MSI GT72 -- help please

[giltheone]

OK, first off, I am not sure on what sub-forum to post this, so please forgive me if this is the wrong place, and for the admins, if you have to move this to another (correct) place, sorry for the extra work.

 

Let me start with the preliminaries:

In December of 2015 I bought a MSI GT72 Dominator, which came with an Intel Core i7-4720hq CPU, and a NVidia MXM GTX 970m (with 3GB vRAM) GPU. At the MSI Global English forums, I requested an unlocked BIOS and a modified vBIOS from Svet, which worked very nicely. I ran the 970m overclocked and modest overvolt using NVidia Inspector using different profiles for different applications, and with XTU I ran de CPU with the +2 extra it allowed me on the multipliers for the CPU.

 

The computer was awesome. But I wanted more graphical power. So, from the old NBR forums, in December of 2016 I bought a GTX 980m (with 8GB vRAM) from Woodzstack. I also got a modified vBIOS for this card from Svet at the MSI forums. This one I ran overclocked too, with varying amounts of frequency and overvoltage depending on what game I was playing (like the 970m).

 

I kept the computer clean from dust (it's extremely dusty over here), and changed pads and thermal paste twice (at the beginning of 2022 the last time) just to make sure everything stayed clean under the heatsink -- and it was absolutely needed considering the amount of particles in the desert air over here. I also added some extra storage with a couple of SSD's and eventually a 2TB HDD to replace the original 1TB one. I had done a mod to have two HDDs, but I was never happy with it, so I went back to a single HDD but with double the capacity that I mention.

 

I have also upgraded other components, like the RAM, the keyboard, the battery, and maybe a couple of other things that escape my mind for now.

 

The thing is, the computer was running very well. Until it didn't one night near the end of May of this year (2022 for posterity's sake). I was playing Elden Ring, which ran reasonably well on my laptop, and I only had a moderate overclock and overvolt on the GPU. But in the middle of playing, the system suddenly stopped. The power supply brick was hot, but not hotter than what it gets during a couple of hours of playtime considering how warm the night was. I let it cool down, and as it was about to start, again it stopped.

 

Several hours after, whenever I plugged in the power brick, the LED indicator on it turned off whenever I plugged it into the laptop. I realized it was overcurrent protection. The system wouldn't boot on battery either, of course. It didn't take me too long after opening up the notebook that the GPU was the culprit. The brick's LED would not go off when I removed it. I still had the original GTX 970m, and when I inserted it in the MXM slot, the computer would boot -- that's the card it has right now.

 

OK, the 980m was dead. It served me well for more than five years. I could live with that. (A couple of days ago I was looking at it more carefully, and I believe I found the culprit of its demise: a short circuited capacitor in one of the VRMs -- if the core was not exposed to a high voltage, who knows, maybe the chip itself is still in working order. I'll do some tinkering with a hot air station once I get one.)

But, again, and as I don't have enough money to get myself a new notebook, but I had enough money for a new MXM card (they have gotten cheaper, finally), and I still want a bit more graphical power, I decided I should FINALLY go for a MXM GTX 1070 -- even if it is a "Chinese Frankenstein", as someone from NBR once called it, if I don't abuse it it should still be a nice upgrade (so I thought). I found them on Amazon -- of all places. So I ordered

(As a side note: please, don't advise me to instead cobble together a desktop: it won't really be that much cheaper, and I want to extend the life of my notebook: it can still provide me with a decent amount of service and fun.)

 

Oh, and let it be clear that I never let any drivers nor the OS (Windows 10) lapse: my system is up to date.

But life is complicated. Things haven't gone as smoothly as I hoped. Here come the recent troubles:

I got the MXM GTX 1070 card after waiting for about a month (I ordered it mid June, I got it around the 18th of July). It looked in good condition. But once in the laptop, these were the "symptoms"

 

1. With the 1070 in place, the notebook doesn't want to turn with AC/DC power brick. The LED on the brick DOES NOT go off as with the defunct 980m by simply plugging it in before start-up, rather it goes off a second or a little less after I press the power key, so at least there isn't an obvious short circuit somewhere.

2. The notebook DOES TURN ON on battery alone with the 1070 set up -- the battery is NOT the original battery, but a substitute I got about a year and a half or two years ago, and it appears to have quite a bit of capacity left. And yes, the charger does charge the battery even today.

