[NW] Upgrade the C90S to a 9600M GT 512MB DDR3 [FIXED!]

heh, my c90s is still going strong as well, kings. i'm still working on making that fan controller internal. decided that if i can't find the people to do the job, i'm learning to do it myself. since i only have 1 c90s, i'm practising on scrap plastic first...i think i must have destroyed at least 8 sheets by now. for some reason, cutting a hole to fit my assembly cracks the plastic. my dremel must be worthless i suppose. as i mentioned before, this assembly will replace the battery since mine no longer works anyway. i'm also poking around to find a small lcd screen that i could fit in there, just so i could show the temps on it. got any ideas? needs to be usb compatible, i'll just hook a pcie x1 usb adapter to get an internal port.

 

Good idea! I never thought to use the battery bay...

You can tap 12V from the battery connector too that way you reduce the amount of wires crossing your motherboard.

I am getting frustrated currently with the dismal performance my 7k500 Hitachi drive is giving me. I need a SSD asap! I hate waiting around for the OS to load which seems to take forever even though it has 400GB free and is well defragged....

I do wonder who I could talk to to get my card voltmodded. Hard to find someone with the know how and guts to try it... Just a small vcore and vmem bump is all I want to get those clocks I was talking about. Then finally I can run games at stock resolution..shock shock horror horror lol

 

Heya guys!

I brought a replacement MXM II card for: HP 8530w
A FX 770M NVIDIA VIDEO CARD 502338-001 512Mb, initial test gets bios picture and windows starts to load.
Since i dont have the custom cooling mount its a bit difficult to test since i dont want to "burn" it. Screw mount seems like its the same as the Nvidia 9600M GT, but layout of chips is a little different.

King: check GeForce 9600 GT Voltmods | techPowerUp
Also check http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=248935

There are some modders i see in a swedish forum, but since your in UK i would recommend looking at Bit tech, to find someone

Regards

Styggo

P.s I have been looking into Modding the Bios further to enable Raid and AHCI (dont want to highjack thread)

 

Hi again guys,
maybe some of you find this useful.
Is a complete C90S R3.0 schematic guide I bought, and I want to share with you.
cheers.

 

Hello phoenon,

Thanks alot, really, to share.
I don't know actually what I'll do with, but maybe it will be usefull for me
As I have electrical issues with my C90S.

@+

 

You are wellcome,
I bought it because I wanted to learn more abaut the motherboard. I actually still wondering to use the Xeon on it. It's strange why it does not boot up when I install it, well it turns on, leds work, but no display, and no other life symptoms.
BTW I installed in a desktop for test the processor (maybe it did not work) but the case is it works very well, I just installed but even in a desktop it seems to be very hot. IDLE temps were abaut ~70ºC at stock. I had to set the fan minimum speed at 80% for get ~62ºC. And I installed a very decent fan (I will post pics). So I'm afraid even getting to work in a c90s I would burn hell (still not played with VIDs eveyting is stock ATM)
cheers
ps maybe Angel would find the doc useful if you want to share him...

 

Talking about xeon's I am about the pull the trigger on a X3380. Found a cheap one.

Shame yours doesn't work. Perhaps all quads are blocked by the C90S motherboard.

 

Anybody still around with either version this lovely machine? I managed to successfully install the Xeon chip and got it working stably up to 3.5ghz. Run into fsb barrier immediately afterwards though.

Hopefully this thread will perk up again soon

 

Great news...btw the c90s seems to be more limited than your c90p since we can't get a quad working and we are 4Gb RAM limited, and is very dificult to find a better MXM II card...sight.
Anyway in my case I'm still pretty proud of my c90s. Sometimes I let my brother play with it, and actual games work fine.
cheers.

 

Maximum PC | Novel Develops World's Thinnest Air Cooled Heatsink

soooo, how much time before someone manages to slap this in a c90? i'm sure it could be modded for a gpu, no?

 

Sounds very good, but I wonder where is supossed to go the hot air. I guess it would be drived outside by heatpipes, then would be easy just solder the existing heatpipes, and use the current fan connector. If it works as they said that would be great news for new brand gaming notebooks.
cheers

 

You mean slap half a dozen in

 

@ Atvaark,
Please when you had your GT130M, was it plug and play, or did you have to do Nightwalkers' NiBitor VBIOS mod?
Thanks.

