G50vt: Upgrade to GTX 260m?

How is this done/is it possible? I know there will be extra heat from the 260m.

I've been searching for an hour, I thought someone on here had done this but I found nothing.

Thanks.

EDIT: Bah, a final search on Google gave me this result: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=446885

I guess I found what I was looking for.

 

Nice find, I was just wondering the same thing, thank you for sharing the link.

 

Very nice, I might have to give this a shot at some point, if I can find a 260 on the cheap.

 

That's what I'm thinking too, but I'm worried about the heat.

 

I have the Best buy model of the G50vt-x1. I recently got my hands on a cheap 260m gtx and it seems like this swap is a no go. It was pretty tough the get the cards swapped and I ended up just snapping the like plastic piece right behind the card in order to keep from dissembling the whole laptop. Anyway I am not sure if I got a dud from ebay or what but the card boots and I am currently using it to write this. The problem is that I can't update the drivers for the card and it shows up as (standard vga adapter) so basically I have no way of verifying the model of the card nor if it would work in this laptop. I have everything updating including my bios to version 213 which is latest I could find. CPUz shows standard vga adapter with 1024 ddr3 memory and g92 65nm 256bit bus.

If anyone has any ideas, they are more then welcome. Also my fan seems to running non stop now so if I ever find a driver heat might be an issue during intense gaming.

 

Welcome to the forums! Nice work with the swap so far.

I assume you've tried nVidia drivers already... Does anything show up in the device manager or system information in windows?

I also think the 260m will run a bit hot. You'll probably have to undervolt and perhaps underclock it (further).

 

In the device manager it shows up as Standard VGA Graphics Adapter. Yea I have tried the new nvidia drivers (older ones too) as well as the ones from the asus website for the the supposed host laptop which is the Asus G51-A1. None work and during the driver installation it stops and says can't find compatible hardware. I am not sure if my motherboard is just not reading the gpu. I did a little research and the numbers on the little green sticker indicate a 8800gts card. And cpuz say its a 65nm card which the 8m series is. Although the 8800gts is only suppose to allow a max of 512mb and this card has 1gb. The 260m gtx has a 55nm chip and Gddr3 and 256bit bus and 1gb of memory, the 65nm/55nm is whats throwing me off.

 

It almost sounds like you picked up a 9800m card (which looks a lot like the 260m) I know asus did make a 1gb 9800m card for the g70, so I am guessing you found one of them.

If you want to sell it and keep trying to find a 260m let me know

 

I would hate to sell the card as I cant seem to find a driver to work on it. I will probably just return it to the ebay seller, unless you want to pay what I did. But like I said it shows 65nm and even the 9series cards are 55nm. Im thinking this is an 8series 65nm with 1gb memory *not sure if they ever made a 8series with 1gb of memory though* and my laptop is just not reading it correctly. Hence not allowing me to update any drivers.

 

my 9800m states 65nm and they did make a asus 9800m with 1gb. Did the card happen to state g60 on it? From what I have seen the 260m's for the g51/g60 had g60 listed on the card..I think it was on the bottom but I can't be for sure. I do know the 9800m's I have seen state g50vt under the green sticker on the top of the card.

You can also try nflash and pull the bios from the card to find out what card it is.

 

Ok i couldn't find anything that worked and reinstalled my original 9800m. As soon as it booted windows found it as nvidia geforce 9800m gs. I also installed the nvidia drivers no problems. I looked through the card and it seems like cpuz is wrong with the nm of these cards as my 9800 shows 65nm as well when it suppose to be 55. I compared the die size of both cards and they were about the same. I will post all the numbers on the card now. It does state G60vt on the back of the card.

Front of card:
On the chip
Nvidia
U906B430 0923B
S Taiwan
PC1620.MOR
G92-751-B1

Green Sticker:
PN:60-NV3VG1000-D01
PT:NOA80928VG0002899 69N0E0V10D01-01

Back of card:
G60VX MXM VGA CARD
REV 2.1
PCB Made in Taiwan

ASUS big bold white letter towards the bottom


If anyone with a 260m gtx could open up the bottom cover and simply confirm the green sticker you would be doing me a great favor!!!

 

Hate to say it but I think you got scammed...

I dont own anything with gtx 260 but my research shows it as:

ASUS VGA BOARD GF8800GTS (60-NV3VG1000-D01)


Hope that helps.

 

ASUS never released a laptop with a Geforce 8800M GTS and since the card actually fits inside his laptop it only means that it is an ASUS GPU with the flipped MXM design. Maybe it's a VBIOS issue?

