M4700 GPU Upgrade

@mx90 The vbios from your link is for a M2000 card:

c:\nvflash>nvflash64 --version GM206.rom
NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (Version 5.531.0)
Copyright (C) 1993-2018, NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.


Sign-On Message : GM206 VBIOS (HWDIAG)
Build GUID : Blank
IFR Subsystem ID : 1028-1190
Subsystem Vendor ID : 0x1028
Subsystem ID : 0x1190
Version : 84.06.51.00.05
Image Hash : A58D50FFF1E4A70749FDD3E6852BCBEB
Product Name : GM206 Board
Device Name(s) : Quadro M2000

So your card is M2000 and not M2200. That would explain why you get GPU mismatch when trying to flash M2200 vbios. Too bad, I was hoping I would get my issue resolved when flashing the original HP vbios. Anyway, you have not mentioned what is the problem you have with this card?

 

How odd...
M2000 is a desktop card (the mobile version is M2000M, it was right before they stopped slapping "M" on the end of all of their mobile parts). To be clear, this is the vBIOS that came on your card and not the one that you were trying to load onto it? If that's the case, it may actually be an M2000M and they just dropped the trailing "M" from the device name in the vBIOS.

So, good news, M2000M vBIOS images are out there and you could try loading a Dell one and then see if the device will start working properly. Bad news, M2000M is only 62% as fast as the M2200. (If that's really what you have.)

[Edit]
I Googled for "NVIDIA_DEV.1430" (since you mentioned 1430 showing at the start of the device ID for your card) and it does appear to be only referenced for the Quadro M2000 desktop version (not mobile). How strange. I confirmed this in the latest version NVIDIA driver INF files that I have downloaded.

[Edit 2]
I reviewed your first post again and see that you have in device manager, the card showing with a hardware ID starting with 1436, which is correct for the Quadro M2200. Did someone flash the wrong vBIOS on this thing before it got shipped to you? No wonder it doesn't work...

I think that your goal should be to get an M2200 vBIOS image loaded; and if nvflash is crashing for you under Windows, I think that you should try it under Linux where there is way less background stuff going on. (Might be an interesting crash course if you're not familiar with Linux.)

 

At this point, I'm assuming that for some reason the HP M2200's come with the vbios for the M2000 - who knows why, though! I've tried flashing with Windows 10, but that made no difference. I've also been trying to get a linux distribution to boot off a 16gb usb drive, but so far I haven't had any luck. I'd welcome a link to a quality guide!

The only issue is that the card identifies itself as 1436 - the code for the M2200. The only evidence that points to it being the M2000 Desktop card is the vbios that came with the card, which the seller told me came from an HP laptop in the following message:
"These cards are pulled from HP ZBook 17 or 15 G4 Notebook.
We know for fact VBios is part HP Bios.
Drivers you can try this drivers from HP:

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp90001-90500/sp90105.exe

If you do not have HP system just simply unzip it

Thanks"

I believe this may mean that the HP laptops have a vbios for the M2000 Desktop card, but who knows! So far, I've been unable to flash it with a dell vbios (thank you again for yours, though now I'm not sure if I should yours yours ending in .01 or the one uploaded online ending in .1C).

Is your M2200 loaded with a Dell vbios? Have you been able to flash it at all yet?

 

Which version of nvflash are you using? Also, which OS are you on when you use them? (Also, have you been able to get yours with the Dell Vbios working? If not, and if you're trying to get this to work in an HP, maybe we should swap our cards LOL)

 

@mx90 You can see the nvflash version in my last comment (Version 5.531.0). Also, I do not judge by the vbios version that your card is m2000, I judge by the Device Name(s) : Quadro M2000. Also both my original vbios and the one from techpowerup are ~ 180 KB, while your is 229 KB, so definitely a different card!!!

The MXM cards for Zbook 15 and 17 inches are totally different, the first are 3a cards, the second are 3b cards. Those have different dimmensions and a 3b card would not fit out of the box in a laptop designed for 3a. Can you take a photo of your card and post it here?

