Laptop Support

[5l1v3r1]

Great project, but i want to ask if it is possible to apply the patches for laptop bioses like asus n550jk-gtx850m or lenovo y520-gtx1060?

[xCuri0]

The patches developed are all for AMI UEFI which laptops don't use usually. But there's no reason the module shouldn't work on a laptop if it has 4G decoding and large BAR support.

[SEt-t]

@5l1v3r1 while the motherboard's BIOS can be patched, the BIOS on gtx850m/gtx1060 can not so far. So, you won't get the working ReBAR with just this project.

[5l1v3r1]

@5l1v3r1 while the motherboard's BIOS can be patched, the BIOS on gtx850m/gtx1060 can not so far. So, you won't get the working ReBAR with just this project.

The patches developed are all for AMI UEFI which laptops don't use usually. But there's no reason the module shouldn't work on a laptop if it has 4G decoding and large BAR support.

Oh i see then we need to patch the vbios'es as well ? But what kind of patching for the vbios? Because as far as i know the vbioses can be found at https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/ link.

[xCuri0]

@5l1v3r1 you'd need some advanced knowledge to be able to patch VBIOS and also Pascal (GTX 1060) VBIOS is encrypted atleast on desktop so you can't edit that. Though some people say laptops have it unencrypted so might be able to be edited.

The oldest Nvidia GPUs that might be able to have it hacked in are probably GTX 16 series and RTX 20 series. They have the Resizable BAR capability but with maximum supported size of 256MB.

You can override the supported sizes list through editing DXE driver or Linux kernel source which will allow you to set a larger BAR size. I doubt it will work but no one has tested it yet.

Linux kernel has an override for the Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse which comes with a buggy VBIOS which incorrectly lists the maximum size as 2GB. A Linux Fix Is On The Way For Some GPUs Having AMD Smart Access Memory Issue

The same code is used in the DXE driver since it's basically code from Linux kernel adapted for UEFI. ReBar.c line 164

[5l1v3r1]

@5l1v3r1 you'd need some advanced knowledge to be able to patch VBIOS and also Pascal (GTX 1060) VBIOS is encrypted atleast on desktop so you can't edit that. Though some people say laptops have it unencrypted so might be able to be edited.

The oldest Nvidia GPUs that might be able to have it hacked in are probably GTX 16 series and RTX 20 series. They have the Resizable BAR capability but with maximum supported size of 256MB.

You can override the supported sizes list through editing DXE driver or Linux kernel source which will allow you to set a larger BAR size. I doubt it will work but no one has tested it yet.

Linux kernel has an override for the Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse which comes with a buggy VBIOS which incorrectly lists the maximum size as 2GB. A Linux Fix Is On The Way For Some GPUs Having AMD Smart Access Memory Issue

The same code is used in the DXE driver since it's basically code from Linux kernel adapted for UEFI. ReBar.c line 164

Alright then, thank you very much for the detailed explanation, i once patched the bios and vbios (which is a part of bios itself) of n550jk-gtx850m for hackintosh purposes and i think i will give it a try for this project as well. If i become successfull , i will post the results here.
Regards

[asc82]

I also have a laptop that I'd like to use this patch with, but I have an eGPU setup, so an RTX 3060 that is connected via USB4 PCIe tunneling.

I think it looks rather promissing looking at GPU-Z, but sadly ReBAR is disabled (and unaccessible) in the BIOS:

[5l1v3r1]

Have you bypassed igpu? Because i realized that by the help of minidisplay port i could bypass the optimus and could only use nvidia gpu and applied the patches here accordingly and voila! it worked. Actually you can also activate nvidia at hackintosh on optimus laptops by this way with the help of opencore legacy patcher. I am on gtx850m monterrey now with asus n550jk.

[psyborg55]

Are there any restrictions on BIOS version?
I have AMI Aptio V in laptop. Above 4G setting is visible when opened BIOS dump in AMIBCP, but i don't see it in actual BIOS

[xCuri0]

@psyborg55 No it should work on any UEFI BIOS you don't even need 4G decode if you are fine with being limited to smaller (often 1GB) BAR sizes. You still do get a performance gain though not as much

Have you tried the enabling hidden 4G decode guide in the wiki ? I've used the same method to enable hidden settings on laptops (not 4G decode but will be same)

[psyborg55]

No, I'll check that guide. Hidden settings were made visible by modder from win-raid few years ago, i can change them on machine. Just this PCI Subsystem page that contain 4G setting is not visible. It looks like it is broken or removed from BIOS and the page shown in AMIBCP being leftover as it has no settings to modify (nothing for failsafe or optimal config)

[psyborg55]

Went through wiki guide and 8 pages on oc forum.
Few more questions:

