4850 in a m5750!

Do you have another mxm laptop to flash and try the Acer VBIOS on the MSI card? Acer VBIOS tend to be more compatible with our m5750. The green pcb 4850/70 will NOT work in out m5750. I have tried both and gotten similar boot issues as you had. You could try flashing the VBIOS of my red card in another mxm notebook but you may just brick the card. As-Is though it will NOT work.

The red pcb 4650 you found looks exactly like the one mxm-upgrade used to sell. My guess is that it will work fine.

It's WAY easier for me to respond to a forum post than a PM.

This is the G.Skill 4GB memory kit I have. I chose it because of the low latency.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231154

The internal DVD drive should have nothing to do with the BIOS. most likely it just crapped out or needs cleaning. If you need a replacement you may as well grab a UJ-120 and upgrade to Blu-Ray. It's a direct fit to the m5750.

The battery shouldn't be the issue but you could just take it out when trying any of this to be sure.

For flashing a BIOS you can do what you like but with such a touchy procedure that if done wrong could cause a huge problem I would just follow Alienware's guide, get a working optical drive and do it that way.

My 1GB card works fine with the 4GB (3.xGB usable) memory in my laptop.

 

i just got a reply from the guy with the 9700 for $100. but if i get it, the only other 4670 vBIOS out there is the one from a 1024MB GDDR3 MXM A/B card from an Acer 8935G. in the BIOS details it doesn't mention 1024MB anywhere, but it does say DDR3 in the first line. like you said earlier, it's probably not a good idea and should be the last resort. i just made this post and somebody replied: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ati-4670m-gddr3-512mb-in-my-aw-m5750.772673/#post-9951227.

now, a guy with an Acer 5920G got the same 4670 512MB GDDR3 card to work and posted this GPU-Z validation: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/details.php?id=698ch. his vBIOS version seems to be 011.021.000.006.033017. the 512MB version on techpowerup, which i guess is exactly what i have, is 011.021.000.006.032662, because the seller of my card did mention the GX623 laptop. when you google 011.021.000.006.033017, a couple more gpu-z validations come up, all for 512MB cards, and a few posts about the GX625 model, not GX623.

so before i venture into another mxm laptop and try to flash the card, i need that GX625 vBIOS and i have no idea where to find it.

 

They do work without flashing vbios from different cards, however I had to flash them with master bios, since those are slave card without HE tab, to make them to work.

 

He got it to work in a Alienware m5750/90 or in an Acer? If m5750 please link his forum post.

I don't doubt they work all together but I DO doubt they work in a m5750/90. I have tried a green PCB 4850, 4870, and even a 3870 from the M17/M15x and found them to be incompatible with my older unit. The red PCB 4850 I found does work which is why I mentioned flashing the VBIOS to one of your cards though he would risk bricking the card.

 

M5750 is basically m5550i in 17" chassis right? I have m5550i and kind of project ongoing with it. But I don't have time to work on it from long time already. I can confirm that green pcb 4870m from Alienware works. That's same for MSI 4850m and MSI 4670m. If I remember correctly moded 230m from Toshiba asswell. Like You said 3870m not work. I have all those cards lying around somewhere and m5550 in parts asswell. When I find the time I will hook up 4670m and 4870m and check on what system bios and vbioses they work.

 

that would be excellent! my MSI 4670 shouldve worked based on most cases, but it seems the bios is just a little different in the GX623 and GX625/628 with 4670's. also, if you do fire up the m5550, please let us know which system BIOS you're on. i believe the BIOS updates for our 5750's are actually titled m5550_bios2.07 and so on. thanks!

 

Let us know man, that would certainly help the community with BIOS, VBIOS versions & GPU-Z screens. The 1GB green pcb 4870 I tried did not work and though I sold it a while back I do have it's VBIOS so I can compare it to yours.

 

in any case, after a BIOS update to 2.07w my 4670 works!!! swapped out the CPU's at the same time, and the laptop didn't last a minute cuz it got so hot. i had to hold a wet napkin to the heatsink while checking temps. with that soaking wet napkin directly over the CPU part of the heatsink - i was getting 92 Celsius! insane! the 4670 was sitting at about 72 degrees with no load at all. i always had two copper shims under the heatsink. the thicker one always sat on the CPU, but this time i swapped them, and i guess the skinny one doesn't make enough contact. oh, well, i will figure it out eventually. i'm just happy i got a good card on the first try(almost). i'm obliged for all the help, protivakid.

i kept looking at your 2nd fan design and finally realized that space is taken up by my second hard drive. i have two 750MB Seagates running in RAID 0, so removing one is not an option at the moment. i will eventually get a nice SSD, but i know it will be 128GB at most, so i will likely be keeping one of the 750's and will still have no space for the second fan. i do have a second heatsink though, and now i'm thinking of cutting it apart and putting the heatpipes right on top of the first heatsink. i know bending them is not a good idea, but it will be better than nothing...

