Graphics Card upgrade for M6800 ?

It worked and works well....... thank you thank you

 

Did you get the M6800?
If so,and you have the time.....could you show us a step by step procedure to intall it,as well as the right thermal pads and thickness to be installed in the new card?
Thanks a lot.

 

No, a delivery attempt was made Friday but I was not available to sign. For some reason, heading to the local distribution center to pick it up is not an option for this package. I have requested that the package be delayed to Thursday 2/7 because that is the next time that I am sure that I will be available to sign for it. The Dell manual for this machine shows all of the steps for swapping out the GPU. @DynamiteZerg has posts earlier in this thread about the installation. You can use the existing thermal pads (that is what I am planning to do).

There are two different NVIDIA heatsinks for the M6800 and they have the same part number. You need the heatsink that doesn't have a divider around where the VRMs go. You can check eBay and easily find photos of both types. If my M6800 has the wrong heatsink then I will be doing a poor / best effort job installing. I only need it to be in there long enough to flash the vBIOS (this could probably be done with no heatsink installed at all), and then it will be going into my M6700, where I have already confirmed that it fits.

 

i just received a Win-10 M6800. the seller listed as having only the Intel iGPU. i'm leaning towards an M3000M or M4 card. i'll have to get a vBIOS to flash and modify the INF.

-- if there's no heatsink included in M6800, (for Maxwell cards) will i need one that does or doesn't have a divider for the VRMs?

 

With just an Intel GPU, I am pretty sure the HDMI and DisplayPort will be non-functional (until you install a discrete GPU).

Yes, the heatsink without the "divider" is ideal, otherwise I think you will have to find a way to cut that bit off of the heatsink. (The appropriate heatsink can be found cheap on eBay, that's probably the way to go.)

I don't think that you'll need a vBIOS change to install a Maxwell card but an INF mod will be necessary. (It's not needed for GeForce 980M anymore, apparently, that is now a fully ready-to-go drop-in replacement assuming you have the right heatsink.)

 

thanks for this info. i've been reading too much and you guys are awesome in the time and effort you put into NBR.

i' like to have a powerful system (though not a gamer) just P-shop and Audio. the m3000m is 75wts and since i'm in Arizona 100+ degree heat, i figure it a good choice. however, the 980M can be had from overseas for $100+ more than the m3000m (with X-bracket).. but it's 125wts. so if i'm not a power-user, will the higher thermals of 980M make a difference much.. or does it stay cool if i'm not pushing the GPU?

plus i notice the most recent nVidia driver (Jan 2019) from the Dell site has this file: nvdm.inf
and many card entries near the bottom below the Driver Library Installation Disk 1:
NVIDIA_DEV.0DDA.14A3.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro 2000M"
to
NVIDIA_DEV.1BB6.17B1.1028 = "NVIDIA Quadro P5000"
but it only goes up to GTX 960M.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=c0cy9/
would this be the driver i'd have to modify? it applies to all Quadro Mx000M.

 

If you install a Quadro then yes you have found the driver that you'll need to modify. You can use either the driver from Dell or the driver from NVIDIA, and you'll have to change a hardware ID to match whatever is showing up in your system. (Two different find-and-replace operations are needed and I spelled it out for another user just a few posts back.) If you install a GeForce 980M then you can just use the GeForce drivers from NVIDIA's site and you shouldn't have to modify anything.

Note also that not all X-brackets are the same. If you get one that didn't come from a Precision system there is a chance that it won't accept the same type of screws. I'm not totally sure how to check this, the ones that came on my card have always worked fine.

I don't think that there would be a significant thermal issue with the GeForce 980M even if you are in a warm environment. When the GPU is not taxed then it should run cool. (The GPU can actually fully power down if you have Optimus/graphics switching turned on.) Worst case, the card starts to throttle the speed down a bit if it warms up to around 87C. My M5000M (similar specs as 980M) is able to maintain 74/75C under 100% load with the fan running full blast.

 

I got my 1070 on Monday and installed it. Partial success!

I have a dual boot system with WIn10 and Linux Mint 19.1. I first tried booting to an USB linux installer, and it booted up just fine, albeit with the HD4600 as the primary video card. I rebooted into my installed linux, which was already configured to use the NVidia XServer with my 980m. It booted just fine! External HDMI/Display port worked fine, system would sleep and wake just fine. I am not running Bumblebee/Optimus under Linux, just using NVidia Prime. I didn't even update the drivers after installing the 1070.

I have the linux version of Unigine Heaven installed, so I ran the benchmark and got almost double the score of my 980m. (980m => 1200, 1070 => 2300) and topped out at 73C. So it appears to be fully functional under Linux.

But...

So far with Win10, all I get is ACPI_BIOS_ERROR when I boot. Being able to successfully boot into Linux seems to imply that this is not an sBIOS/vBIOS issue, but rather something particular with Win10.

My system is currently configured for Legacy boot. I tried all the boot options under the F12 menu for Win10, and they all received the same error. I also tried loading Win10 via grub, but still received the same error. It shows the windows icon, starts the spinner, then BSOD with ACPI_BIOS_ERROR. My F12 menu has an option for UEFI boot (same error), but I think that's actually a hybrid, loading the EFI files with a compatibility module. My Win10 has an MBR, not a GPT partition.

Things that are one the list to try:

* Put the system in full UEFI/secure boot mode and try loading Win10 installer from a UEFI usb. I think this will be quicker and more reversible that converting my SSD, and would probably rule out driver issues as well.
* Remove the card, remove all relevant video drivers via DDU and reinstall card and boot.
* Remove the card, try disabling/uninstalling ACPI from windows, reinstall card and boot.
* See if I can boot into DOS or Windows PE
* See if I use the eGPU setup tool to fiddle with card initialization and then chainload windows.

 

If you read through the early pages of this thread... This is exactly the same thing that happened with the P5000 in the M6800. @iieeann tried many things and was not able to get around it. (Clean install, existing install, UEFI, legacy, it even happens loading Windows setup so it isn't being caused by the NVIDIA driver.)

The solution discovered later is to load an early "engineering sample" vBIOS... Something changed with the "production" vBIOS for Pascal cards that junks up Windows booting on this system but it works with earlier pre-release versions.

We have such a vBIOS that works with the Quadro P5000 but I haven't seen any for other Pascal cards. The person to ask would probably be @RMSMajestic, he was the source for the working vBIOS for the P5000 and he mentioned yesterday that he may have access to some ES vBIOS images for the 1070. Fortunately, since the system is functional under Linux, you can use Linux version of nvflash to change the vBIOS.

 

I did read through all those P5000 threads as well as the 1060 upgrade thread and the 7710 upgrade thread, so the ACPI_BIOS_ERROR wasn't unexpected. It's wasn't clear, though, if it would 'just boot' Linux or actually work.