Error 43 (W5170M + Precision M4800)

Hello,

So, I bought a W5170M (R9 M375) recently and it arrived today. I bought as a "replacement card" if I have some problems in the future.

The seller actually offered an option to flash for HP or Dell and you just have to say which one at checkout. Which I did and he confirmed.

The first time I tried to run it, it wasn't even detected on Windows, so only the Intel card was showing up. I cleaned the contacts and some parts with 91% isopropyl alcohol and when I tried to run this time, it was detected, so I installed drivers right after. After rebooting, the card was there, but with error 43.

Running GPU-Z and it shows the bios is "unknown" and I wasn't able to extract it. It also shows "unknown" on Pixel and Texture fillrate and on Memory Bandwidth. Memory itself shows as "0 MB".

If I try to run the computer with switchable graphics deactivated, it won't boot at all.

I know I could just contact seller directly and this will be my last option, what I want to know is: could this be a vbios issue, like he just forgot to flash Dell vbios? I have one (for Dell) in my hand, but I don't want to flash it without guaranteeing that could be a vbios issue or maybe it will be a lot harder to get my refund. Tbh, I don't even want the refund itself, because I got this card for a really good price ($25 + shipping), so I hope there is a way to "fix" it.

Thanks in advance.

 

It could be a vBIOS issue, and the card can't report to GPU-Z because it can't read itself too well. You could try flashing the right one on using NVFlash, but it could also be an issue with the card. Just try everything and when all options are exhausted, return it.

 

Well, I don't think nvflash won't work, since it's an AMD card, but I will try to flash it, then.

I'm just going to wait for a WX 4150 that I bought days ago to arrive and I'll do it in one "ride".

Thanks.

EDIT: I did use "expect" instead of "wait for" which makes more sense in Portuguese than in English, lol.

 

Ahhh, I forgot you were talking about an AMD card, this program exists, its basically NVFlash for AMD GPU's:

Link:
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-atiflash/

 

Is the card the blue HP kind or green?

My M2000M came with no VBIOS and I had similar experience. But I knew it was working because Ubuntu was picking it up. And when I used NVFlash's command in Windows to see if there was anything on it, it was FF in every block. I flashed an official HP VBIOS on it and it started working as intended.

I don't know if there's such a command to see if there's anything on it for AMD VBFlash though, but I checked that way and it was legitimately blank.

 

It's blue, which I think is for HP laptops. I read somewhere that usually these cards won't even have vbios installed on them because mobo does everything itself. Is that true?

I could use a programmer to see if only return 0s (or FFs), just to check. Chip is easily accessible.

But it's a relief that you had the same issue. I'll try to flash the Dell vbios when my WX 4150 arrives.

Thanks, guys.

 

I think that's true. The M2000M was from a Zbook G3, which had that VBIOS within its BIOS. The chip remains on both of my HP branded cards (WX4150 and M2000M) so they can be flashed. The WX4150 I have is for I think an HP Z2 Mini workstation, but I never tested to see if it had a VBIOS on it because my Zbook G2 worked but with no fan control. I'm still gonna flash a near identical VBIOS on mine, to be a Dell card instead when I have other bits for it sorted.

 

So, update for your guys:

I noticed something that was actually weird: card bios wasn't being recognized at all. If you try to flash it, it said that a "read error" happened. I also wasn't able to save the vbios directly from GPU-Z.

So, I used a programmer to do it, expecting to confirm that was a broken bios chip. For my surprise, it was recognized without any issues and I could also see that seller did what he was supposed to (flash a Dell vbios in it). I had no issues on flashing a modified vbios that I configured for my laptop and I had some suspicions that revealed to be true: after plug in on my laptop, it's still saying bios is "unknown" and I had the same issues that I had before.

What I think the real problem is: bios chip probably lost some soldering point or so, making impossible to read the bios and that's why it's not working on my Precision M4800.

I'm not going to return it, because I didn't pay much for it anyway. I'll hold it for a future ZBook and if I'm correct about this, it'll work like a charm, since I don't need to have any kind of vbios for working on this model.

Edit: Seller probably tested it on a Zbook. This is a photo from his ebay listing: