Asus G50 - 260M Swap Procedure

I got mine off of eBay a few years ago from a G51 for-parts (as-is). It had a broken keyboard, no boot drive, a broken internal display, and only 1GB RAM but the description said the external display was fine, which meant the GPU was too. Still works great after years of gaming at 102C +. Really great piece of silicon.

 

Not to brag but the 9800GS on my G50VT-X6 is running fine even with crunching seti@home nearly 24/7 at 85-90C or so for a few years now. Makes for a great little heater. I wonder what causes them to fail. Solder joints weakening with temperature cycles or vibration?

Doing a swap like what Duct Tape Dude did will prevent audio through HDMI I believe and no fan control (stuck at full speed) unless you mod it, and you need to get the heatsink for that GPU, and some shims for RAM cooling I think. Maybe get another 9800gs or another laptop? The 9800GS or GTX 260 might be on Ebay every once in a while

 

You got me. This particular machine was purchased for my son when he joined the National Guard. I'd like to get it working but if the cost is prohibitive, then it will stay as it is.

The 9800m GS video card does concern me. I've read so many posts about people succumbing to this failure. Getting another used card might just put it back where it's been for so long...

I didn't realize the 260 swap wasn't a straight replace.

If anyone knows of a donor card for a reasonable cost, I'll consider repairing it myself. I've pulled the existing card several times and reapplied TIM, but apparently the damage is too far gone and the machine won't stay up during gaming. In fact, even IE9 will crash the machine if hardware acceleration is enabled. The machine is in otherwise very good condition.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply.

 

Ickibar is 100% right. I assumed you had read the thread and were willing to accept all the caveats. I also have to mod my drivers manually every time I want to update them.

Your best bet is eBay, try searching specifically for an Asus 9800m GS (other OEMs' cards won't work). Best of luck!

 

I know VGA cards can also be purchased from Aliexpress.com . Because of a bad experience, I would only want to buy one of these if I knew for sure the part number was 100% match. I'm saying this because I have not discounted the idea of putting a 260 in the machine. And if I can rely on your help to do this, all the better.

In the meanwhile, I'll start rereading the whole thread.

 

Oh don't waste too much time on it! Basically if you get a 260m...

-You lose automatic fan control (it runs at 100% all the time)
-No HDMI audio out (HDMI video works fine). I've tried everything including modding drivers to no avail.
-You probably want a G51 heatsink/fan also because of the extra heat. The G51 fan has 17 blades instead of 13 (this is why I got an as-is G51 to upgrade my G50vt).
-You need a G51/G60 260m, you can't use a G71 260m.
-You can't use a standard MXM 260m (reversed connector)
-Drivers need to be manually modded or downloaded from laptopvideo2go I think.

I think you could also use a 9700m from the G50v.

I believe that's everything. The rest comes down to price and whether you want to do it or not!

 

Thanks again. Is there a particular partnumber for the card I can key on?

 

So I have a potentially stupid question, I've always read that our 2 hdd bays have a max RAID alignment of 1TB. However does that limit the bays when used as separate bays? Could I toss in a hdd or shdd larger that 1TB in both bays if I continue to use them as separate disk(i.e. Drive C and Drive E)?

 

Yes but idk what it is. I think it started with 13.

No idea where that limitation comes from. I have a feeling it's because one bay is 9.5mm, the other is 12mm. I think up until very recently the largest 9.5mm drives were 1TB, or maybe at the factory they would give you 2x500GB and call that a 1TB RAID.

Anyway, it's just two SATA drive bays. By default each disk will show up separately. If it fits it will work. You can only hardware RAID hard drives in the bays--the ODD works off a different SATA port, so for example you can't just use a drive bay adapter and expect to get a 3-way RAID.