@ Anyone,
Did anyone try the 1GB DDR2 version 9600M GT? If so did that need Nightwalkers' VBIOS modding, (or does it go plug and play)

I understand the GDDR3 is quicker, but am still very curious to know. Thanks.

 

I don't think anyone used that part. Only one way to find out though. If it is plug and play great if not folloow nightwalkers guide to get it to run full speed.

I recommend going to www.mxm-upgrade.com and getting your hands on a 4650 GDDR2 card. Better than 9600M GT and definitely plug and play.

 

the gt130M needed a vbios mod to work correctly. ATI cards on the other hands work flawlessly as plug n play. of course, they need some hefty cooling though...

 

@ Atvaark,
Thankyou for the information. I tend to agree with you about ATI. I'm quite nervous of the ATI's for the heat and their high power requirements. Maybe the 4650 DDR3 is the choice with a slight undervolt. I see some people put heat dissipators on their heatsink pipes. The last thing I want to do though is dissipate more heat inside the laptop.

The 9600M GT performance level glich is a real bane. I'm working on an Acer 5920, and another 'notebookreview' member made a BIOS fix to get the 9600M GT working in it. I bought the 9600M GT and tried it, and got the same as you C90S folk.

I think I'll resign to a 9600M GS. I'll find out if they have three or four performance levels before I buy one. Really the aim is to move away from the G84M downclocking.

One thing that suprised me was the number of references on this thread about upping the power supply. I thought the 9600M GT was 23W power consumption, (ref. notbookcheck stats). That's the same as the 8600M GT. In contradiction though the quadro that's based on the same core as the 9600M GT is rated at 35W. (Confused.)

I did find one ray of hope in Acer drivers. The ususal website for support has only one driver for the 5920. However I found another Acer Support website that had many video drivers for the 5920. One of the drivers was for 9000 series GPU's in the 5920. I hoped it would fix the problem. Unfortunately it was a 64-bit driver, and I'm using 32 at the moment.

I kind of hope it offers some hope for you Asus users, that there may be another driver that will get the 9600M GT going. Really though I bet you have all exhausted every search option there is in finding a cure.

Thanks too King of Interns.

 

4650/4670 too hot in the C90? Try a 4850 going to try to install one soon.

Actually the 4670 is a really cool running card in the C90. At idle clocks it stays around 35C - 40C at 0.9V.

Yes full clocks are a little warm because of the 1.2Vcore at 675/800. However very easily the card can be undervolted to 1.1V and still be stable at those clock. Heck you could probably even do a small OC especially on the memory where the performance increase is felt. At stock clocks the 4670 is more powerful than a super OCed 9600M GT so bear that in mind!

 

4850? are you kidding? is MXM II? wow that would be a great step forward. waiting for report!
Cheers

 

This page seems to suggest there is a driver version that works with the 9600M GT, allowing it to throttle up. It's a much older driver now; 180.60. I may have misunderstood the jist of what they were discussing eventually, but this is the link for others to decide.
9600M GT won't throttle up under load [Archive] - nV News Forums

EDIT: Sorry if I had misread. It seems maybe to be for the Linux OS.

This is two quotes from the posts:
maccam9405-06-09, 05:32 AM
"I can confirm that my 9800M GT can now switch between all of its power levels (0-3).
It seems a bit buggy though. Sometimes Nvidia Settings will show it at the highest level when the system is unoccupied. In one specific instance I saw earlier, it throttled to the lowest level while running Scorched3D with high settings, reducing the framerate to 1FPS."
mfb05-06-09, 05:39 PM
"Working perfectly now on my 9600M GT. Thank you NVIDIA! " Linux nvidia driver.

 

Yeah it is mxm 2.1 III. Now I know you will be thinking hmm not enough space CPU is in the way. You would be correct. Some modding however allows one "just" enough space to squeeze one in there!

Waiting for card to arrive now. Hope to install it sometime next month. Will of course post results; come fail or success..