 

I also thought it was an 8800gts but I believe that is only referring to the actual board and not the chip. The reason I say this is because the PN number on 9800m gs also brings up something about a 8800 gts in my google searches. I also confirmed that it has 1gb of memory where the 8800 series did not allow more than 512mb per http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8800M-GTX.8836.0.html

About the vbios. What is that exactly and how would I go about updating that?

 

Since it does have the g60vx on the PCB it is safe to assume you have a asus 260m.

The way to check the vbios of the card is to download NiBitor and download nvflash and the stuff to make a usb bootable. I used the hp usb format program to make it bootable using windows 98 files. I know there was a post bout it but I can't find at atm. You then place the nvflash files on the usb.

Plug the usb in and restart the laptop and go into settings. Go to the boot section then hard drives and make sure the usb drive is higher on the list of hard drives to boot from. save and reboot.

When the usb boots into the dos (c:\) type nvflash and it will tell you how to save your bios. Once saved you can remove the usb and reboot.

Back in windows you will plug the usb in and open nibitor. You then open the .rom file on the usb drive and it will tell you what bios was on the video card.

This is also how you flash new bios to the video card if needed.

 

Thanks, I will have to search for that thread as im not really sure how to do that. I might try the card again but I will take offers if anyone is interested in the card. If its anywhere near what I paid I might just skip this headache. Thanks for all the help everyone!

 

Hey guys I am hoping someone can help me out again. I am having trouble with my current 9800m gs videocard. As you may know I tried installing a 260m gtx in my g50vt-x1 machine but that did not work out to well and ended up parting with the card. I reinstalled the 9800m and everything was fine til I decided to play dawn of war 2 on it for the first time in months. My temp shoot up to 105c in about 5-10 minutes and my system starts to lag like crazy! This game is not that intensive and used to run fine before I swapped and re-swapped cards. When I installed the 9800m gs for the final time I used arctic silver 5 thermal compound. The fan seems to be working fine. My idle temps are in the 68c for the gpu and my cpu (p8400) is 48c. My cpu temp at load is 60-70c. Thanks for any help fellas!

 

Only thing I can think of is the heatsink might not be making proper contact with the GPU. Make sure it is in fact flush with it and screw it down a little tighter if possible. You'll probably need to reapply paste if it's cured already.

 

I will try that tonight thanks dt. Im getting tired of unscrewing that bottom cover , I really hope this does the trick. The way the fan assembly is built it has a black wrap holding the cpu and gpu heatsinks together with the fan. Could there be a problem with that? Does anyone know if that assembly can be safely taken apart and reassembled?

 

If you're talking about that kind of sticky rubber strip over the CPU and GPU heatsinks I think that can be taken removed and then put on again a limited number of times. I don't think your computer will die without it but it seems to keep the airflow going correctly in addition to coupling the heatsinks together.

 

Just finished cleaning everything up and applying new arctic silver 5 to the cpu gpu and north bridge. i tried to tighten the copper heatsink as tight as i could without stripping the screws. I launched the game and again after like 10 minutes 110c temps! The fan starts turning faster as the game progresses. The strange thing is that its not even while playing! I just launch the game and sit at the menu and it still overheats! What is going on here? could it be a software or bios issue ( i remember "upgrading" to the newest bios when I was trying to get the 260m working )? Or is it most likely a hardware issue? Could my fan have taken a crap when I installed the 260m? It sounds like it works fine, its pretty quiet when im browsing the net and watching movies and it turns up appropriately with 3d gaming.

 

Wow, that's really weird. You can feel airflow, correct? It's usually pretty clear coming out of these. I don't see any reason for the GPU to be overheating like that if the heatsink is on there correctly. I'm getting a bit scared about putting paste on my computer now...

Re: menu overheating: even if the menu is 2D sometimes the game loads textures and stuff and the GPU clocks up to gaming speeds.

I think Metallic had a similar problem with his GPU, idk what happened to his machine.

 

Man this really sucks! I thought I was upgrading my laptop and only ended up downgrading it to the point that its a freaking video and internet machine! I think I may try to order one of these http://estore.asus.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=5056&catid=606. Its the vga heatsink part. I feel the fan blowing lots of air out and it is hot!!! If the fan was the culprit I assume it woul not be blowing any air correct? The vga heatsink looks like it comes with the original pad type stuff. Im going to call 2mw morning and confirm that it does. For 15 dollars its not going to hurt to try. I can't think of anything software related other than the bios update than I changed when I was swapping cards. That and the video drivers but I have tried several and none seem to alleviate the heat issue. By the way I tried Dragon age origin and it lasted 5-10 min as well before getting to 108c so its not the dawn of war game.

