Upgrading FHD to UHD on Acer Predator G9-792

dcat

Commendable
Nov 9, 2016
3
0
1,510
Hello

Here's my issue: I want to upgrade my screen from FHD to UHD on a G9-792 and since I see both 4k and 2k versions on the market, I think its possible.

I've did some googling and found out that:

- FHD pannel is: LP173WF4-SPF1, and ebay sellers state its has a 30 pins eDP connector.

-UHD pannel is: B173ZAN01.0 (AUO109B) and it has a 40 pins connector.

I've did some further research by partially disassembling my laptop and here's what I see inside - it actually has a 40 pin display connector on the motherboard while my display is FHD. Thus I'm not sure if 4k model will work with it.

To be consistent, here's a pic of my motherboard edp connector http://storage3.static.itmages.com/i/16/1108/h_1478636640_8198317_bbd51ad4f1.png

Please advice.
 

dcat

Commendable
Nov 9, 2016
3
0
1,510
I will try that out anyway. Just as a project for fun.

For those who wanna do the same, the cable part number is 50.Q04N5.015 also known as 1422-0268000.

Good luck!
 

dcat

Commendable
Nov 9, 2016
3
0
1,510
I've bought the pannel. I've bought the cable. Attached it. I saw the bios logo and setup showing ok so I've bolted all together. You even don't need to disassemble the laptop to do that. Only small cover under the display and the display cover. Afterwards I've figured out that after any software tries to change screen resolution it just shows blank screen.

- on ubuntu - it shows black screen but its possible to adjust brightness. grub works fine. with nomodeset option you can boot it but you'll loose brightness controls and you can't alter panel resolution but its defenitely in 4k mode. I've booted it with external display arrached and xrandr reports 1920x1080 max resolution for it and 0mm x 0mm screen physical dimensions - seems display is not fully supported.

-on windows - it will boot fine on clean win10 setup and will show you 4k resolution. You can install nvidia driver and it will still work. But after installing intel one - it will show you black screen.

So its just initialized improperly by UEFI or there's something else to do with it.

There is G9-792-7298 [NH.Q0UER.002] with a screen like that so the bios v1.05 should be compatible. Any ideas appreciated. I wonder if actual display firmware is compatible. Or if thats an video bios issue then how to update it?

just in case: don't put it into legacy mode - you'll see no bios setup to revert it. Will have to attach back the old panel to be able to siwtch it to EFI back

I don't need windows running, I just want linux to stop changing the resolution on start and it should do what I want then. Also xrandr detects the display as 0mm x 0mm, this can be an issue. sinceit blinks on resolution change but still displays nothing.
 

dmitrykotin

Prominent
Nov 22, 2017
1
0
510
Another update. I've figured out the display I've bought has a broken EDID and its not easy to reflash the EDID on that model - its not possible to flash it programmatically since EDP has no direct connection to EEPROM via EDP pins - you can easily read it with i2c tools but not write (does not reporting errors, just not accepting new values). Thus I've bought another display which is B173ZAN01.0 FW2 HW 2A. Works fine. So a recomended bolt-in upgrade.

P.S.: appears my eyes prefer LG-Philips fullHD panel for some reason, I've tried different brightness levels, fonts sizes and antialliasing settings - does not matters.