 

Cool, sounds very interesting.
I thought about it a time ago, maybe cutting the left side of the CPU heatsink, and maybe the corner side of the CPU bracket would fit. Anyway I hope you will open a new thread with the tuto!
BTW if you plan to sell your actual 4670 if you are success I'm on this cue, lol
Good luck King!

 

Sure I will bear that in mind. There are already 2 people though lol who want it if successful! So you will be the next in line lol! Never sold anything with that much demand haha

You are exactly right with the modded details. I have already cut down the left hand side of the CPU mounting plate up to the metal strap (the bit you need to screw the plate down) with that removed I now have 9.9cm space. Going to be really really tight though as the card is 10cm long! Also the cpu bracket is VERY hard so cut it will need to take it to waterjet cutting place! Needs to be done though I think to make a bit more space for the capacitors and circuits underneath the card.

Really looking forward to getting my sleeves rolled up and cracking on with it!

 

Ok so Im finding this very difficult.

I can find plenty of 9600's second hand online but how do I know it has the samsung memory chips? Is this still a requirement over the quimodos?

And if I do go second hand do these cards last? Have they been known to meltdown like the 8600m I have to replace?

This thread is awesome btw if a little overwhelming.. so much to read!

 

Hi damanic, and wellcome to the thread...my 9600m GT is not samsung, so there is not a requirement for it to work, BTW I would take care of the BIOS instead, since probably ACER ones would not work (but I'm not sure).

I just can't understund your second question, do you mean if there is a risk of having a second hand card or so?
Cheers.

 

hi phoenon,

Ok good to know I dont need samsung. But Im sure I saw that the flash update for the card to work at 100% only works on the samsung chips and that it should not be attempted on the quasimodo (or whatever they are called) chips?

As for second question. It would be really easy for me to replace with another 8600 card but they have a known problem and will die just like the one I need to replace. I just want to make sure that the 9600 does not have the same problem and that it too wont die after a couple of years in the same way? Otherwise I may aswell get another 8600.

I guess there are not that many people who have had the 9600 in their C90s long enough to know?

 

Well in first place I have the Quimonda chips, and it's working well. Personally I wont get an other 8600m GT just for performance terms. The 9600 is much faster, and for the time lasting, I have it working for at least two years, but the heat is a problem, you need a copper heatsink for get low the temps, some of us modded the C90P heatsink and installed in our C90S, and thats enought.
Cheers.

 

Oh you mean buy one of these
www.asusparts.eu/product_info.php?cPath=163571_67674_70812_70813_70814_70827&products_id=22702

Can you point me somewhere that shows how to mod for c90s 9600.

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

Yes that's the heatsink.

Well is not a guide but this is what I made.

This is how it looks like. And some other users did their own mod...and there is also a good idea modding the fans for manual set to full speed like King of Interns did. You have the permalink in his signature.
good luck

edit
More details here 1, 2 and 3

 

Hi NightWalker an all others!

I found this Guide while i placed a 9700m GT in my Alienware m9750.
Of course i got this MXM Structure Error and my card is running in thrtl Mode.

So i did as you have shown - took the "Extra" Clocks from the Performance Table into the "Thrtl" one. Well it works only until Windows boots completely up.
When the Welcome Screen should apear, theres only weird colors and my Alienware reboots.

I flashed back to the original .rom - all fine.
Then i took the "3D" Performance Table into "Thrtl" - Works. But this is by far not the Power this card should have...

So whats wrong here? Any Ideas?

This is the Original:


This is the one working atm:


Like i said, putting "Extra" in "Thrtl" or in all Tables except 2D causes weird colors on Windows Welcome Screen and a reboot.

Thanks to all in advance !

Edit: When i check via GPU-Z/Sensors my Card runs actually with "Thrtl" Clocks.
On the Front Page it has the Full Clocks shown:

 

@ mj12bot,

Hello. I'm sure that putting the code for 'extra' in the 'Throttle' and '2D' is the way it was explained at the beginning by NightWalker. Are you pasting the code in the way NightWalker explained or are you simply changing the values in the clockrates tab. Maybe that makes a difference. If you have it running in three modes though, that is good.