 

Try doing the paste again. Like D00d said, it shouldn't be doing that at all. With my experience with repasting the 9800m GS, you need a pretty fat glob or a copper shim to get it seated correctly.

Although, I had replaced the thermal pads, so that might have been the problem.

 

Im gonna try to put a bigger glob of paste in the morning and see if it does anything? There isnt a break in period with these things right? Also do you guys know how to revert back to an older bios or actually the original bios. I read somewhere that the fan and powermizer (dont even know what the powermizer is) is controlled by the bios. I have 0213 and before when everything ran fine it was 205. I can't even find the 205 bios through google let alone how to install it as winflash won't let you use an older bios. Thanks for all your help guys!!!

 

When I first repasted the GTX 260m on my G51vx with AS5 it was hotter than the stock, cured, paste, but nowhere near the temperatures you getting.

 

Just to let you know that is the heat sink for the 9700m card in the regular g50v not the one in the g50vt. The g50vt uses the same heat sink as the g51 and the g60 but none are listed on the asus estore site. Your best bet for replacing the heat sink would be to call them up and order it that way. Alot of the parts for the laptops are not listed on the estore.

But before you do that you need to verify everything else is ok. You need to pull the video card completely out of the laptop. The easiest way to do this is to remove the two screws on the corner of the bottom case near the video card and three screws holding the motherboard to the bottom case. One is near the video card, one is near the hard drive slot and the other one is near the cpu (they are both in the black plastic braces). Pop the top part of the palm rest up and pull the motherboard away from the bottom case carefully (make sure to pop the SD and card pieces out. You may also need to pop the fire wire plug inward to pull the motherboard free of the bottom case).

This should allow you to properly tilt the video card for removal and insertion. Once removed verify the bottom copper plate is not loose or messed up in anyway and verify that the heat pads are not messed up. The same goes for the top heat sink. Make sure all the pads are there and making contact. Clean all the old paste off good with alcohol or paste specific solvent and replace it with just enough paste to cover the center contact. Replace everything and tighten everything down. Make sure the black tape like piece that is on the vga heat sink fins does not get between the cpu fins blocking air and remember to plug the fan in lol

For added security it might be best to go into bios setting and reset to defualt or manufacture settings.

 

Another note, I am currently posting this from a g50vt-x5 that has a 260m in it. After downloading the current dox drivers it recognized the card and is running great.

The fans are always on high so the temps are fairly decent. I flashed the card to 600/975/1525 and it barely gets over 34C checking email and such. The lowest I have seen is 32C and the highest playing games has been 64C. I ran 3dmax06 in 1366 x 768 and scored around 9850 with just turbo extreme on.

 

That's pretty sexy. You basically have a G51 now, haha.

Now, to figure out if a GTS 360m can fit into a G51vx, just for giggles.

 

Next project....figuring out how to make the g50 keyboard backlit....lol

 

Hey glad to hear you have a G51 now! As for a backlit keyboard, I used a coathanger, some duct tape, and two blacklight LEDs with resistors and strapped them onto the sides of my cooler so they overlook my keyboard on the sides. I connected them via USB and so now at night the blacklight lights up the white parts of the keyboard (the letters). It also makes anything remotely neon look cool.

OT: Why are our names red now? I thought everyone got banned and at first I was like "oh no, not Forge too!" and then I was like "oh."

 

Im glad to hear the card is working for you! Did you have the same problem I did with the laptop seeing only standard vga adapter at first instead of it reading as Nvidia 260m? Im curious because if it did then it was my stupidity for not trying a dox driver before giving up and maybe there is still hope for other G50vt-x1 owners out there. By the way ill try your advice and hopefully that works, I am sick of opening this thing up and not being able to play games! Thanks again for everyone's help.

 

Jose, when I upgraded my cpu from a P7350 to a T9900 I also repasted my GPU. I was having similar problems because I stupidly removed the thermal pads from my GPU memory blocks and replaced it with paste. I found out this didn't work, and immediately after launching any 3d game my GPU would ramp up and heat up just at the menu. I was hitting temps of 105C+ within minutes of gaming. I ordered new thermal pads, and thermal paste (Shin-Etsu). Even after putting on the new paste and pads I was still getting higher temps. I reapplied the paste, but put two thick lines down each side of the die. Then I made sure that the fan was seated properly, because it previously wasn't. The fan should not move up and down when pushed on if it is seated properly. After all of that I am not hitting over 90C in games, and my 2d/idle temps when just browsing or watching videos on tube are anywhere from 48c-52c.

