860m upgrade issue

hello there,

I just recently purchased a 860m to replace my 260m and ran into an issue.

My main problem is that I have a black/white screen at boot with the 860m installed, even with an external monitor connected. I am able to get the external monitor to display if audio is disabled in BIOS, however this is less than ideal and is only permitting me to enter BIOS and Windows on an external monitor only.

What I have done so far is updated my BIOS to A09 and made sure the EC update stuck (had issues at first) and have obviously downloaded and modded the latest available driver for the 860m and installed it. GPU-Z confirms the card is what it should be (Keplar 1152 shader variant) and have even ran a few benchmarks to make sure it was working properly.

Aside from the above, I have not flashed the card yet. I assume that since it's a Blue dell branded card that vBIOS modification wouldn't be required? I thought that all I needed to do was mod the drivers and that was it? Any insight would be helpful because I'd really like to salvage the card and not return it.

ALSO, since the upgrade didn't go as envisioned, I have reinstalled the 260m for the time being. While the card works, for some reason now it doesn't show the BIOS splashscreen or windows loading screen on the laptop's LCD - it only displays on an external monitor. The laptop's LCD monitor only comes on after the Windows boot screen ends. Any idea how to fix that?

 

You need to update vbios of the GTX 860M. Since the external monitor works fine, you should be able to fo that fairly easy.

1. Disabled audio in bios (A09) and get the 860m fully working including the hdmi audio drivers. at this point my pc green screened but thats ok. I used the nvidiaoem 347.52 and uploaded a new inf file for you that will need to be dropped in the display.driver folder of the nvidia folder

2. Enable audio in the bios.

3. Restart into safe mode and uninstall the generic High Definiton Audio Codec drivers from device manager.

4. Restart again and enter safe mode to install the latest dell audio drivers. Once this is done you should see the IDT control panel in control panel.

5. Disable all sound cards under Sound, video and game controllers including the IDT AND NVIDIA DRIVERS. For good measure also disable high definiton audio controller under system devices. Also go the the volume settings and set windows sounds to no sound.

6. Restart into full windows. You should be able to boot even with audio enabled in the bios now.

7. once in full windows reinstall the IDT drivers with the idt still disabled, this will enable it and force the driver. once complete you should have sound!!! DO NOT REBOOT YET OR YOU WILL GREEN SCREEN UPON BOOT

8. make sure to leave the nvidia hdmi audio disabled!!

9. disable and renable your video card. not sure why but this solved my issues!!! NOW YOU MAY REBOOT AND ENJOY YOUR PC AGAIN!

10. open the playback devices panel and disable the idt display port. leave the rest enabled

11. reinstall the nvidiadrivers and make sure to include the hdmi drivers.

12. reboot and plugin to a displayport (i use a displayport to hdmi adapterfor my tv)

13. open playback devices again and look to see if nvidiahdmi 0 has picked up your device.

14. set your nvidiahdmi0 to default.

15. sit back and enjoy your pc again.

16. remember do not reenable the idt displayport in playback or you will yellow screen and will need to boot to safemode to disable idt audio in the device manager

Vbios here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/180888/180888

 

Thank you very much for the steps you've outlined above ! I will attempt them here in a bit.

One reason why I haven't flashed the 860m yet is because there are so many variations of this card and its hard finding an exact BIOS. While my card is the GK104 Keplar version, it is a 2GB model. The BIOS you provided a link for is a 4GB one, would it still be ok to flash it with that?

 

Are you sure? Because the 2GB version is the maxwell version of the GTX 860M, while the 4GB is the Kepler one. I didn't even know they had a maxwell 2GB MXM version of the card.

We have quite a problem here then, since the maxwell version, to my knowledge shouldn't even exist on a MXM PCB. Could you make a screenshot of your GPU-Z and send it here?

 

Yeah, I had to double check when I saw what GPU-z spit out at me.

I specifically got this 2gb 860m thinking it was the maxwell version since it has 10% better performance than the Keplar and uses less power. I'm upgrading from a 65w 260m and didn;t want to have to buy a new power supply for a better card, so I figured te Mazwell 860m was my best choice. I was pretty flabberghasted when I saw that GPU-z reporting it was a GK104 (keplar) with 1152 shaders. I had no idea there were more variations of this card other than the 4gb Keplar and the 2gb Maxwell. Apparently there are 2gb Keplars out there too?

I will reinstall the 860m and get a screenshot over in a few.

 

Once you send the GPU-Z screen we will see further. I need to know a couple of things.

 

Here's a link to the GPU-z screenshot. I also included a photo of the front and back of the GPU, as well as my HW ID. I modded the drivers a few moments ago to install the card again in Windows, so I figured I would include a screenshot of that as well.

Edit: For what it's worth, when I modded the driver, I replaced 119A.0376.1558 with 119A.02A2.1028.

https://imgur.com/a/ESfxA

 

Alright, so it is indeed a kepler card which is interesting. Take GPU-Z and make a dump of your current vBIOS, then try and flash the 4GB kepler vBIOS onto the card and see what happens.

It should work. If you want an Overclocked Edition then head over to techinferno and download it there:
https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/files/file/22-nvidia-kepler-gpus-modified-vbios-file-pack/

 

Are you crazy? Flashing a vBIOS with a different memory size will brick the card!

OP do not follow this advice. You could try svl7's GTX 860M vBIOS from here:
https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...king-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks/

 

Maxwell 860s are BGA only and the mxm versions are Kepler, often overpriced for the performance unless given up on eBay with a low starting bid.

 

This is an awesome guide! I'm trying this with my M17X R3 with a 880M from EUROCOM in it. But for some reason when I go to install the IDT drivers on Step 7. I get this error even though it's the right driver and the latest for this M17X R3.

"The hardware detected is not supported by this IDT software package. The install will be aborted"

In Step 4 when I install the IDT Drivers in Safe Mode, the IDT Control Panel doesn't appear at all, not even in the task tray.

What can I do if I can't get the driver installer to detect the hardware when I've followed every step to the letter till Step 7?