 

Hi All, from 2008 I'm an owner of Asus G50V A1 with GeForce 9700m GT. I love this laptop and always wanted to give him a new life.
Sorry for repeated questions, but I read a lots of forum threads about upgrading gpu and I'm still not sure if it will work.
According to dissasembly guide in pdf VGA module, shape of 9700m GT is different than 260m gtx, so how to get it fit ?
Any of 260gtx from G50VT, G51Vx, G60VX(rev 2.1) will work ? like Model: GTX 260M G92-751-B1, Part No.: 60-NV3VG1000-D01 ?
Do I need to upgrade Bios ?

 

I have the G50VM-X1 with a 9700mGT, and I've looked into this myself. Aside from one guy earlier in this thread(like 10 or so pages back), noone else has done it. And the method the one guy describes in so involved and time consuming to not really be worth it on our machines. So while it is certainly possible, it is not worth the time, money, and effort(atleast to me). If you want to mod the computer than go for upgrading the cpu, that was my major bottleneck when it came to games, and at $100 dollars you can get a really good one from ebay.

 

In modern titles the CPU is unlikely to be much of a bottleneck with the 9700m GT.

 

So today I had a thought, I wondered if it was possible to upgrade the wlan in our notebooks to a newer one? or in my notebooks case to one that had built in bluetooth? except nothing I found online would tell me whether or not it would work. So if any of you guys know of a way to do it I'm all ears. For some context, the thing that set this idea off, was me reading about the new standard of wifi 802.11ac, and I wondered how difficult it would be to migrate my asus and my brother's toshiba to the new standard.

 

It's PCI Express 'm' or whatever the mobile version of PCI express PCI cards are called. You may have to match up the version of PCI express for compatibility but maybe the latest ones will work fine. Yes I think ours has the wifi and bluetooth on that one card so you'd need to get another that also has both. taking on and off the antenna wires are a snap (literally) if I remember right. Chance are you can buy the latest one and it'll work without a problem but I'd do more research first with a return policy. Wireless 'n' is way faster than i'll ever need for Internet but maybe you use it for local file transfers.

 

Would this work? Newegg.com - Intel 7260HMW IEEE 802.11AC, dual-band, 2x2 Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth 4.0 Mini PCI Express combo Adapter - 867 Mbps+300Mbps - Internal - Wireless Adapters

 

The AC version is the latest so 7260 ac if you think you might use it otherwise yes that is fine.

 

I thought that was the AC version?

 

So it is, they should be calling it the 7260 ac which is an hmc card (it's not made in anything else)

 

awesome, am going to purchase it now so that I can have it when my new router comes. Will I need to do anything special to get the bluetooth working on my machine? (mine didn't come with bluetooth from the factory though it does have the led on the front panel)

 

No it's all just like an extra bluetooth usb device, so just install the drivers.

 

so that was a fairly easy install, though I do have an issue that I didn't expect, because it is a HWC it doesn't reach the mounting points on my motherboard. Right now I just have it held down by some tape, but do you have a better suggestion to secure it?

 

I am a owner of a Asus g50vt. My 9800 gs video card is shot. My screen flickers & i get the blue screen of death with a nvlddmkm.sys as the error message.

i am interested in upgrading to a 260m. Can someone please tell me what model number i need to look for? Please help me out

 

It has to be the Asus one, it's physically different to all other cards.

 

Also be wary of cheap cards from e-recyclers or similar. The older G-series laptops frequently had heat issues and the 260s suffered the same conditions that caused your 9800 to fail. Sometimes the card will be pulled from a working laptop but will still fail under load. For example it took me two 260s before I got a working one for my old g50vt. Your best bet is to get it from someone who pulled it from a system they owned and knows that it hasn't overheated.

 

The issue is the solder between the die and the package cracking.

 

hello,

after 5 years my g50vt video card is failing

BSOD, then artefacts on desktop, now it's working with "standard vga adapter" driver

it's 9800m

I think WoT did it

reading through 33 pages, I decided to try baking it

will post results

 

I guess I've had good luck. 5 years or so with mine, with about 2 years crunching seti@home on the GPU nearly all the time with no failure yet, besides AC adapters and the screen CCFL backlight. 5 years on the CPU
Hope for the best with baking

 

eagerly awaiting your results

 

well, no change.after baking

200C for 9,5 minutes didn't do the work

artefacts ( lines ) still there in desktop, and no 3D

the thermal paste was like a stone, next time I must remember to change it sooner

maybe I will try few minutes more, or a bit higher temp, but that will be after I get a new notebook, since used cards (9800 or 260) on ebay are 120$ and more, and who knows how much life is left in them

my friend has the same model and its still working fine, allthough he is not using it for games much

 

Yeah it seems like a risky venture on the 260s, especially at this point, hopefully you move on soon even if the baking works (for now).