Hope that helps. I would get a thicker paste. Shin-Etsu is some amazing paste, you can get it from newegg, but it's sort of expensive. Don't be shy and apply it generously, and it should help the temps.

 

Ok guys i have not tried to repaste the gpu as im at work and dont have any tools or paste with me. But I loaded the manufacturer settings in the bios and it did not revert to the older bios. The gpu still ramped up 110c in a few minutes. On top of that now my second hd is not being read. I know there is a bios glitch and it posts twice under manufacturer settings so I reloaded user settings and still a no go. I forgot what I did 2 years ago to get the second hd working but now I am stumped. I can see it in the bios but my windows is not.

Is this the paste your talking about? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150080&Tpk=Shin-Etsu
I just spent 15 bucks on the arctic silver set with the remover and cleaner and paste. I will try to add it thicker when I get home but if that doesn't work I will try wit the Shin-Etsu. The memory pads are still on the heatsink, where did you buy yours? Just in case I decide to replace mine.

 

To get it to post once load the user defaults.

 

No, this.

I suggest you use a paste other than AS5 since it doesn't like to be laid on thick and conducts electricity should it run over the GPU.

No idea. I thought that those names I had called Chaz and Flipfire behind their backs had finally caught up to me.

Wait, no, I was kidding. Really!

 

Scratch the harddrive issue. Rebooted one more time after loading user defaults and changed the controller to compatible and then back to enhanced and started windows. Now my drive is back.

 

I thought the same thing about thermal paste before as well. However, it seems that the gap between the gpu and heatsink is fairly large, and it cools better (at least it did for me) with a thicker paste and a very generous amount. Also there is no cure time with the Shin-Etsu, so pretty much what you see when you boot up, is what you're going to get regularly.

Goodluck, let us know how it all turns out!

 

Or you can put a copper shim and sandwich it between two thin layers of paste. That's what I did.

 

What size is the shim that you used? Im thinking of ordering from here http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-Sized-Th...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3a55e709a3 just in case.

 

I think it's too big. Let me dig around my room for a second. I could cut and mail you a piece. Mind measuring the 9800m GS die? I forgot the dimensions.

EDIT: I think it's either 10-gauge or 12-gauge copper sheet, whatever thickness that translates out to

 

Hahaha. I guess we're blue again. Maybe an April Fool's thing from NBR?

Interesting method of thermal padding.

 

The copper shim is fairly known here, I think. Since copper passes heat better than paste, using a shim instead of a thick blob of paste is cooler.

And it does work. My GTX 260m loves me for it.


EDIT: For your viewing pleasure, shim sandwich.

 

ENHANCE!! But I see what you did there, very nice. Last I saw of copper was the copper blocks thing. I think I'll do that when I get home from France.

 

My Xenon isn't a proper camera, haha. I have copper lying around. Pay me like fifty cents for postage and I could mail you a couple of shims.

What's the dimensions of the die again?

EDIT: and just so there's no confusion, the shim is only on the die. The memory nodes are covered in Bergquist thermal pads.

 

Forge I'll pay you a few bucks for a shim for my G51 260m. Can I get a paypal or something to send you some cash for a cut copper shim.

 

Sure. Could you measure the die for me, or find the dimensions somewhere?

I'll cut them and get them reasonably flat, but I'm leaving it to you to get them pancaked and sanded to your liking.

 

I haven't had a lot of time lately, been really thinking of getting the Asus g73 but want this thing running 100%. I don't like selling things that do not work and it's dishonest. Anyway I came across this stuff when I read Forge talk about Bergquist

http://www.bergquistcompany.com/thermal_materials/gap_filler/gap-filler-2000.htm

http://www.bergquistcompany.com/thermal_materials/gap-pad.htm

http://www.bergquistcompany.com/thermal_materials/liquid_dispensed_materials.htm

Anyone have experience with any of these products? They look like they are designed exactly for gap between the core and heatsinks like our situations with the videocards. Thanks. You guys have been the best! So glad I found this forum!!!

 

WOW!!!!!!! Finally got the paste in the mail today and repasted everything. Temps at startup were 32c for the cpu and 42c for the gpu. Never have they been this low for either. I ran about an hour of Dawn of war 2 and it never went over 83c! Amazing that just paste could make this much difference! I will never use another paste. Thank you Talon for the heads up!