straight forward.   After removing the heatsink, it was clear the thermal compound was ready to be replaced anyway, it was quite dried out.  The card did not come with a heat sink x-bracket, so I had to pop that loose from the existing card and install it on the new one.   It took a fair amount of pressure, both to remove it from the old GPU and to install it on the new one.

 

After reassembly, I booted the laptop and immediately got a BSOD when I logged into windows.  The error code was "VIDEO_MEMORY_MANAGMENT_INTERNAL   However, it cleared up on the next reboot. I had not uninstalled drivers before swapping video cards, which is what I believed caused the BSOD.

 

After running through some games and benchmarks, I'm pretty happy.   Performance was improved about 20-25% over the P3000.  

 

I actually believe this is the Max-Q variant of a P4000.  I'm happy with the performance, but it's a little less than what other people have benchmarked.   Although it seems to boost a little bit higher than the stock specs, it seems to max TDP at about 60W (with a few spikes higher) rather than the spec'ed 100W of a P4000.  I'm actually OK with that.   During gaming and benchmarking, the card runs exceptionally cool (<60C usually, with hardly any fans running)  and the laptop still has excellent battery life

 

I am currently running the card with Optimus enabled and the thunderbolt/HDMI ports directy connected to the GPU.   I typically run the laptop connected to a thunderbolt dock connected to a 32:9 1440p monitor.   Using the BIOS option to directly connect external display output to the GPU was necessary to enable high refresh rates on my monitor.  (That was also the case for my P3000)

 

 

[aldarxt]

Hey jeamn, Look in Gpuz at the bus interface and make sure it reads PCIe x 16 3.0 @ x 16 3.0 and not x8 3.0. I recently put that card in my m17x r4 and got similar scores as you but then noticed Gpuz bus interface x8 3.0. I so I removed and cleaned the contacts of the card and got even worse numbers so I went back in just loosened the screws and applied pressure to the card to fully seat in the socket, tighened it up and got the PCIe x 16 3.0 @ x 16 3.0 reading and my scores went up ! Real happy with this card I bought a 2nd one and put it in m18xr2 now I want to put one in Precision M6700, but not till I get something more powerful for one of the Alienwares. I thought it was a great deal at $280 also. Am still tempted to buy another but hoping for RTX mxm to show up. Hope this helps

[Aaron44126]

If you did want to raise the power limit it would probably just require flashing a different vBIOS on there...  If you could find the "official Dell" vBIOS for this GPU then that would be ideal.

 

It's hard to get to the point of a temperature problem with these beefy NVIDIA GPU chips that are intended to run in desktops at higher power levels.  When I tried P5000 in the M6700, it would pull around 110W and I was still never able to get it anywhere near thermal throttling.  I have noted that it leveled off at around 76 °C when I put it under an extended load.  (That was with the fan running full tilt, though.)

 

Also, doesn't matter to you since you are done already, but to anyone else: the X-bracket is easier to get off if you apply some heat (heat gun or hair dryer).

[aldarxt]

Hey Aaron4412, These Quadro P4000's seem to be locked, I wish there was a way to flash an unlocked vbios on them I would not hesitate but searched around found nothing and ssj92 on this forum said they are locked vbios and wish there was a way around it. Its a good card and the mxm's are hard to find above this performance level, was looking at P5000 but if I go for a higher price might as well go for higher performance at least RTX 3000 but nothing in sight and rumors of RTX A4000 so I trying my patience hoping to keep these MXM laptops alive

[Aaron44126]

30 minutes ago, aldarxt said:

Hey Aaron4412, These Quadro P4000's seem to be locked

 

Hmm, interesting, I didn't realize that this was a thing.

 

Regarding high-end GPUs, HP does make some Quadro RTX (Turing) MXM cards.  The layout is off a bit but RTX 3000 has been demonstrated working in the M6700 (by drilling new holes through the GPU heatsink).  It doesn't even have the vBIOS/BSOD issue the Pascal cards have in the M6700/M6800.  RTX 5000 has the same layout so it should also work.  I'd think that these cards would also work in other systems, if they physically fit (and with a heatsink mod).

 

https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-precision-m6700-nvidia-turing-rtx-card-discussion-thread.833140/index.html

(Sorry you can't really see the pictures.  Still need to fix attachments in NBRCHIVE.)

 

I also haven't heard a whisper about the possibility of Ampere MXM GPUs.  You would think RTX A1000/A2000/A3000 at least would be possible on a regular card.