3. When turning on with the battery with the 1070 installed, the screen stays black, and it doesn't really go anywhere after turning on -- the notebook stays on, but it doesn't seem to reach or go past POST. And yes, I've tried changing the BIOS startup to UEFI+CSM, Legacy, and UEFI alone.

4. The system turns on using he iGPU regardless of which MXM card is in the slot.
5. I have done some tests with a DOS boot USB stick, with the 1070, the 970m, and the CPU integrated graphics, with it booting only with the latter two -- I put some tasks like renaming a file on the AUTOEXEC.BAT to see if it gets that far with the black screen, and no, it doesn't reach that point with the 1070, but it does occur with the 970m and the iGPU.

6. I got myself a CH314a chip programmer with a 1.8V adapter, and some clips to re-flash the vBIOS chip of the card without removing it, which I did last night by putting in an official GT72vr vBIOS from the MSI site. (I figured the board is close enough to the board of the GT72, so it might work.) The vBIOS on the chip was different from what the MSI one. With HxD stating at offset AE0 I can see that:

 

a) 86.04.42.00.03 was the vBIOS on the card
b) 86.04.31.00.0D is the one from MSI

And NOPE: the above symptoms haven't changed.

 

So, I don't know if there are any suggestions. I am worried something may be wrong with the motherboard of the PC, but it seems to be working fine with either the iGPU, or the 970m. I've done some preliminary testing on the board of the 1070 itself, and there don't appear to be any shorts in it. I don't know if the problem may be the exact vBIOS of the card, or some setting I should change on the motherboard BIOS to at least get it to boot. I realize I may have to use a modded driver to actually take advantage of the card, but if I can get it to load with the Windows 10 default driver it would be a start.

 

(Yes, I can still return the card, but having to wait for a few more months for a replacement will be extra annoying, and not a guarantee that it actually would work: getting something from China to Mexico -- where I am at -- is a pain in the behind -- a dull, slow pain, and not the kind of pain someone with a few kinks might enjoy.)

 

Thank you, and I apologize for the long read

[giltheone]

OK, I feel like I need to share some updates.

 

First off, the MXM GTX 1070 card I bought is the one in ---> this link <---. Yes, it's Chinese version, which seems to be based on the Dell model, which appears to be on the same black PCB of the Quadro P5000, as was discussed in this ---> archived NBR thread <--- (especially note the third figure in post #3).

 

By now, I have tried flashing several different vBIOS with a programmer (the CH341a with a 1.8V adapter), and some clips (I'm not going to be de-soldering and soldering back the IC chip). I have to use a programmer, as I DON'T have access to another computer with a MXM PCI-e slot. That has been slow, as I have to remove the card every time to reprogram it -- I don't have another computer at home, and I can't do this at work, as that would require carrying quite a few electronic things and tools back and forth, and that would be an enormous hassle.

 

Well, first I tried the vBIOS from the MSI webpage for the GT72vr; however, that one is a GSYNC vBIOS, so another member of the forum (thanks @solidus1983) was kind enough to provide me with another that wasn't GSYNC. But unfortunately the symptoms described above did NOT change. Well, almost -- I'll get back to that in a bit.

 

Then I went I tried other MSI mobile vBIOSes found at Techpowerup's VGA Bios Collection -- I did have to check some of the "unverified uploads", I will admit that. Again everything was almost the same.

Here's what was different:

The LED indicators on the notebook did flash, (but the computer still would only work when on battery alone, just as before), but also as if  the computer was reading from the drive as it went from POST into Windows -- I tried blindly writing down a password (my system doesn't go into Windows with a default user: I'm moderately paranoid -- sue me if you think it's wrong 😉 🙃) But I don't think I made it into Windows, though. I don't know if it was going past POST and failing, or I just simply mistyped something, as I couldn't see the screen: it was still black from the get-go.

 

Then, just a few hours ago, and as half-hearted attempt at a Hail Mary, I decided to try a Dell vBIOS, seeing as the PCB was what Dell used -- I tried a vBIOS for an Alienware 17 R5 (I should've tried something a little older, but I was just fiddling around). And a couple of more things were much different.