It's really useful that you have put your pictures in here, (brilliant!), because I was thinking about another approach. Your NiBiTor images benefit a lot at this point in time, for explaining it.
-----

1. Why not click the 'change amount of active performance levels'; in the clockrates tab. Reduce it by one level.
2. Then paste in the 'extra' clock timings (within 'performance table entries') into the 3D box.

Obviously use Nightwalkers way for guidance, but this way only one set of data needs to be copied once. Also you may end up with three performance levels which is better. (Those lower levels work to keep laptop power consumption down - after all. Why not keep them if it can be done?)

The 'performance level entries' will still show four boxes. This is good too. For example the 8600M GT vidBIOS shows four boxes in 'performance level entries', but we only ever see three 'active performance levels'. Trust me this is true. I am writing this post on a laptop with an 8600M GT in, and I looked this vidBIOS information up, in NiBiTor.

Has anyone tried that. Only I have read this thread but not seen it mentioned. I can't help being optimistic it would work.
At the least, take a standard 9600M GT vBIOS and just reduce the amount of active performance levels by one. Then see if the 9600M GT (/9700M GT/GT130M) will clock up to the 3D level.
(Additionally- changing the 'amount of active performance levels', to three, takes out the 'extra' level.)

 

Hi u6b36ef,

thank you for your thoughts on this.

What i did a few minutes ago was killing this 30 second countdown & beeping by setting the 30 seconds to 1 second. Now the "MXM Structure..." Error is only blinking up for 1 second and it dont even beeps. So thats a good thing.

OK now for removing one performance level: I have done it and this is what i have running atm:


I will check now if it is changing something

Edit: I forgot to mention - I pasted the code in Perfomance Tables like NightWalker discribed it. And another thing is that only "Extra" (now "3D") has a Voltage of 1,05V. All other Entries are running at 0,89V. This comes within the Code in the Performance Tables.

Edit2: Ok i ran Crysis2 and the Clocks are always staying at Throttle Settings. What i cant understand is why the "3D" Settings (which where before the "Extra") are simply not working as "Thrtl" Settings? These are Clocks for this Card, so where is the Problem. What is happening on the Windows Welcome Screen that causes this weird Stripes and reboot...

 

mj12bot,
That's a sad result. Nice effort though.

-A blogger called Morris suggested how to change or stop the boot MXM error message, (second post in this link). http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/22772-9600m-gt-on-amilo-pi1556/ using the far right tab in NiBiTor. That's the boot settings tab; but I wondered if that's what you had used though.

I don't know what causes this performance levels problem. The only info I can offer is that I have one 9600M GT. It works in all modes tested in an Acer 8920, but has this performance level issue tested in an Acer 5920. Since the vBIOS is on the card, it suggests the cause is with the system BIOS (SBIOS), of the laptop. Though some Linux users have claimed a driver update from Nvidia fixed it. (As I said in earlier post.) Maybe it's just how they all interact. This is most likely old news to most users though.

I was tempted to test my ideas myself, in the Acer 5920. Only the 9600M GT got settled in the Acer 8920, because MXM II card is tricky to re-fit in there. (Moving the 9600 around is not an easy option.) I never manage to get NiBiTor to work for me either; I need to spend more time learning it I think.

Question though, is the 9700M GT, MXM II or III please? (Just for my own info.)
Maybe your reboot is caused by whatever is causing the bad graphic effect.
I think Alienware falls into the Acer/Nvidia/MSI type vBIOS compatiblity. Is your 9700M GT Asus by any chance, like the ones on eBay (atm). Asus are sometimes compatible, but there are stories of Asus not transferring to laptops of this bracket of vBIOS compatibilty.

 

I modified the .rom with a Hex Editor to get the 30 sec to 1 sec.

It is a MXM III Card and i think it is an Acer.

Before this one i tried an Asus Card and my Notebook has done nothing with it.
Power LED turned on and nothing happened.

 

Here is what i found out:

The reason for crashing is the memory clock of the card.
Everytime it is set to 800 i get a crash on Welcome Screen.
I tried with both, 0,89V and 1,05V.

Core and Shader can be raised without any problem.

Strange...

Edit: Even stranger is that i get to Welcome Screen with 800 Memory Clock @ 0,89V - but when i use
600 MC @ 0,89V i dont even get there and it crashes earlier...

