Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

First of all, enable integrated graphics in BIOS (you can do that by reset NVRAM via CMOS battery). If you have it enabled and nothing boots - you need to do some kind of trick. Find the eeprom vBIOS chip on the board (usually at upper left corner). Find the pins 1 and 8 (they located opposite to each other), connect them with something metal and boot up the system. When you pass the Dell Startup screen, you can release them. Then start ATIflash and upload your default firmware.

P.S. This is how it looks on my Nvidia GPU.

 

It looks like it must be covered by the heatsink. Is it safe to power up my GPU without a heatsink? Won't it overheat?

Edit: To clarify, there's a similar chip in the same spot, but rotated 90 degrees.

Edit further: Image of my card is here: http://imgur.com/a/oN3R6 Apologies for blur. + also added image of suspected bios chip.

I may be able to tape a wire on, put the heatsink on, and then disconnect/reconnect it to the remaining exposed pin. Please confirm that I have the correct chip first.

 

If you can't do this with heatsink on it, you should find something cool to place on GPU chip and do fast reflash under the DOS.

P.S. Here is how it looked when I tried to reflash my previous M6800 with FirePro M6100
P.S.S. Remembered some details about the operation. You shouldn't release the bridge between pins right after boot. Keep it up, boot to DOS, run atiflash -i . And only after this steps, remove the bridge. Then reflash.

 

M4600 can't run on integrated graphics with an AMD GPU present. Graphics switching is not available on this model with AMD. To use integrated graphics and the discrete GPU, you need an NVIDIA GPU, or Dell Precision M4800/M6800 or later.

 

At what point does the operation become dangerous enough that I'm better off selling the card as-is on Ebay with bad BIOS and buying a working M5100?

Edit: I think I'll probably go ahead. At least I'm learning stuff

 

If I were you, I would just reflash it. I see no danger in this kind of operation.

We need integrated graphics to reflash the AMD card. If you bridge pin 1 an 8 on the eeprom flash, system will not recognize the AMD card and will use the integrated one. Under the DOS the ATIFlash utility can recognize the card and reflash it successfully.

 

It's not working. The system will not boot with the graphics card plugged in, regardless of whether the vBIOS chip is shorted or not. Once powered on, the system can be powered off using the power button if the chip is not shorted, but must be unplugged if it is. Either way, no video output at all.

Update: OK guys I'm an idiot, pretty sure I killed my graphics chip by trying to hot-plug it. There were some sparks across the mxm bus. Any ideas for how to test if the chip is still alive in any way? Laptop looks fine, it didn't even blink.

Update update: Actually appears to be behaving the same way as before. Let's assume it's not broken (somehow.) Still not sure what steps to take next.

Oh, but for some reason the backlight turns on now occasionally?

 

Are you sure, you have shorted pin 1 and 8? I've attached the file where needed pins are shown.

And there is little chance to kill the GPU with hot-plug. I think, everything should be fine with it.

If your shorted pins are the same as the pic shows, then probably you'll need to blind flash the GPU (still, the process is the the same as with shorted pins + black screen).

 

I've shorted both 1+8 and 4+5 - I tried both, because I wasn't sure which was which. I tried doing a blind flash earlier in the thread, and that didn't appear to make any difference whatsoever, either.

 

I meant blind flash with shorted pins.