 

For starters, the power brick did not turn off: the system booted with the brick, not just with the battery. That was certainly very different -- the system was powering the way it should. However, the fans were behaving oddly: they spun up to the max after a couple of minutes or so (that was also happening before, so that didn't really surprise me).

 

But this time I knew for a fact the PC went into Windows -- before doing this, I had verified exactly what to press, and when, so I could enter my password even with a black screen -- and when the Steel Series keyboard lit up, I knew I was there (the keyboard only lights up after I log in). It even had sound -- fiddling again with keys, I knew I was trying to access something and (not seeing the mouse to click on an unseen option) I could hear the Windows chime of pressing something incorrectly. To quote an unsure Homer Simpson "Woo... hoo?"

 

Well, not being able to do more, I knew the system was "aware" of the GTX 1070 card, but did not "know" what to do with it, so I had to do some more digging, and for that I needed my computer -- again, more "surgery" on the machine to change back its graphical "brain" to something that was working.

So here comes the bit that has me perplexed somewhat:

I changed back to the GTX 970m that had/has been working fine -- but something weird happened. The MSI splash screen at POST was there, I could even check the system's BIOS -- my mind was going "it's ALIVE!", together with scary movie monster music in my head -- but when it tried to go into Windows the screen went black immediately. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself, "something's not right here."

 

Turned off the machine, restarted, went into BIOS, changed into Intel's iGPU, and once in Windows, I went to Device Manager with "show hidden devices", and then "uninstalled" the hidden GTX 970m. I rebooted with the GT72's toggle switch to change into discrete graphics, and after the restart and POST, I saw the Windows greeting screen, and as I was writing down my password, the screen blinked (I assume it switched from the generic Microsoft driver to the Nvidia one) and then the black screen again. Something was behaving badly -- somehow the GTX 1070 did something to the driver! Or at least that's what I hypothesized. Well, more like I hoped it was just that.

 

I repeated the above procedure to go into Windows with the iGPU (and yes, the GTX 970m had been reinstalled, as I suspected), and again I uninstalled the device, but I also checked to remove the driver for it. Rebooted into discrete graphics, but this time with only the generic driver. Once in Windows I reinstalled the Nvidia driver -- the screen went black, then it showed something, then it blinked, went black, etc. a few times, and then it stayed on, asking me to reboot to finish the installation.

 

And now we're here. The system is working with the GTX 970m, just as before. And before all of this jazz, I did create a restore point, but I had to diagnose what was going on before resorting to it.

 

So, preliminary conclusions:

 

1. The system both in hardware and software does see the GTX 1070 when it has certain vBIOSes, and can boot into Windows

2. With the right vBIOS, the power adapter doesn't shut off -- as it's supposed to be.

2. With the GTX 1070, I still get only a black screen, either before, during, or after POST, and once in Windows, the Nvidia driver becomes "funky", requiring a reinstallation even if it's to use the GTX 970m card with which the system was working, otherwise Windows seems to no longer "know what to do" with the latter card.

 

And maybe

4. I don't know if there is a specific vBIOS that may get the card working, but it does not seem to be a MSI vBIOS -- shame we don't have a Pascal vBIOS editor... lousy suits encrypting things to keep out us, the users of the products we paid for...

[solidus1983]

Your issue is that the MXM card in question is a Dell version thus, the MSI laptop can not read the sensor data. This might explain everything and the funky issues your experiencing so no matter what Vbios you use the issue will still be the same.

 

As for the Driver issue, the driver will not work as the Device ID's for the GTX 1070 is not in the driver.

 

Go example of a use of an MSI MXM GPU say my GTX 1060.

 

The laptop driver was expecting 10DE 1C60 1462 11AF however because the of the lack of Bios support the GPU showed up as 10DE 1C60 1462 11FF or if you did a bios mod then the ending would be 0000.

 

So you have to use modified drivers for the Aftermarket upgrade to work.

Edited August 9, 2022 by solidus1983
Stupid mobile phone formatting was bad.

[giltheone]

Thank you for the reply. Modding the drivers is not a problem -- I can change the INF file well enough (I've modded some drivers before, and recently I've been reading/reviewing on how to do it for the Nvidia drivers). Of course, I may have still have doubts, and I would still appreciate any help there.