 

Good news folks!
I just found GT 240m modules MXM II on ebay:
</title>< name="description" content="Compra Asus C90S C90P nVidia GT 240M 1GB DDR3 MXM II VGA Card en la categoría Computers Networking, Computer Components, Graphics, Video TV Cards, Graphics, Video Cards de eBay España.">< name="keywords

I just got one and it is working flawless!!

stock clocks: 550 / 790 / 1210 - test clocks -->> 700 / 950 / 1520

7,7K score isn't bad at all, but I just started to test it. I had some problems with its mounting plate, and used the one on my 9600m GT, and temps are still to high, I should mod the GPU fan for manual control 100%.
Maybe I could get higher clocks...

This card should be very close to King's hd 4670 DDR3 one
cheers.

 

Lovely! Ramp it up to 775mhz and 1000mhz and lets see what it does!

You are right shouldn't be far behind. I get 7.7K stock clocks though! Of course the quad does add to the score but not by a massive amount. At stock with a 2.5ghz duo it gets 7K so I guess about 7.3K with 3.2ghz E7500.

What does the GT240M get at stock clocks? From all the benchmarks it looks like the GT240M comes squarely in between the HD 4650 and HD4670 performance wise with memory type kept equal.

Should be good for 8000-8500 in the C90S. Perhaps nearly 9000 in mine

Anyways getting FAR too close for comfort haha gonna HAVE to get this 4850 working now!!!

edit: here is an interesting comparision:
HD 4670 OC
800/930 + 2.6ghz core 2 = 8000

SM 2.0 – 3066
SM 3.0 – 3830
CPU – 2273

H 4670 Stock

675/800 + 2.6ghz core 2 = 7100

SM 2.0 – 2635
SM3.0 – 3279
CPU – 2318


GT240M OC
700/950 + 3.3ghz core 2 = 7700

SM 2.0 – 3233
SM3.0 – 3020
CPU – 2879

When I get home tonight I will do a 700/950 and 675/800 run and disable 2 cores at 3.3ghz to see how close the two cards are Perhaps Phoneon you could do a 3.3ghz + stock clocked GT240M run. Then we have 2 sets of results to directly compare the performance of the cards.

 

Here you are, these are stock clocks + stock CPU 2,9@


And this is the last test with mem 1030 clock


BTW, my target is abaut 8 ~ 8,5k as much. The cards are similar, but notice shader 3.0 score.
In any case I wish you could get your 4850 work, that would be great step forward. God luck.

PS - Don't worry man my C90s still far from your best.

 

Yeah the SM 3.0 score does indeed seem a fair bit lower than the 4670! I think it is because the 4670 simply has more shader firepower with the equivalent of about 68 nvidia shader processors compared with 48 on the GT240M. Perhaps if you knock the shader clock up to 2000 things will improve on that score.

 

You are right, so basically the 4670 has higher clocks that makes sense.

I just achieved my 8k goal. And decrased temps to an aceptable range (keeping in mind here is very hot at this time in Alicante). I had to remove thermal pads from the memory chips, because GPU is very thin, and with thermal pads, the heatsink does not contact the GPU as it should...so now I'm worried abaut the chips temps).



What a clock rates mean, the core stable max seems to be 710 and shader 1550, taking a look to the voltages it seems to requiere a overvoltage for get higher clocks...really don't know if modding with niBitor would affect, what do you think?

cheers

 

nah Nibitor won't unlock higher voltages. Only a hard voltmod would work.

I think it is understandable that you can't get much higher the GT240M is a cool card so probably not giving too much extra voltage. Plus stock clock is 550mhz. 710mhz is already 160mhz OC. While the 4670 starts at 675mhz. I can do about 790mhz 100% stable and that is only 115mhz OC. Some people have been able to squeeze 875mhz stable out of it though which is insane!

Memory wise though 1035mhz is REALLY good I cannot get past 985.5mhz stable and most seem to get somewhere between 950 and 1000 with this card. Again some lucky souls get above 1000 but rare!

Just shows how ati really shocked nvidia with the 46xx series of cards lol. At the time it really jolted nvidia into action as they realised how outclassed they were.

