6920G 9500M GS swapped -> HD4650!!!!

With some help of mxm-upgrade.com we managed to upgrade my current nvidia 9500M GS with the new ATI HD 4650 1gb ddr2.

As Kris from mxm-upgrade already posted we needed a heatpad to get the right contact between the cards.

Ice-Tea : " I wasn't too happy with the print the thermal paste left on the heatsink so I substituted with a heatpad. Will probably deliver cards for all Acers with a heatpad from now on."

I think a full guide will follow on the site www.mxm-upgrade.com

Its not very hard to swap the cards and there are noone problems when swapped.
Everything worked like HDMI VGA and stuff.

I am using the currently beta version driver 10.3. I figured that the powersaving settings are on max battery when plugged into the wall. So that needs a change for a good result.

RESULTS:

3dmark05 old: +- 5300
3dmark05 new: 10238 HUGE upgrade
3dmark06 old: 3309
3dmark06 new: 4857

The temp of the GPU is not getting higher then 65-66 degrees. Tested with Furmark running.
Everything is running great compared with the old card.

I will highly suggest to buy the card and upgrade your laptop if you are playing heavy games.

Greetz,

Microstorm

 

Brilliant news!
Good to hear that the 6920G's cooling system is a little more capable of handling the increased heat, too - the Radeon HD 4650 can get into the 90s when in a 5920G.
Thanks for taking the plunge, Microstorm, and double-thanks to Ice-Tea for jamming open the upgrade path again.

 

What about the power usage overall after upgrading the card on battery, any difference?

 

Thats a thing I cannot say something about..
My battery is most likely broken. When I startup my laptop without 220v the battery goes after 5mins from 80% to 5%. In a second like boom! Will buy a new one shortly. Strange thing is: when I startup with power and pull out the adapter its pretty normal.

Without Ice-Tea I was most likely not going to try out a new card because of the price. Ice-Tea just has a very good service!

 

Very impressive! Enjoy the red team!
As for the battery life, there shouldn't be a huge difference IMO.

 

I guess their wont be any huge differend indeed.

I figured that ATI has 10% undercut as a basic in their 10.3. Remember to put it down for fullscreen on hdmi output

 

good stuff. do you mind me asking how much you paid for the card and upgrade?

 

The card was €200 incl. shipping as on the site: www.mxm-upgrade.com
Ice-Tea and me replaced the card at his house since I aint living to far from him and because I was replacing something never done.

So the costs for the card is 200 euro's including shipping.

 

Holy cow, 200 Euros! But awesome results less.

 

That's not too bad, the current top notebook cards can easily hit 700$ per card.


<<< the 4870 is about 450$

 

thanks, i paid about €220 for my 9600 and we have about the same benchmarks.
maybe there will never be anything faster for our laptops

 

Small review is up.

It ain't much but then again it wasn't all that hard

 

It can sound like alot but the result of the 3dmark05 is almost doubled!
Since I play World of Warcraft alot. I am able to run on the highest settings with better fps then everything on the lowest, windowed and lower resolution.
Big big improvement

I will test the soundoutput aswell soon since I didn't yet as I see on your site Ice-Tea

 

Tested the sound some while ago and that is also fine

 

hi

i bought one and got it yesterday but it won't work!
i have the same laptop as you do 6920G/ IntelT8300/ 4Gb Ram/new HDD 500Gb 7200 RPM/ and still with the crappy 9500M GS!

when i'm putting the ATI card in my laptop it just won't boot
my screen doesn't light up, just nothing happens... no text comes up... just total black screen.
my hdd indicator light up for 1-2 sec. and thats it!

Any ideas Kris? i send u a mail!

 

Too bad the HD 4650 is still DDR2.

 

Your card is either jacked up or probably overheating before you can install drivers.

 

i don't think its overheating? my pc just won't boot up! no boot = no GPU power needed.
i think that he does not recognize the card and if so i'm screwed lost €200

and ive received a mail by MXM Upgrade( Ice-Tea member of this site) an he said that i should clean my GPU with alcohol? ? it is brand new... why sould i clean it? or did he give me a second-hand one?

 

It might of got dusty or something. Shouldn't you msg him for a answer to that question if its new or not.

 

IannEefje, do u manage to upgrade it?

 

Same boat here except with a HD4670,
I've sent the card back to Kris at MXM, he'll try to flash it with another vbios,
But I'm a bit skeptic.

I really tried everything to get it going but it never booted,
Removed Second HD, removed extra RAM , HDMI ouptut, VGA Output all versions of modded unmodded 1.16 bios,1.15 bios,1.14. = never booted.
I even removed the PCIE WIFI... Removed ES T9500 and put back T7500, really frustrating.

My card did not come with a heatpad but the paste footprint was ok.

We'll see what Kris comes up with.

Frank.