My concern now is what you say about the vBIOS... Are you implying that no matter what I try, the card will never work on my notebook? I've seen videos/blogs of people installing cards from vendors different from their notebook manufacturers, and somehow they have made them work -- though admittedly, it's only two or three videos/blogs I could find, which is not many to go by, and none of them explain anything they did exactly on the software side.

 

If you say the card will never work, then I will simply have to return it. It's a bummer, since I really wanted this to work.

 

In any case, thank you for your advice.

Edited August 10, 2022 by giltheone
Corrected a statement -- cards from vendors different from notebook manufacturers seem to work in some cases

[solidus1983]

Right if with the dell VBios its is now showing a screen you simply need to mod the driver, go into safe mode and remove the Nvidia driver with display driver uninstaller, then do not connect to the internet. as it will download the nvidia driver again.

 

Then get the Device ID of the GPU with the dell vbios and then mod the nvidia driver that should then get it to work.

 

Just make sure you have a nvidia driver already downloaded ready and use something like WinRAR or 7zip to extract the .exe file.

 

 

Update: So looking into it, someone is using a Dell Vbios on Aliexpress with a GPU almost the same as yours with Device ID 10DE 1BA1 1028 057B with the 86.04.42.00.03 vbios on it. yet a post below it shows the same vbios but marked for MSI??

 

Me personally i would send the card back then try again.

 

MSI MXM Board N17E-G2-A1 nVidia GTX 1070 GDDR5 8GB VRAM Gsync 607-1W0V1-04S | eBay

MSI MXM Board N17E-G2-A1 nVidia GTX 1070 GDDR5 8GB VRAM Gsync 607-1W0V1-03S | eBay

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 MXM 3.1 Graphics Card for Laptop | eBay

MXM (Notebook) GTX1070 8GB (MSI) | eBay

[giltheone]

Thanks a bunch. This does help. I contacted the vendor, and I told them I would test the card a little bit more, and they said they will wait, and they will refund me the money and pay for the return if I choose to go that route, or they can send me another card if I also choose that -- they want to avoid negative feedback, so they are amenable to coming to a friendly arrangement. The card could have been damaged during transport, but a little more testing should be no problem -- it doesn't appear physically damaged, and testing with a multimeter shows no apparent short circuits, but a busted and non-shorted capacitor would not be detected that way, for example.

 

I will give it another "spin" reprogramming the vBIOS when I have the chance, and once again, thank you very much for the info.

[giltheone]

Well, it's been months since I started this thread, and I feel obligated to post an update:

The card I was having trouble with is DEFECTIVE! I figured it out sometime in August, but I got busy at work, and I couldn't do anything about it anyway. The vendor is still willing for me to return it and see if it can be fixed or at least properly diagnosed. If they are unwilling to refund me the price, at least I hope to get back a working card.

However, once I got my Christmas holiday bonus, I bought another IDENTICAL card from another vendor on eBay. This one worked right out of the box: I just put it the notebook less than two hours ago, and it immediately came alive. I'm using it right now. I am using a modded Nvidia driver from a few months ago (I modded it myself back in July, and used NVCleanstall to get the driver signed). I'll repeat the process with a newer driver, but for now this one works.

The only problem now is that sending the previous defective card back to China has proven a pain -- sending something abroad from Mexico using the postal service is a nightmare.

Thank you to everyone who helped. And now I'm going to enjoy this thing: I will finally be able to continue playing Elden Ring, hahaha.

[giltheone]

OK... I've been testing the GTX 1070, and overall it works fine. But it's exhibiting the exact same problems I had with the spare GTX 970m: the screen will turn a solid color (usually a color prominent from whatever is being pictured). Two completely separate cards, same behavior. It doesn't happen when I use the integrated graphics.

There's something wrong in how my notebook is connecting or transferring data between the graphics card and the system. The system doesn't completely freeze -- if something is producing sound, it will continue on as if nothing was wrong, for example, and I see normal disk activity from the indicator LED. But the keyboard and the screen both become unresponsive: I have to manually shut it down (the power button still works). This is very odd.