1. No way to run this with legacy BIOS? I have WIN10 UEFI install but is on HDD, win7 legacy on SSD is what i use most of the time
2. There are mentions of CPU in forums. Does the CPU need to support the feature as well? My system is FX9830P with RX460

[xCuri0]

@psyborg55

1. legacy may work but on alot of systems you will just end up with black screen if you try to enable 4g decode without disabling csm

2. there are no cpu requirements afaik

[psyborg55]

Another shot at this:
Clean win10 uefi/ csm disabled/ amernime 22.10 driver - there isn't anything in adrenalin software SAM related, only some new feature smartshifx max disabled (not available)

Module was inserted in main bios and flashed, rebarstate shows value is preserved across restarts - tried 11,32 and 10

Not sure if PCI bus driver that is installed after AMD driver and restart has any effect on this. On amernime it doesn't update automatically and windows doesn't prompt for restart due to hardware change, i updated it manually, still no changes in GPU-Z

[psyborg55]

Tried to enable 4G decoding, system crashed and restarted.
Then booted ubuntu (legacy install only) to see the messages.
Looks like quite a bit of stuff needs to be changed...

[xCuri0]

@psyborg55 looks like a DSDT issue from that kernel log

[Sid127]

of course, here you go. Uploaded DSDT to Nextcloud because GitHub wouldn't let me attach it here.

Also, if Boot Config had to be preserved, wouldn't that error out right here though?

[xCuri0]

@Sid127 does it error at kzalloc ? https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/f1fcbaa18b28dec10281551dfe6ed3a3ed80e3d6/drivers/pci/setup-bus.c#L66

also does resizing gpu to be smaller work if you have tried that ?

[Sid127]

It does not seem to error out at that kzalloc, the if block checking if tmp is empty is not executed. Using ReBarState to set reBAR to 128MB also does not change the BAR size of my GPU.

[xCuri0]

Using ReBarState to set reBAR to 128MB also does not change the BAR size of my GPU.

Linux may be changing it back to 256mb

[Sid127]

I'm not entirely sure how to work around that...

[xCuri0]

Also if you're using that override 128mb won't work because it's not in that supported caps value afaik

[Sid127]

Removed the override, and reducing the BAR from 256 to 128 does work, but bumping it from 256 to 512 does not

[xCuri0]

it's the VBIOS then, NVIDIA doesn't lock down laptop VBIOS so modification is technically possible but requires some very advanced reverse engineering knowledge

[Sid127]

Thought as much, thanks for the help regardless <3

Would UEFITools be able to parse a vBIOS? Or is there any other tool I shoukd be using to poke around the vBIOS, just to see if I can manage to enable it myself?

[PeLLmEn]

Actually you can also activate nvidia at hackintosh on optimus laptops by this way with the help of opencore legacy patcher. I am on gtx850m monterrey now with asus n550jk.

@5l1v3r1 Please, can you share your efi folder and modded bios for n550jk with working gtx850m in hackintosh?

[lpbellier]

Hey is this issue still open?

[Sid127]

a while after my initial attempt, I decided to take another look at things on the same laptop, and my dmesg now has:

[    0.497373] pci 0000:00:02.0: BAR 2: assigned to efifb
[    0.636093] pci 0000:01:00.0: can't claim BAR 6 [mem 0xfff80000-0xffffffff pref]: no compatible bridge window
[    0.636114] pci 0000:00:15.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0x674000000-0x674000fff 64bit]
[    0.636388] pci 0000:00:15.1: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0x674001000-0x674001fff 64bit]
[    0.636658] pci 0000:00:1e.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0x674002000-0x674002fff 64bit]
[    0.636927] pci 0000:01:00.0: BAR 6: assigned [mem 0xb2000000-0xb207ffff pref]

which is definitely different compared to the last time I tried. pci 0000:01:00.0 corresponds to my GPU

I recalling not patching my DSDT despite having this

[sidpr@strogg ~]$ sudo dmesg | grep -iE "root bus resource"
[    0.499242] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io  0x0000-0x0cf7 window]
[    0.499246] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io  0x0d00-0xffff window]
[    0.499249] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0x000a0000-0x000bffff window]
[    0.499251] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0x8d800000-0xdfffffff window]
[    0.499253] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0xfc800000-0xfe7fffff window]
[    0.499255] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [bus 00-fe]

and being told my DSDT was already fine and I know for a fact I've got 4G decoding enabled as well

Any help would be appreciated :)

[xCuri0]

@Sid127 If you want rebar on Turing 20 / 16 series there's a new method called NvStrapsRebar look at the repo or thread in discussions

[HolimaX]

Any chance to get this for Lenovo T430?

See n4ru/1vyrain#134

[xCuri0]

@HolimaX try it and see ?

[HolimaX]

I have no unused h/w for it :(

[HolimaX]

@xCuri0 , maybe you Can join forces with @n4ru on n4ru/1vyrain#134 (comment) ?