Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

You could try all the 5170m vbioses until you find one that works for your screen

 

OK, so more research suggests this is a no-go. It looks like the M4600 has an LVDS display, and all of the Dell models (7510 and 7710) that have the W5170m are eDP only. (I'm assuming that LVDS and eDP are mutually incompatible and that the vBIOS can only support one or the other.) The only other laptop that has a W5170m that I can find are the HP Zbook 15 G2 and G3, and I think HP pulls some shenanigans where they put their vBIOS in the system BIOS to limit compatibility, or something. At this point my best bet is probably to flash the card as an r9 m370x or r9 m375x, but I'm not sure where to find any vBIOS for either.

How feasible is editing the VBIOS to support LVDS (assuming that the root cause is the LVDS-eDP issue)?

 

Unfortunately the entire zbook line uses eDP. in the past I have been able to flash fire pros to the consumer equivalent, do you need the firepro features and ISV? If not you can try to find the radeon equivalent and then see if it went into any LVDS laptops.

Or go for a hail Mary and ask amd support if they have an LVDS bios for that chipset

 

Wasn't sure about the Zbook line using eDP vs LVDS, they used the term LVDS in their manual, but I'll take your word for it. The consumer equivalent of the W5170m is the r9 m375x, while the r9 m370x uses the same chip but slower clocked. Unfortunately the r9 m375x never made it into a consumer laptop as far as I can tell, and the r9 m370x never appeared in anything but the Macbook Pro, so getting a VBIOS for either seems like a long shot. And, I would have "hailed Mary" already if I could find some contact information. I doubt that the guy operating a chat line on the AMD website will have access to the vBIOS for unreleased cards

Update: Went ahead and submitted a support ticket 'cause why not, but I'll probably just sell the card on Ebay and pick up a 965m or something once @valuxin is done testing.

 

I think the LVDS might refer to the di have read a bit of zbook manuals and i dont recall lvds coming up but i suppose it could referance the dream color displays that use 50 pin lvds connectors that connect to an adapter that takes eDP input

 

K, first of all, subsystemID is not the problem - current vBIOS on your board have original subsystem ID (for example, ID of Precision M7510 and etc.). You should flash the vBIOS via CMD in Windows or under DOS - GUI don't allow to flash vBIOS with different subsystem IDs. If I can remember, this command should work just fine:

Code:

atiflash.exe -p -f 0 bios.rom

Secondly, W5170m and M5100 share the SAME hardware, so that mean you can flash M5100 with W5170m and W5170m with M5100. Just try to flash stock vBIOS from my archive.

 

Thank you Notebook Guru! I thought the M5100 and W5170m hardware looked awfully similar, but I thought that the different codenames meant that the architectures were different, or something. If it's a W5170m, though, then it's stable at higher clock speeds than the M5100. I should be able to regain that (admittedly modest) performance difference by overclocking, right?

 

W5170m GPU chip just have more ASIC quality than M5100. This means, you could overclock it higher with the same TDP. Just give it a try with stock vBIOS and then you might try overclocked one.

 

OK so I flashed it to the stock M5100 vBIOS from the overclocking thread and now it won't display on anything, internal display or external. The fans spin periodically when I power it on but nothing else happens. Can't tell if it boots into Windows or not. I guess I'll assume there was something wrong with that vBIOS and attempt a blind flash (using this guide) to the vBIOS you linked. Anything I'm missing?

 

Doesn't look like it's able to boot at all. I've tried to blind flash it 3 times and none have worked, even though it looked like it would run OK when I did a dry run with the GPU unplugged. When I try to shut down FreeDOS using ctrl+alt+delete it doesn't respond, either. Any suggestions?