 

Agree, NVidia didn't made a good great job with 2xx series, while ATI was already DX11 capable much earlier.
Specialy with the GTX 260, wich should be the same 9800m GTX in my XPS, but my friend with the Asus G60J is abaut unable to overclock because of temps (asus didn't a great job cooling this notebook thought), and he won't mod at all while he is on warranty. It would be funny scoring the same with the C90S from 2007 to Asus G60J 1,5k € 2010 LOL.

In any case I still wonder if we could see a 256bit installed in our C90. That would be the greatest upgrade ever. Good luck in that crusade!

Cheers.

[PS] I'm abaut to perform some test like crysis benchmark and so...will post
EDIT:
here you are:


Crysis is 34 fps average, maxed out at 1280x960.
Lost Planet 2 is abaut 36 at 1280x960, no blur, low shadows, everything else high and VSYNC on

 

Yeah it would be more than nice!! Actually if the 4850 works the C90 would own your mates G60J The GTX260M isn't as powerful as the 4850 especially when mated with a powerful CPU which I have

Should be interesting. My main concern is going to be power. The X3380 isn't too power consuming but may be forced to run at stock at undervolt or perhaps a bit lower The reason is the 4670 is a 28-30W tdp part and the 4850 is 50-60W tdp!! I guess through overclocking my 4670 I have hit 40W tdp at least but still need to make sure I have enough PSU headroom.

If that is the case then Q9550S is the only way forward

@Pheonon talking about oldie goldies! Your XPS M1730 still really is very good!! You should jam 8GB of ram in there and perhaps a couple of C300's 256GB in raid 0 (if you win the lottery ) Very nice. Also I wonder if you used the X9100 could you hit 4ghz stable 24/7 clock!! Would be interesting. I would also be interested to know if a quad would work with a bios cpu microcode insert

 

@King that's the point. The power seems to be the only limit in that great notebook, the fact is I think that was the reasson for my X3220 didn't work, according to the specs it is 105w TDP. not even with your 150w PSU, I wonder if some Xeon with 95w would work, but by the way I'm not spending that amount just for test, the microcode is in the BIOS, but it doesn't boot (not even error msg).

But you are right, maybe you would need more PSU power for make all that work, you are abaut to overcome my 230w m1730 PSU LOL!!anyway the Q9550S still being a great CPU.

Talking abaut my m1730, for the 8gb RAM is an upgrade in the cue, the hdd would wait a bit more...but since it is working more than great is not needed BTW. The CPU is more than discussed on forum, it seems DELL just forgot us, we are not able to mod the BIOS, because is not AMI nor AWARD, is dell specefic one, and when I bought it last year, I extended the warranty for 3 more years! (150€ well expended).
For resume, the X9100 does not work, and the QX9000 would be great upgrade all m1730 are waiting, but I don't think we could see that any time soon, but in part I understand it, keeping in mind this X9000 gets over 90ºC if you don't use right voltages, and rethermal-paste often.

cheers!

 

Yeah power is something to always bear in mind. When I tested the QX9650 that thing chewed up all my power I had hard shut downs at 3.5ghz and 1.225V lol. Then again the X3380 does exactly same at same voltage and no problems at all so shows how much more efficient it is. I now run 3.47ghz as I just need 1.2V to run stable and it shaves 7C of my load temps lol.

Something interesting to mention is when I tested the QX9650 I bought a volt/wattage meter to see how much power the unit pulled. The unit crashed at around 185W on the meter. I have a 180W power supply that should be capable of providing at least 200W so I think the vrm's in the C90 just cannot handle more than about 180W of power. It is this limitation I am thinking about. With an increased power draw of around 30W from the 4850 I need to cut down 30 W from processor. I think 3.16ghz + undervolt at 1.15V (maybe less) and 4850 at stock clocks will run perfectly. Beyond that only testing will tell.

Just want the card to arrive now ASAP

Didn't realise your X9000 runs so hot!! If only if wasn't for that extended warranty you could do a few cooling mods

 

Sure, as soon as the warranty runs out I'm modding that crappy heatsink, or maybe looking for a higher RPM fan, I'm still more than two year for that (maybe my M1730 die before, and Dell replaces with an alienware LOL, there actually doing that).