[jeamn]

I think you need a specific nvflash to flash a different bios  with a different device id from a different vendor.  But this particular card does have a bios chip (as do all Dell MXMs, iirc) and you can flash whatever the heck you want to on an MXM card with a ch341a programmer.  There was even a tool on the old forum where you could do some small modifications to the bios and update the checksum to get it to pass validation: https://github.com/LaneLyng/MobilePascalTDPTweaker

 

You can get P4200 MXM cards on ebay with the same layout.  I seriously thought about trying that, but had some reservations about the power draw.  

 

 

 

 

[jeamn]

2 hours ago, aldarxt said:

 Look in Gpuz at the bus interface and make sure it reads PCIe x 16 3.0 @ x 16 3.0 and not x8 3.0.

 Thanks for the tip.  I did check this and it's reporting as x16 3.0

[TheQuentincc]

Hi, I ended up getting a 7720 for cheap (7700HQ/P3000 + a 7710 for 340...), I was thinking of getting a GTX 1070 for this laptop, I already have a standard Aetina that I need to fix but I also have a MSI 1070 but it doesn't fit the heatsink, does 7710 and 7720 share the same heatsink ? I was thinking of modding the 7710 heatsink to handle this MSI card.

Do someone know how much power allow the 7720 to go through the MXM slot ?

Thanks you

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, TheQuentincc said:

Hi, I ended up getting a 7720 for cheap (7700HQ/P3000 + a 7710 for 340...), I was thinking of getting a GTX 1070 for this laptop, I already have a standard Aetina that I need to fix but I also have a MSI 1070 but it doesn't fit the heatsink, does 7710 and 7720 share the same heatsink ? I was thinking of modding the 7710 heatsink to handle this MSI card.

Do someone know how much power allow the 7720 to go through the MXM slot ?

 

Can only sort-of answer this.

 

7X10 and 7X20 are compatible enough in terms of chassis to the point that you can upgrade a 7X10 to 7X20 by just swapping out the motherboard.  So, I think that it is likely that the heatsinks will be cross-compatible.  Some comparisons of the photos in the service manual should be able to confirm this with reasonable certainty.

 

7X20 shipped with P5000 GPU which could draw around 110W through MXM, IIRC.  (I tried a P5000 in my M6700 but ended up having to get rid of it due to stability reasons... but it definitely passed the normal 100W cap, under high load it would draw extra power and end up causing the CPU to throttle due to being power-starved.)

[jeamn]

Well, I finally figured out why my P4000 was not utilizing it's full TDP.  It was actually a driver issue.  When I upgraded from the P3000, I had simply re-installed the drivers.    However, after I cleaned everything out with DDU and re-installed the drivers via safe-mode, the card was using it's full TDP when running games/benchmarks.

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

I don't really see a thread where this would fit, so I will put this here since it relates to the same model. I replaced the lid and palmrest last weekend with new ones from PartsPeople. Since it is a full teardown, it might be useful to someone wanting to upgrade their GPU. I think Brother @Recieveris going to enjoy some of the elevator music choices I selected.

 

 

[Nowan]

Question. Is the precision 7720 a 30 pin or 40 pin edp?

 

[Mr. Fox]

24 minutes ago, Nowan said:

Question. Is the precision 7720 a 30 pin or 40 pin edp?

 

Don't quote me on it because I haven't looked to verify, but I believe the FHD 1080p and lower resolution are 30-pin and the 4K is 40-pin. The best way to verify that is to look at a replacement eDP cable online (like eBay) and zoom in to count the connections.

[Aaron44126]

55 minutes ago, Nowan said:

Question. Is the precision 7720 a 30 pin or 40 pin edp?

 

28 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Don't quote me on it because I haven't looked to verify, but I believe the FHD 1080p and lower resolution are 30-pin and the 4K is 40-pin. The best way to verify that is to look at a replacement eDP cable online (like eBay) and zoom in to count the connections.

 

I believe that this is the case, too.  I don't remember the details for each model, but 30-pin for low-res and 40-pin for high-res is common for Dell to do (with the same system/motherboard).  If you want to "upgrade" the display panel then you will probably have to swap out the display cable as well.  You could possibly use a 30-pin panel with a 40-pin cable, with an adapter, but not the other way around.

 

...Around this era, they also had a tendency to stuff the webcam cable in with the display cable so that it uses a single connector on the motherboard and splits off inside the display enclosure.