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[Guide] Getting Nvidia cards to work on Thinkpad P71

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From what I gathered online, this won't work with P50/51/52 P72 because they all have soldered GPUs. And like what it said in your linked page, they have no vbios chip so hackintosh has no idea where to read the vbios from. Try load vbios, if that doesn't work, you are out of luck.

I suspect Nvidia mobile cards on hackintosh is only possible when
1. integrated graphics card can be disabled in hardware, meaning the laptop has to have a MUXed design. (which is the case for Thinkpad P series)
2. The nvidia card has MXM or max-Q design where it has its own vbios chip (EEPROM) that are not shared with other devices on board.

Could you link something that confirms that the ThinkPad P72 won't work?
 
Could you link something that confirms that the ThinkPad P72 won't work?
I have people in discord group with P52 and P50. It didn't work for them. Not sure if P72 is any different, from what I found online, Lenovo changed P72 design and GPUs are all soldered like P50 series, so I assume it's the same.

Try extract Vbios with GPUZ, if you get an error message saying your BIOS is not supported, then it means my guide won't work for you.
 
I have people in discord group with P52 and P50. It didn't work for them. Not sure if P72 is any different, from what I found online, Lenovo changed P72 design and GPUs are all soldered like P50 series, so I assume it's the same.

Try extract Vbios with GPUZ, if you get an error message saying your BIOS is not supported, then it means my guide won't work for you.

Since the GPU is soldered and does not have a separate VBIOS chip, do you think there is any way to flash the BIOS to a similar effect?
 
I have been able to flash a new VBIOS to my P50 using NVFlash with no error. I cannot extract using GPU-Z however, so I assume it's the inability to read the VBIOS that prevents this from working.
 
I have people in discord group with P52 and P50. It didn't work for them. Not sure if P72 is any different, from what I found online, Lenovo changed P72 design and GPUs are all soldered like P50 series, so I assume it's the same.

Try extract Vbios with GPUZ, if you get an error message saying your BIOS is not supported, then it means my guide won't work for you.
May I ask what exact model of P71 do you own? Is it by any chance the one with XEON CPU?
 
I have been able to flash a new VBIOS to my P50 using NVFlash with no error. I cannot extract using GPU-Z however, so I assume it's the inability to read the VBIOS that prevents this from working.

Wait, so does that mean that you can technically use qiuboujun's method for your P50?
 
May I ask what exact model of P71 do you own? Is it by any chance the one with XEON CPU?
My specs is e3 1505m v6 with quadro p4000 but I don't think CPU has anything to do with it.
 
I have been able to flash a new VBIOS to my P50 using NVFlash with no error. I cannot extract using GPU-Z however, so I assume it's the inability to read the VBIOS that prevents this from working.
That's interesting, my friends had p50 and p52, both reporting unable to detect EEPROM when using nvflash.

I have attached a tool to verify vbios rom. Can you drag your vbios rom into #Nvidia_ROM_Info.bat inside the folder and upload a screenshot?
Also, since you flashed your vbios, have you tried to boot with nvidia GPU? I believe the only clover graphics setting needed is nvidiawebdriver.
 

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That's interesting, my friends had p50 and p52, both reporting unable to detect EEPROM when using nvflash.

I have attached a tool to verify vbios rom. Can you drag your vbios rom into #Nvidia_ROM_Info.bat inside the folder and upload a screenshot?
Also, since you flashed your vbios, have you tried to boot with nvidia GPU? I believe the only clover graphics setting needed is nvidiawebdriver.

Sorry for the stupid question - but what is the point of extracting the VBIOS with GPU-Z? Also, is it possible to nonetheless flash the VBIOS when the GPU is soldered?
 
Since the GPU is soldered and does not have a separate VBIOS chip, do you think there is any way to flash the BIOS to a similar effect?
No, you can't. The problem is not the vbios itself. The VBIOS in the BIOS is completely fine. The problem right now is that MACOS, much like GPUZ, can only read VBIOS from EEPROM. So when you have a laptop that put a lot of devices info in a single EEPROM, MACOS has no idea where to look for the information, thus fail to assign a correct driver. Lenovo already has code written in BIOS to help windows and Linux to directly use VBIOS inside the BIOS, so usually, that's not a problem.
My situation is unique because P71 uses MXM design for its graphics card. It's a standard design from Nvidia, which includes a separate VBIOS chip on MXM board. Since it's only used to verify with BIOS and not as functional VBIOS, Lenovo didn't even bother to put all the data there. It's kinda like a corrupted VBIOS in a sense. By flashing it with proper VBIOS I was able to have a functional VBIOS that both GPUZ and MACOS can see.
The only two models with MXM design are P70 and P71, that's why I come to my conclusion that these two are the only ones can use Nvidia in Hackintosh.
 
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