EDIT: all done. CPU runs at 66 Celsius, GPU hasn't reached 74 under a light load (ATI Tray Tools 3DBench). No artifacts for 10 minutes, it's golden! will be monitoring in a game, but i think i'll be ok! someone did send me that other BIOS, btw. i will upload both to techpowerup eventually. now i need to sell my x1800. i've seen them for almost $200 with heatsink. people are narrow-minded i guess...

 

Great news! Can we get some GPU-Z screens, pics of the card in the laptop, and uploads of the VBIOS? Also where did you find your version of 2.07? A link to that may help the community.

Even the price of 240GB SSD's have come down A TON! I would suggest getting that hot HDD out of there and swapping one in to the second HDD bay. It's temps are not doing your card/cpu any favors.

What mods did you have to do to the heatsink and what thermal paste did you use? I had a heck of a time with heatsinks. Went though 2-3 of them before finding a good one on ebay. To my knowledge there is some sort of liquid / compound in the heatsink tubes. I bent the heatpipes on mine so it was blocked and would not travel toward the back to be cooled down. My CPU temps were nuts until I eventually found a dent free heatsink in good condition. DO NOT BEND YOURS! I have found they are very delicate and even the slightest bend will cause temps to shoot up.

Have you run Prime 95 for a few hours or anything with HW-Monitor to make sure your CPU temps stay cool for long periods of time? Have you done the same with the GPU using FurMark or anyting similar? Some people love while others hate FurMark. Just watch the temps to make sure you are not boiling the thing and stop the test if they shoot up too high. Also did you fan-mod so it's always on at 100%? If not I would be curious if the fan spins up to a rise in GPU temp while the CPU is idle or if it only responds to the CPU. MXM Upgrade mentions this may be an issue if the fan is not set to 100% all the time.

Also wanted to ask do you have 4GB of memory working in your system with the 2.07 bios version and how much does windows say is usable?

Also did you put in a T7600 or a T7600G?

 

i still haven't run a game or did any extensive testing. i will eventually take some gpu-z screens and upload the vBios to techpowerup.

the 2.07w BIOS, as well as the rest of them are available on the Dell website, you just have to find the link. i will look it up again and share it when i have a few minutes. for some reason, i had to reinstall all the chipset drivers, disk controllers and so on after the BIOS update. usable RAM still reads 3.25GB in W7 x64.

my new heatsink came with the x1800 replacement back in 2012, and before i put it in, i realized i needed a couple of copper shims. then i hardwired the fan to a USB cable, and found that any phone USB charger with over 5V output will run the fan a little faster. and yesterday, when i put in the t7600 and got 92 degrees at idle, i reapplied the MX-4 paste and this time jammed a couple of small washers between the CPU part of the heatsink and the flexible brackets that mount the heatsink over the CPU. i think that helped.

i will keep this updated, or maybe even start a new topic with pictures. i decided against the $100 m9700, btw. it's just so obsolete with its AMD single core limit and the SLI setup is absolutely pointless.

 

update: no synthetic tests, but i ran three different games for a few hours with excellent results! HW Monitor registered 66 degrees max for CPU and only 62 max for GPU! but i did have a hell of a time getting my sound to work. tried the latest realtek HD drivers and lost the sound completely. had to revert back to what Windows update found for the audio device and still haven't found a good Realtek version that works. i now realize that this has actually been a problem for me for a while, because when certain sounds are/were played in games, like voice comms, i get a noticeable stutter in video performance and sound playback itself comes through a little "laggy". at first attempt to install audio drivers yesterday i even got a BSOD, because i installed the Realtek package before Windows had a chance to update the HD Audio Device automatically. i almost thought i got a bad CPU - the system slowed down to a crawl!

the only drivers on Alienware website are the old XP drivers from 2006 and i know at some point i found ones from Realtek that worked perfectly for me. i think i had to look up the Realtek device part number that came with our motherboards and then select the correct driver version on Realtek's website. it was so long ago, i can't really remember what i did. any tips are appreciated...

