Aspire 6530G - to IGP or not to IGP ?

Hi all,

my first NBR thread ever, so I'm pretty psyched

Straight to the point: I decided to upgrade my 16" WXGA LTN160AT01 Samsung screen to a 16" WUXGA Samsung LTN160HT01-A02.

This worked partially, because as expected, I needed a dual LVDS capable cable (original one is 'missing' 8 necessary pins/cables), so screen resolution was limited to 1280x800, anything higher being almost unreadable because half the vertical pixel 'lines' are missing

Anyway, I'd already ordered this cable and it's still on its way here.

But, me being me, I decided to put some fresh thermal paste on my gpu (there's a copper shim between heatsink and core for better contact), and with the vga-board removed, I wanted to see if I could get an image via the onboard IGP (HD3200). The answer was no, so I gently put the HD3650 back in the MXM-slot, booted, just to be greeted by a black screen.NOOOOO!!

No image on the laptop's screen, completely garbled image (black lines, colours flashing etc.) on an external display via D-sub, still no image via the IGP with the HD3650 removed.

My initial feeling was that I must have cracked some solder on the HD3650 while overtightening it's screws or something, so yesterday I baked it for 8 minutes in a preheated oven at 200 degr. Celsius, but afterwards, the garbled image remained.... bummer.

So, my questions for you are:

A) Does anyone know how to enable the onboard graphics on a 6530G ?

B) Does anyone have any advice in general? (and no, buying a new laptop is not really an option right now )

Just having spent almost 200 euros on the 1080p screen+cable and a new battery, I really put myself in a sucky situation, so not having to buy a new mxm board and living off the igp would be my way out of this mess!

 

Presumably there is no IGP on a 6530G motherboard, or perhaps it is physically disabled, or even defective. I'm not sure, though - I'm more of an Intel guy.

 

Exactly, that's what I'm not sure about either... the 6530G has exactly the same specs and chipset as the 6530, which runs on the hd3200 igp. The RS780MN chipset (AMD 780M) with its igp is explicitly mentioned in the 6530 series service manual... but my feeling is that it needs to be enabled in some way.

BIOS doesn't have any switching options, and the 6530 has exactly the same bios as the 6530G, so maybe it switches to internal graphics when no mxm board is present...but clearly this is not happening in my machine ..

 

The 6530 schematic lists the chipset as RX780 on the 6530g and RS780 on the 6530, and there are many components which are present on the 6530 which are not on the 6530g. Part numbers are different on the boards I have as well 0834 on both 6530g`s and 0823 on the 6530.

 

Then it's exactly like on Intel machines. The Aspire 5720 has a GM965 northbridge, while the 5720G includes a PM965 - the difference is no integrated GPU in the latter.

 

That would actually make sense... but were did you get the RX780 reference? That would imply that the 6530g chipset is actually a mobile version of the AMD 770, which doesn't have the igp.

Well, I received my dual-lvds cable today, so tonight I'm having another go at fixing my machine, still hoping I didn't crack anything

Keep you posted!

 

The RX780 reference was from the schematic (circuit diagram) for the 6530G.
Search AcerAS6530ZK3 if you want a look yourself, Pages 9-12 cover most but not all of the differences between models.