Graphics Card upgrade for M6800 ?

The part that you have bolded is determined by the motherboard. It cannot be overridden by the vBIOS (or we could load a custom vBIOS to change the ID and we wouldn't need INF mods). 15CD corresponds to Dell Precision M6800 (Optimus enabled). 05CD is the same for Optimus disabled. 15CC and 05CC are for Dell Precision M4800, for example.

The lines that you have selected don't actually determine whether or not the driver can be installed. Those are basically variables pointing to the card names and they just named them with the device ID for simplicity. The real compatibility dealbreaker are the lines that look like this (bolded part):

%NVIDIA_DEV.11B8.15CD.1028% = Section040, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11B8&SUBSYS_15CD1028

Same issue, though, they reference the "15CD" specifically. The only 15CD entries that are in the file are for the K3100M, K4100M, K5100M, and K2200M for some reason. If you have a M6800 but not one of those cards, an INF mod will be needed. Similarly, if you had these cards but in a different system, you would have to modify the INF file to load the driver for them.

Except, for some devices they leave out the subsystem ID and include only vendor and device IDs, which is valid in an INF file. (The desktop card entries are set up this way, if I recall.) If there is an entry for the GeForce 980M that matches the vendor and device ID and doesn't specify the subsystem ID then you will be able to load it without an INF mod. (I only have Quadro drivers downloaded/extracted at the moment so I cannot quickly check this.)

An example that I found in the Quadro INF files is:
%NVIDIA_DEV.11FC% = Section016, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11FC
...which is a Quadro K2100M with no subsystem ID specified, so it would work in any board if you had such a card.

 

I am helping a friend of mine to upgrade his M6800 with a gtx980m.
When I open the static bag I found out some scratches on the R22 chips.Is this normal?
I just want to be sure the card is gona work before trying to install it.
Anyone?

 

I just took some card photos, the R22 chips on my Quadro M5000M look pristine by comparison to this.
That said, I'd probably go ahead with the install anyway... Those seem like beefy components (I think they handle voltage/power regulation) and scuffs on the outside probably won't impact their behavior.

 

Interesting. The nv_dispi.inf file includes lines for the 980M. This was the case for the 390 drivers I initially installed, as well as the 417 drivers I updated to.

Code:

 grep "13D7" nv_dispi.inf
%NVIDIA_DEV.13D7%           = Section084, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7              
%NVIDIA_DEV.13D7%           = Section084, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7              
%NVIDIA_DEV.13D7%           = Section083, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7              
NVIDIA_DEV.13D7 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M"

That would explain why the driver mod was not necessary for me for the 980M. But that would also imply it shouldn't be necessary for anyone with a 980M upgrade.

 

Indeed, assuming that all 980M have the 13D7 device ID. I wonder if this is a recent(ish) change. I seem to remember that an INF mod was required in the past. Maybe I'm just thinking about Quadro M5000M though. There have been a number of upgrade stories for both.

[Edit]
Found a post from late 2015 indicating that an INF mod was required back then...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0-owners-thread.682401/page-306#post-10165268

 

Yep, I just checked an older driver that I had laying around (368, from 2016 for eGPU purposes) and it does not have the entries for 13D7 in nv_dispi.inf

The other device id in the driver files for 980M is 1617, I'm guessing that's for the 4GB variant and it would still require a modded inf to install the driver.

I wonder if 980M got included with the desktop cards in order support some of the USFF game boxes that have been coming out. (Or maybe to support mining farms?) It's also interesting that there are blanket entries for the Kepler based Quadro mobile cards in the GeForce drivers.

 

Ok to begin with...... which .inf file are you modifying? Second, and I'm using your example here ........ should I try and substitute NVIDIA_DEV.13D9.05CD.103C = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M" for NVIDIA_DEV.13FA.06DA.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro M3000M" ?

 

What is your hardware ID as reported by Device Manager?
(Should be in a format like: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_153F1028&REV_A1)

 

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D9&SUBSYS_05CD1028&REV_A1

 

Ok. I am assuming that you have Optimus disabled right now. If you turn it on, the ID should change to
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D9&SUBSYS_15CD1028&REV_A1

Try this replacement against nvdmi.inf. (Find and replace all occurrences of the left string with the right string.)

NVIDIA_DEV.13FA.06DA.1028 => NVIDIA_DEV.13D9.15CD.1028
VEN_10DE&DEV_13FA&SUBSYS_06DA1028 => VEN_10DE&DEV_13D9&SUBSYS_15CD1028

If it takes, you card will be reported as a Quadro M3000M in Device Manager (this is just text and doesn't change anything with regards to the card's performance; we can fix it later if you like). Not sure if it'll work, I've never attempted to use Quadro as a base for a GeForce card in an INF mod before, but same NVIDIA driver is used for both cards so it may well be fine.

If it doesn't work, I'll see about downloading an actual GeForce set of drivers and see if I can find any 965M entries that appear to support Optimus to try to use as the base... I usually only have Quadro ones sitting around. Strangely, the GeForce drivers also support Quadro cards but not vice versa.


My M6800 (for P5000 vBIOS flash) is supposed to arrive today, but with the midwest winter weather going on and no tracking update from FedEx since Monday, I don't think that I'm going to get it...