As I said in previous post, my card is working with both the original vbios and techpowerup vbios, but only works via external monitor, it doesnt lit up the laptop display. So that is why I want to flash it with original HP vbios, to see if that would fix it. Otherwise, I might as well sell it, cause it aint gonna be usable for me.

 

Here's a picture of my card. It's certainly 3.0a - that's the only size that will fit in my laptop. I'm just as confused as you are in regards to the vbios differences, but just so you know my computer identifies the hardware as m2200 in every way - I'm pretty damn sure it's not the desktop M2000 (and definitely not the laptop M2000). Also, thanks for pointing out that version number!





I have a strong suspicion that if you manage to flash your card with my vbios & vice versa (although I'm not sure if I should use your vbios or the 1C one), our problems will be solved. I'm still having problems trying to run nvflash outside of Windows, so I dunno if I can or can't do it just yet.

Really though - do let me know if you would like to trade adapters with me if you find that you are having difficulty trying to flash to the 84.06.51.00.05 M2000 Desktop vbios using nvflash. I'm gonna try your version now, and if that doesn't work I'll be continuing to try and flash it using Linux (so far both bootable Linux drives I've made have not functioned




edit: Turns out I had previously tried that version, but it doesn't matter anyway because the vbios on mine gives it the wrong board ID and so needs a version of nvflash that ignores it.

 

So, I got nvflash working in Linux. The only problem is that the Joe Dirt versions that would allow me to flash my card show the same error as in Windows!



For now, I suppose I'll be trying to get ahold of Joe Dirt himself. I'm thinking that only the Geforce cards are supported, not the quadros..

edit: I wanted to note that the normal linux version of nvflash did detect my card (as an M2200)

edit2: I'll try the versions that crashed next.

edit3: Those versions apparently were never released for Linux!

 

@mx90 It is strange that GPU-Z does not show any bios version for the video card .. that is definitely worrying in my opinion. Also not detecting your video card is also a worrysome. My Zbook does not have Optimus, so it only works when the nvidia quadro works. I am afraid to force flash your vbios because of those reasons and would gladly await someone to provide vbios from HP Zbook. Or as you say we could try a swap between our cards as last resort, but not sure if it would be easy. Where are you from?

Edit: Why do you insist on using Joe Whatever version of nvflash? I am using the regular version from techpowerup site and it works just fine.

 

I've read that the M2200 is based on the 965M, and his tool was made for this & other 900 series Geforce cards (See: https://www.overclock.net/forum/71-...passed-gtx-950-960-970-980-980ti-titan-x.html). The other versions with the cert checks removed crash when I use the Dell vbios. I just went to try and use them in Linux, but it turns out that there are no other such versions made for linux to attempt the flash with (at least that I could find). I believe the normal version works for you because Dell does not use the M2000 Desktop vbios for the M2200, so there is no hardware identification error. I'm about to contact HP now regarding this, actually. I'll post what they say here.

Btw, I'm in Massachusetts (near Boston). It'd be great if we could swap them in-person or through the mail, but it'd be a shame if others with the same problem in the future are S.O.L!

edit: GPU-Z does show the bios version sometimes, I'm not really sure why it seems to go back and forth.

 

The normal version of nvflash works fine for the M2200 I have, what issues do you have with it? Have you tried the latest one from the techpowerup site and to save the vbios from it? Also thinking about it now, I suspect the reason why GPU-Z might not provide any info is it does not fully identifies your card, after all it shows with warnings in device manager. I actually have not had to install quadro driver with modified .inf, the one from the nvidia site for m2200 installed just fine without any errors and recognized card immediately.

So try to get Windows to recognize your card properly, and you might get GPU-Z and nvflash to work successfully with it.

P.S. I am from Eastern Europe, Bulgaria. It would be hard to swap over mail, there would be export/import tax etc.

Edit: I just tried the nvflash version of this Joe character, it directly says "No nvidia card present", while the regular version works fine at the same time. Please disable the M2200 card from Device Manager and then run nvflash64 --save test.rom and check the output generated. Also check what nvflash64 --version test.rom would show you after that.

Edit 2: I've used to work for HP for 3 years, so I have seen how the support works from inside. They would not lift their finger for ANYTHING that is not stated as supported. And swaping video cards in laptops is definitely not something they support.