Both the 970m and 1070 work fine at boot, I can also go into the BIOS, and no problems. The system can start, but it MAY suddenly do what I'm describing almost at random. Two things that do seem to trigger it, however: using the magnifying glass, as soon as I zoom, or with the transparency effects on, as soon as it "un-focuses" whatever is pictured, the screen will turn a solid color, and the keyboard stops working. Both of those things require graphics processing power, but this doesn't happen with the integrated graphics. I am unwilling to believe that such specific thing is something present in TWO separate dedicated GPUs.

On thine I did, I bought four sticks of identical RAM around mid summer to have a total of 32GB. I removed the previous two 8GB sticks. I am not certain the new RAM may have issues, but I'm actually started to hope it could be related to that, which would be an easier fix than having something bad with the MXM port for the GPU.

(By the way, I installed the latest NVIDIA driver, signed by NVCleanstall, but the same behavior was there with normal, older drivers with the 970m.)

I'm at a loss. I can't believe the exact same defect is present in two cards, one barely used (the 970m) and the newer 1070. I'll disassemble the notebook just to see if I'm missing something underneath the motherboard.

[giltheone]

This is an update and a recap of whatever I have written above. I posted this (almost word for word) on the MSI forums, but no one has replied, so I'm posting it here, and hopefully someone will be able to help me, since over there it seems barely anyone is willing to look at my thread. Here goes:

1. I have MSI GT72. The motherboard is a MS-1781, with a i7-4720hq CPU. For most of its lifetime I have run Windows 10 (upgraded from Windows 8.1 that it came with).
2. When I bought it some years ago (December 2015), it came with a MXM GTX 970m with 3GB VRAM.
3. After a year, I bought a new GTX 980m with 8GB VRAM. None of these two cards are GSYNC, as the monitor is not that type of monitor.
4. The 970m was (is) still good, so I simply stored it, and for the next few years I used my notebook with the 980m.
5. At the beginning of this past summer, mid June of 2022, the 980m failed in the middle of a game. It seems some capacitor on the card blew, and as far as I can tell, a power MOSFET was also damaged.
6. I decided to get a MXM GTX 1070 as a replacement -- from China, as I could only find one that would fit with the original heatsink over there. Long story short, I finally got one that works recently (I had gotten one that did not work, this is a different one).
7. In the meantime, I started using the GTX 970m again. But some problems arose after a few weeks of using this video card: the screen would suddenly become a solid (random) color (i.e. solid blue, red, orange, green, purple, white, etc.). This would happen more or less at random moments, as I logged into Windows, or after a few minutes already in Windows, usually as a large transition of the screen happened (using the magnifier to zoom in on something, for example), but not always.
8. I resorted to using the integrated graphics on the CPU, and that worked (and still does work) without problems.
9. After the new GTX 1070 arrived, it worked fine -- it posts, and produces video output to the notebook monitor, but then the exact same problems that were occurring with the GTX 970m happened almost immediately, with video either through the monitor, or through the HDMI output of the notebook. Oh, before I forget, I modded the Nvidia driver for the card to work when in Windows -- at POST, the driver is irrelevant, since the PC starts off with the GOP contained in the VBIOS.
10. I suspected that the incident in the summer may have damaged something on the motherboard connected to the MXM port, as the video glitches were exactly the same with both cards, and I thought it unlikely that both cards (the 970m and the 1070) had the same defects.
11. I bought a used (and moderately priced) motherboard off eBay to test this, as I don't have the equipment to fully diagnose the original motherboard. The "new" motherboard is also a MS-1781, but this one has a i7-5700hq CPU.
12. I have kept the rest of the components of the PC exactly the same (SSDs, one HDD, monitor, keyboard, RAM, etc.).
13. The 970m card works flawlessly with the "new" motherboard, no glitches at all, so the card is good, as I suspected and now verified. But unfortunately:
14. The 1070 produces NO video output with this motherboard. None whatsoever, not at POST, not afterwards -- it still produces output on the older motherboard, I retested this.
14. I even flashed the newest BIOS that MSI has for the version of the GT72 with this CPU (version E1781IMS.317), but still, no output.
16. When looking at the hidden devices in Device Manager, on this "new" motherboard, I can see Windows has recognized the 1070 as "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" (I can tell by the Device Instance ID PCI: it's the correct string for the card).

I can go into a few more details, but for now, I hope this is enough to state my problem.