I'm also worried abaut the 4850 temp, do you have any info abaut it? Do you think your stock heatsink could keep it cool? the most times more power means more heat, I think I'm starting to be more excited than you, LOL.

Cheers!

 

haha I won't be using the stock heatsink. Going to desolder the heatpipe from the plate and re-weld/solder it to a M860tu heatsink that I am getting with the card.

My one concern is will 1 heatpipe be enough to chanel the heat away. If not I will mate it with my cpu heatsink
Other concerns are space ; will it fit lol so far got a 9.9cm gap to fit a 10cm card LOL and compatibility.

The odds are more stacked against me than in other mods but in a way not really. I have always pushed the boundaries and have eventually got my way

Hey Phoneon done some really interesting tests!! Just plugged my C90P into a killawatt and here are the results so far. Used Prime 95 and Furmark:

At idle : 66W
With CPU at load at 1.2V/3.457ghz : 166W
With CPU at load at 1.2V/3.457ghz + 4670 at load : 210W

This proves that actually the C90 can draw more than I thought it could and that there are only limitations on how much power the LGA socket can provide which only the QX9650 is capable of hitting lol. Now to try same with max OC on GPU watch PSU burst into flames!! Interestingly the 4670 at stock adds a whopping 44W draw at load compared to its idle clocks!! I wonder how much 4850 will eat....

edit: here goes:
With CPU at load at 1.2V/3.457ghz + 4670 at load 780/985mhz : 221W
Temps were CPU max 72C + GPU max 64C. These are higest stable clocks for both. After 10 mins testing

 

Very interesting...so 221w with a 180w PSU, nevermind!
maybe you would need a new uranium PSU for that 4850 LOL!
This would help a lot understanding how C90p takes power.
good job.

 

Actually working on 80% efficiency which is asking perhaps alot from an external PSU lol 221W at the wall is roughly 180W at the brick so not a problem. Plus the higher the load the lower the efficiency too.

I am mainly surprised how much power the 4670 uses. Usage shoots up 44W from idle under load at stock and a massive 55W at OC load! That must mean a total power consumption of around 60-65W!!! That seems alot to me for a mxm 2.1 II card! Even at stock the card must be pulling 50-55W. Although working from the 80% effiency rule the card is more likely to be pulling around 50W at OC and 40W at stock load. With undervolt to 1.1V at 675/800 probably could get it down to 30W.

I am going to add some more results later will test CPU at 3.16ghz and lowest stable voltage to see how many watts I can drop. I am betting at least 30W as without much testing I know it can run at 1.15W but not at 1.1. Will find out lowest voltage and do another run with GPU loaded again.


This perhaps sheds some light on why yours 105W Xeon chip didn't boot in the C90S. It seems there is a limitation at the wall for the LGA 775 socket for our desktop boards. The C90S 945G chipset perhaps is more sensitive to quad's power usage than the C90P P35 chipset which might compound the issue further. Some one should get a X6800 and see how far they can push it. Perhaps Phoenon you could rival your X9000. 3.6ghz should be doable and just about coolable.

I might buy one for fun if I can find one and push it as far as I can. Then give it/sell it to some lucky person here!

edit: 3.16ghz run at 1.1375V (lowest stable voltage) draws 142W compared with 166W at 3.47ghz and 1.2V. Saving of 24W. Nearly my 30W goal.

 

Good, you are in the right way. 3,16 ghz still being a nice clock, specially it's worth for the 4850.

For the C90s, maybe the X3230 would work, it's 95w, instead of x3220 105w. The X6800 is 75w and we know it works, so the limit should be close of that 95w.

haha, probably I would buy it to you if you are finally able to test one lol! I wonder to max out my c90s (and course overcome my friends G60J lol)

cheers

 

The X6800 works fine in fact I tested one myself lol about 2.5 years back lol in my old C90S was a hot chip but I am sure at least 3.5ghz is achievable.

As for the X3230 is concerned I am not sure it would work either. Upon boot up it isn't as if the quad draws load power. I think the chipset really isn't compatible.

Still 3.5 - 3.8ghz X6800 and GT240M with 4GB of ram isn't anything to sniff at even now 4 years after the machine came out.