 

Look for the M5790 Vista driver. That worked for me though I run 32-bit windows which uses a diff driver. No point to run 64-bit for me since the memory maxes out at 4gb anyhow.

 

after dealing with this for another 2 and 1/2 hours i finally got the latest realtek package to install fine. i think the AMD catalyst package installed its HDMI audio output device on the system, even though i unchecked the box when installing. got rid of catalyst and reinstalled the AMD display driver ONLY through device manager, after extracting their package with 7zip. i also had to cut the internet connection to stop Windows from installing it's own drivers.

everything seems to be going well right now. that new-ish game i mentioned earlier is running at 58-60 FPS at 1920x1200. unfortunately the game has an artificial FPS limit that doesn't let you exceed you the monitor's refresh rate, otherwise i'm sure i could get more. next i will try to get a few more Hz from the display using the custom resolution utility thing...

 

Sounds good, waiting to dig into those VBIOS files and see some GPU-Z screens when you have time.

 

dude, i bought an SSD and spent ALL DAY trying to get it to work! it gets detected in BIOS, but gives me a BSOD in Windows every time, even in safe mode.

i forget, does a SATA drive ALWAYS come up as RAID: *name of HDD* in our BIOS? i destroyed my RAID 0 array in the RAID utility, but still can't find AHCI mode anywhere! was there ever that option in BIOS?

the SSD i got is a used Kingston 256GB SATA-II for $70! just tested it with my desktop and it's fine! bought another one just in case - PNY Optima 120GB. Will try it in a couple of hours. i'm scared to go back to 1.19w BIOS if that's my problem, the 4670 might not work. was pulling my hair out all day!

 

I can't remember without looking how it comes up but it was easy for me. Maybe try switching the modes in the bios?

 

there's no switch for us. our mobile version of the 945 Express family chipsets doesn't support AHCI.

the PNY SATA III worked flawlessly - i was done in 20 minutes. going back to Kingston SATA II, with intel's AHCI/RAID drivers for ICH7 loaded before Windows install, it took about 3 hours to go through the installation and it ended with an error - corrupt installation file, call Windows DVD vendor.

i just exchange the Kingston for an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB and got to the first restart pretty quickly, but now stuck on the Updating registry settings screen for about half an hour. can't figure it out. the PNY is too small to keep, i want to return it to Best Buy, but so far is the only thing that worked for me. gonna try again with the Vertex 3...

EDIT: tried the Vertex 3 - nothing but trouble. slow slow windows install with a few hang ups on restarts. after about 3 hours Windows finally booted, but the speed was not there! it was worse than my 7200rpm HDD's. returned it back to the seller and kept the PNY Optima 120GB. this thing flies. Windows boots in under 15 seconds, shuts down in 3. still updating/setting up, but everything is going smooth so far.

one thing i keep noticing is that while GPU-Z reports the 4670 at stock core clock of 675MHz, ATI Tray Tools shows it running at 300MHz, and i have to manually set the clock every boot. i tried 750/850 and only maxed at 75 Celsius on both CPU and GPU after a few hours of gaming(that was before the SSD). i wonder if it has a modded BIOS to keep it underclocked, or is it just the idling core speed until 3D output is actually requested? will figure it out tonight and upload those screens, though i lost my imageshack subscription...

 

Sounds like the Vertex was junk right out of the box. I use dropbox to upload files, works a lot easier IMO with it's desktop client.

Odd on the clock, I don't think I've tried tray tools with mine to see if it throttles down at idle but I imagine it would otherwise I feel the temps would constantly be at 80C like under load instead of 50C idle. You'll have to pull the VBIOS and check it out.

 

and i thought i was done upgrading... caught a but of luck today.

spotted an XPS M1710 in the For Sale forums on here with a T7600G! the guy lives 10 minutes away from me. picked it up for $180 cash earlier today!

next, i go to Best Buy to return the USB DVD drive and a lady is bringing in a Sony VAIO All-in-One Desktop for recycling. i commented that it's probably an easy fix and she said "here, take it. if you fix it - call me". so far its BSOD'ing with a fresh Windows 7 install, and has shut down a couple of times. probably overheating, and maybe an HDD problem. listed specs say the GPU is 8400m, but i'm not sure if it's dedicated or MXM... Intel 965 Mobile chipset in there.

 

If I hear Geforce 8400m, first thing what's coming to my head is infamous Nvidia failing graphics problem. 8400m and 8600m were worst affected .

 

Still waiting on those GPU-Z screens and VBIOS uploads

 

And he's gone before any updates were shared ....