Can someone please help me? What can I do to get video output from the card with the "new" motherboard? I can continue using the 970m for now, but I really want to use the newer card.

[Tenoroon]

1 hour ago, giltheone said:

This is an update and a recap of whatever I have written above. I posted this (almost word for word) on the MSI forums, but no one has replied, so I'm posting it here, and hopefully someone will be able to help me, since over there it seems barely anyone is willing to look at my thread. Here goes:

1. I have MSI GT72. The motherboard is a MS-1781, with a i7-4720hq CPU. For most of its lifetime I have run Windows 10 (upgraded from Windows 8.1 that it came with).
2. When I bought it some years ago (December 2015), it came with a MXM GTX 970m with 3GB VRAM.
3. After a year, I bought a new GTX 980m with 8GB VRAM. None of these two cards are GSYNC, as the monitor is not that type of monitor.
4. The 970m was (is) still good, so I simply stored it, and for the next few years I used my notebook with the 980m.
5. At the beginning of this past summer, mid June of 2022, the 980m failed in the middle of a game. It seems some capacitor on the card blew, and as far as I can tell, a power MOSFET was also damaged.
6. I decided to get a MXM GTX 1070 as a replacement -- from China, as I could only find one that would fit with the original heatsink over there. Long story short, I finally got one that works recently (I had gotten one that did not work, this is a different one).
7. In the meantime, I started using the GTX 970m again. But some problems arose after a few weeks of using this video card: the screen would suddenly become a solid (random) color (i.e. solid blue, red, orange, green, purple, white, etc.). This would happen more or less at random moments, as I logged into Windows, or after a few minutes already in Windows, usually as a large transition of the screen happened (using the magnifier to zoom in on something, for example), but not always.
8. I resorted to using the integrated graphics on the CPU, and that worked (and still does work) without problems.
9. After the new GTX 1070 arrived, it worked fine -- it posts, and produces video output to the notebook monitor, but then the exact same problems that were occurring with the GTX 970m happened almost immediately, with video either through the monitor, or through the HDMI output of the notebook. Oh, before I forget, I modded the Nvidia driver for the card to work when in Windows -- at POST, the driver is irrelevant, since the PC starts off with the GOP contained in the VBIOS.
10. I suspected that the incident in the summer may have damaged something on the motherboard connected to the MXM port, as the video glitches were exactly the same with both cards, and I thought it unlikely that both cards (the 970m and the 1070) had the same defects.
11. I bought a used (and moderately priced) motherboard off eBay to test this, as I don't have the equipment to fully diagnose the original motherboard. The "new" motherboard is also a MS-1781, but this one has a i7-5700hq CPU.
12. I have kept the rest of the components of the PC exactly the same (SSDs, one HDD, monitor, keyboard, RAM, etc.).
13. The 970m card works flawlessly with the "new" motherboard, no glitches at all, so the card is good, as I suspected and now verified. But unfortunately:
14. The 1070 produces NO video output with this motherboard. None whatsoever, not at POST, not afterwards -- it still produces output on the older motherboard, I retested this.
14. I even flashed the newest BIOS that MSI has for the version of the GT72 with this CPU (version E1781IMS.317), but still, no output.
16. When looking at the hidden devices in Device Manager, on this "new" motherboard, I can see Windows has recognized the 1070 as "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" (I can tell by the Device Instance ID PCI: it's the correct string for the card).

I can go into a few more details, but for now, I hope this is enough to state my problem.

Can someone please help me? What can I do to get video output from the card with the "new" motherboard? I can continue using the 970m for now, but I really want to use the newer card.

It is most likely you are experiencing one of these two problems:

1: Those standard MXM 3.0 1070's are iffy, and can seem to work flawlessly in one motherboard, but refuse to work in others. Keep in mind, they are basically "Frankenstein" GPU's, they really shouldn't work.

2: I too have a GT72VR motherboard (it originally came with a 6700hq and 1070). This motherboard does NOT POST with a non MSI branded GPU in it. I tried a Dell 860M and it refused to work, but as soon as I put in my 1070, it works great.

My assumption would be that despite buying what is seemingly the same revision motherboard, it's slightly different (i.e. the 5700hq instead of the 4720hq) and doesn't allow non MSI branded GPU's to work. It would make sense to believe that MSI implemented some feature on their newer GT72 boards that will only allow MSI branded MXM GPU's to work and that the GT72's with 4th gen CPU's were the last generation of motherboards that don't have this annoying feature. This would explain why your original 970m still works.

