Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Well, at least trying to...

Initial try - fail. Physically card fits in MXM slot perfectly, no problems with heatsink fit either.

But the screen stays black after boot. My initial thoughts were that it simply won't even start booting, so reverted back to original Quadro. Search of BIOS white/blacklisting proved nothing suspicious.

Now I realised that possible it did try to boot, only display output was wrong (maybe external display). Silly that I didn't disable boot on passwords, so it's possible was just sitting there on password entry screen (invisible due too display being off). Need to connect speakers to listen if its beeping and for how long.

Will try more this week. If HD6970 will not work at all, I am thinking about trying HD5870 or NVidia cards - may be will be more luck with these.

Reply 1 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Very interesting... I know many aren't really interested in tweaking the W701 into a gaming beast, but I'm definitely curious as to how it'll turn out. Have you considered attaching a second monitor to see if it will output in that, just in case?

Reply 2 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Yeah, trying external output is obvious choice.

First of all, I will just disable boot on passwords and see if HDD starts blinking, if so, then I will try Fn video output switch, second monitor or remote vPro connection to see.

Its possible that RGB LED display needs some specific initialization, as I know that Lenovo provides customized VBIOS on their Quadros.

Reply 3 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Im interested in finding if it will work even though I dont game anymore.

Reply 4 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Was wondering where u got the card and how much. Interested in getting one too.

Reply 5 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Wow - I'm going to have to watch this topic. If you manage to succeed with this project, you'll be giving a major boost to my plans of picking up a W701ds later this year. If I can toss in a decent gaming graphics card, I could get rid of my desktop for good!

Reply 6 : Upgrading W701 to Radeon HD6970M

Fail. When speakers connected, there are one long and two short beeps - means it didn't initialise BIOS/hardware and watchdog timer has triggered.



I have procured the Alienware HD5870 - result is still the same, perfect physical fit, but won't boot into even initial BIOS screen, one long two short beeps.



So I went deeper and analysed the SBIOS. It did contain plenty of checks for "NVidia" hardware IDs, and even some nasty stuff in MXM init code (like calling int 10 inside int 15 MXM structure callback). So I tried my best and tried to mod the SBIOS to eliminate all these hardware ID checks/wierdnesses. But result is still the same - won't accept third party card, one long two short beeps.



So I have to conclude that while slot is indeed MXM electrically, there seem to be some very serious MXM software non-compliance going on, preventing from use of any generic MXM3 cards. Quick analysis shown that official Lenovo Quadro cards actually use a VBIOS specifically made for Lenovo, so probably some sort of wierd custom code to interact with W701 system side is there.



I am now going to seemingly last available option and going to try upgrading to Quadro 3800M. SBIOS has option ROM VBIOS copies for 2800M and 3800M in it (to ease updating I assume), so hopefully even non-Lenovo 3800M will work.



P.S. some strings in the BIOS were quite entertaining examples of Engrish

Code:

Devide Error 
DXE is located fail. It will cause shadow function fail