 

So what I read here in the thread, is that I spent over 1200.00 for the best buy Asus G50, that hasn't worked for the last 2 years, but I got it up and running and cleaned and repasted the fan and processor. But am stuck with a dead 9800 graphics card that has had an exclamation point next to it for 3 days now.
There is no updates for it, and I just uninstalled it thinking I can reinstall it. Well, I got the 2 recovery discs and the driver disc that came with the laptop, and I can't seem to get the 9800 back on. Sigh... I'm not as tech savvy as you guys. And I feel I got r aped with this laptop.

 

if your G50 has the 9800m GT in it from the factory, than you can swap in other gpu's. It is only the model that launched with the 9700m GT(mine) that is a more troublesome swap than is worth the effort.

 

It will be the GPU that has gone with those symptoms, I am just not sure how worth it spending money on it is.

 

The bottleneck that my 9700m GT has only just gotten so bad that I can't get any new AAA pc games, so I'd imagine that a 260m swap would get him another year or two of high-end games. If he has the time and can get the gpu cheap than I'd say it would be worthwhile, but only just.

 

Even so, the CPU probably doesn't have the horsepower too so even with GPU upgrade he may have bottleneck issues too.

 

That laptop just isn't worth upgrading at this point. Best to either hand it down to someone who will use it for older games, and regular pc usage or try and get a bit of cash for it and move on.

I remember pushing my old Asus G51 with a 260m and upgraded with a T9900 CPU and overclocked to something like 3.5Ghz to run Bad Company 2. It had a tough time even on 720P. I doubt BF3 or BF4 would run very well.

 

It's not a big jump either to the 260M, I think an extra 2 years of use is being quite generous, especially when combined with all the available 260M cards being used and still being vunerable to the solder issues Nvidia had.

 

Hello guys! I've been reading this post and it's awesome the information one can learn! I have a question (maybe already answered, but I'd like to confirm it). I have an old Asus G50VT-X1, and my video card (9800M Gs) died. If I buy a new video card from a G51, I mean a GTX 260M, will it be possible to change it without any problem? Should I install some special drivers?

Thanks in advance! You guys are great!

 

Have you seen if anyone else had done it already? If not then no one can really confirm it.

 

Well, this post is about doing it, so I imagined that some of you have done it, but I want to hear the voice of experience from them!

 

If the board has its own bios there is a good chance, they are both the same reversed MXM I believe.

 

Yes, they're both physically identical. And how can I know if the board has its own bios? I read that you can flash its bios, so that might mean it has its own bios?

 

If nvflash can extract the VBIOS then it's discrete, otherwise it won't allow you to extract VBIOS.

 

Yes, but my board is fried, I can't even turn on my laptop.

 

That sucks
It's still under warranty right?

 

I wish it was! But no, I bought it 7 years ago, but it's a shame that I can't use it just for a board...

 

If completely unsure do an inventory of all the 6/8 pin SOT packaged chips on the board to see if any of them are bios chips.

 

I know the 260m GTX GPU of the G51J can go into the G50VT, so I guess that means the 260m has a BIOS like the 9800m GS does.
The 9700m GT that comes with the G50V (no 'T') does not have a BIOS so neither the 9800m GS or 260m GTX can go into a G50V and the 9700m GT can't go into the G50VT or G51J AFAIK.

You'd need a new heatsink I think so the RAM pad locations match and the GPU is cooled. The HDMI port may not output audio anymore after this? Also the system cooling fan will be at high speed all the time because the laptop will not be able to read the temperature of the GPU.