Sadly, the problem is probably from your 1070. If you can, try to return it, and if you can't, you could probably sell it on here or on Ebay with the context that it should work, but can't be verified. 

 

[giltheone]

@Tenoroon, thank you. I figured there were slight differences between the motherboards -- or at least, I speculated that was the case.

Before losing all hope, I will try to use a flash programmer to flash an appropriate MSI VBIOS onto the card. I had tried that with the first 1070 that I bought, before I realized that card had actual visible defects on the board (at least a couple of caps were missing, and I suspect the chip itself or the VRAM modules may have been soldered improperly on that one. Oh, that one was from a different seller at Amazon, not eBay).

Who knows, maybe using an appropriate official MSI VBIOS might make it work -- I am comparing the VBIOS of the card working card with an official MSI card (with the same version), and there are a few very small differences: exactly 30 bytes in total scattered throughout (I used a hex-code editor to compare the files). I have to be hopeful that may be enough. Otherwise, the only other option is to diagnose and repair the "old" motherboard -- I am certain I can do it with the correct equipment, which I may be able to borrow from someone over here.

I will also contact the seller. Maybe they can help -- they did ask what motherboard I had before they shipped the 1070 to make sure it was compatible with my laptop. Maybe the have the correct solution. They were very polite and attentive when I ordered the card.

And if I can't solve the problem and return it, I still have the option you mention.

[Csupati]

On 1/2/2023 at 5:57 PM, giltheone said:

@Tenoroon, thank you. I figured there were slight differences between the motherboards -- or at least, I speculated that was the case.

Before losing all hope, I will try to use a flash programmer to flash an appropriate MSI VBIOS onto the card. I had tried that with the first 1070 that I bought, before I realized that card had actual visible defects on the board (at least a couple of caps were missing, and I suspect the chip itself or the VRAM modules may have been soldered improperly on that one. Oh, that one was from a different seller at Amazon, not eBay).

Who knows, maybe using an appropriate official MSI VBIOS might make it work -- I am comparing the VBIOS of the card working card with an official MSI card (with the same version), and there are a few very small differences: exactly 30 bytes in total scattered throughout (I used a hex-code editor to compare the files). I have to be hopeful that may be enough. Otherwise, the only other option is to diagnose and repair the "old" motherboard -- I am certain I can do it with the correct equipment, which I may be able to borrow from someone over here.

I will also contact the seller. Maybe they can help -- they did ask what motherboard I had before they shipped the 1070 to make sure it was compatible with my laptop. Maybe the have the correct solution. They were very polite and attentive when I ordered the card.

And if I can't solve the problem and return it, I still have the option you mention.

Maybe you shoud try an unlocked bios for it if its exist, other than that is should be a plug and play upgrade, AW 17 , Clevo series just work fine with pascal series with both edp and optimus method . Or try an msi 1070 from a never modell maybe the heatsink are compatible .
https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/msi.1015/GT72S 6QE 980m upgrade to 1070/ yep its kind of working i think they used the msi 10 series and they mention that You need to use the gt72vr gpu heatsink. 1060 is okay but they found some bugs with the 1070 mostly with external display at startup.

[giltheone]

UPDATE:

I had to buy another (used) motherboard with a 4th generation processor. I had already spent time and money into this, so I decided to go all in. I got the MS-17811 motherboard with the Intel i7-4980hq -- a beast of a processor.

And now the GTX 1070 card works without a hitch. Of course I modded the Nvidia driver; I used NVCleanstall to have it "signed", and I am now using this exact same PC to write this message.

I am rather impressed with this rig: both the CPU and the GPU are monsters. The only drawback is that the CPU does run hotter than either the 4720hq or the 5700hq, even though it has the same TDP. The GPU seems fine as is, and without any overclock it performs better than the original GTX 970m or the GTX 980m with which I had upgraded (and before it died).

Unfortunately the heatsinks for the GT72vr or any other newer GT72 models don't fit the motherboard: the screws of the CPU part of the heatsink that go onto the X-bracket are at slightly different positions for those models. Bummer, because it has three heatpipes for the CPU and/or the GPU. I will see if somehow I can add some extra heatpipes, maybe I can do that, but it will require a careful redesign on my part.

Anyhow, I am happy with this as it stands 🙂

Edited September 8, 2023 by giltheone
Spelling and punctuation, clarifying some sentences

[gpixel]

I wish I had found this thread sooner. you and i have basically been doing the same thing since 2018. however, I started with the 5700hq and then went to a 4710hq. i always wondered if Msi purposely blocked the 1070 from working with the 5700hq and this thread just confirmed it. and it makes sense why they would because the 5700hq/5950hq are monstrous processors. the 6820hk over locked to 4ghz only matches my old 5700hq(3.7ghz) in firestrike.

 

I am currently running a Frankenstein gt72 6qd(6820hk) 32gb ddr4 overclocked ram from 2133 cl15 to 2400 cl12 and the 1070. I tried some patriot 2400mhz ram but the imc did not like it so I stuck with the stock sk hynix and overclocked them. I had to mod the heatsink for the GPU as there is a chunk of metal that prevents it from sitting flush on the vrms(msi version). this also applies to the 2qe/2qd heatsink. 

 

when the graphics card is first installed on the laptop I would get a fuzzy screen because of the improper driver. however, after the modded driver is installed everything works as it should. I think I was very lucky to get a good card as there were issues with the gt62vr/gt72vr versions where the card would shutdown I think. there's complaints in the MSI forums about these models. I believe my particular card came from a gt83vr.

 

the way I mod my driver is a little different than you. I don't use nvflash to sign the driver. instead I just boot up windows with "disabled driver signature" then install it that way. I found the easiest way to mod the driver was to delete all the 1070 entries and keep one. the device id at the bottom is the one I kept "1ba1" for non gsync model gt72 laptop. 1be1 is the gsync model I believe

[giltheone]

On 10/8/2023 at 3:05 AM, gpixel said:

I wish I had found this thread sooner. you and i have basically been doing the same thing since 2018. however, I started with the 5700hq and then went to a 4710hq. i always wondered if Msi purposely blocked the 1070 from working with the 5700hq and this thread just confirmed it. and it makes sense why they would because the 5700hq/5950hq are monstrous processors. the 6820hk over locked to 4ghz only matches my old 5700hq(3.7ghz) in firestrike.

 

I am currently running a Frankenstein gt72 6qd(6820hk) 32gb ddr4 overclocked ram from 2133 cl15 to 2400 cl12 and the 1070. I tried some patriot 2400mhz ram but the imc did not like it so I stuck with the stock sk hynix and overclocked them. I had to mod the heatsink for the GPU as there is a chunk of metal that prevents it from sitting flush on the vrms(msi version). this also applies to the 2qe/2qd heatsink. 

 

when the graphics card is first installed on the laptop I would get a fuzzy screen because of the improper driver. however, after the modded driver is installed everything works as it should. I think I was very lucky to get a good card as there were issues with the gt62vr/gt72vr versions where the card would shutdown I think. there's complaints in the MSI forums about these models. I believe my particular card came from a gt83vr.

 

the way I mod my driver is a little different than you. I don't use nvflash to sign the driver. instead I just boot up windows with "disabled driver signature" then install it that way. I found the easiest way to mod the driver was to delete all the 1070 entries and keep one. the device id at the bottom is the one I kept "1ba1" for non gsync model gt72 laptop. 1be1 is the gsync model I believe

Oops. I hadn't been here in a few weeks... Cool that you got your computer working.

I ended up undervolting the CPU, and that has kept the computer cooler -- the GPU doesn't seem to get that warm, so for now, I'm fine as is. The i7-4980hq CPU is better than I expected and it has been stable with the undervolt, so I am still happy.

I am, however, dreading the end of life support for Windows 10. I know there are workarounds for installing Windows 11, but I'm hating the OS. And since in any case, the workarounds will still require a completely fresh install, I may just opt for a Linux distro, and game using Proton. For most of my work, Linux is actually better, with the exception of having to use Microsoft Office for many of the required paperwork I have to constantly submit, and Libre Office, or Open Office may not be sufficiently compatible. But we'll see, There's still a couple of years before the end of support for Win10.