K53TA.. The best deal ever... could be!

I've played bf3 with stock cpu speed and voltage yesterday and temp went to 83 :/ I've tested 2.8-3.0 oc for some minutes with bf3 and it was amazing, for a 400$ laptop. but for now i have to find a way to cool it. its weird to see 2 identical laptop running completely different no?

 

I'm crossin' my fingers for ya - the screen is really about the only thing that keeps me from absolutely loving this laptop.

 

I thought you said previously that your a8 was crippled? Wouldn't that allow you to OC so far without issue?

Has anyone actually installed an a8-3510mx, a8-3530mx, upgraded to 1600MHz ram and had success with it? The one person in this thread who did that said they were getting worse overall performance.

Or are people only able to install the a8-3500M and see gains? There has been a ton of talk of people in this thread upgrading to the A8 but i haven't seen any good results yet. Can anyone chime in?

I haven't really experimented with any higher clocks than [email protected] because it hasn't been necessary for me because i only play CS Source. If i get bf3 or something newer i'll OC the GPU and push a little farther on the CPU.

Also, what are the part numbers for your 1080p screen and cable? I might want to upgrade to a better screen sometime soon. I don't have the chimei(?) screen in mine and viewing angles and general screen quality is still pretty terribad.

 

The A8-3530MX was crippled, I sent it back. I was able to locate an OEM pull A8-3500M and it works perfectly. The only advantage is the additional 80 shaders on the APU (6620g vs 6520g) and the higher core voltage capability.

Again, the A8-3500M works absolutely as expected. The A8-3530MX that is floating around on eBay absolutely DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY.

As far as the 1080p screen, it doesn't matter which you use as it's a standard part. My current one is an LG, I cannot remember the part number off the top of my head because I'm at work. As for the part number on the LVDS cable, I'll let you know once I verify that it works as expected.

Here are some Geekbench stats for my A6-3400m


Geekbench @ 1.4ghz stock clock - 3463
Integer Processor integer performance 3880
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 4234
Memory Memory performance 2328
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 1580

Geekbench @ 2.6ghz - 5724
Integer Processor integer performance 6496
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 7203
Memory Memory performance 3695
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 1907


Geekbench @ 2.8ghz - 6033
Integer Processor integer performance 6974
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 7694
Memory Memory performance 3518
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 1965

Geekbench @ 3.0ghz - 6430
Integer Processor integer performance 7460
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 8240
Memory Memory performance 3689
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 1980

Here is the current processor I am running.

Geekbench @ stock (1.5ghz) with A8-3500M - 4087
Integer Processor integer performance 4548
Floating Point Processor floating point performance 4961
Memory Memory performance 2914
Stream Memory bandwidth performance 1770

JD

 

I'm just an outsider looking in, although I did own a K53TA for a short period. But I found the stock A6-3400m to overclock well comparable to the A8 MX CPU's with stock cooling at least. I was easily able to achieve 2.2GHz, and 2.4GHz if I wanted to push the temperature a bit. But I got that with my A8-3510MX in my HP DV6z until I did a cooling mod and used a notebook cooler. Now I can get 2.8GHz, but you could probably achieve that with a radical cooling mod on the K53TA.

 

So, have you actually noticed an increase in performance with crossfire having the additional 80 shaders? Also while OC is there actually a conceivable increase in performance?

 

I honestly jumped into it to quickly and didn't benchmark enough stock. I wish I did more benchmarking before hand (especially graphical), I still have the A6 so if you guys have something specific you want me to bench with I'll tear it back down and have at it... As far as OC'ing -- there is a fair increase in FPS in populated places in games such as WoW, etc.

Let me know.

JD

P.S. - I forgot to mention my Geekbench scores with the A8-3530MX... ~3100 @ stock 1.9 clock and 3913 overclocked to 3.2ghz LOL. That was even with 1600MHz memory (which it definitely recognizes).

 

I do not trust geekbench at 2.3Ghz on my a6 3400 m I get 4557

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. K53TA : Geekbench Result Browser

 

Yea, I mean after overclocking the cpu (in my case to 2.6Ghz). I don't think overclocking the gpu would make any noticeable difference based on what I've seen?

 

If you really want to stress your system run Prime95 Large FFT + MSI Kombustor and make sure that your CPU isn't throttling. I've seen claims of 3.0GHz but after several minutes or P95+Komustor it starts throttling the CPU. Depending on the game or app it may not be that noticeable, but in many cases it's seen as stutters or short lockups. I can run my machine at 3.0GHz and run benchmarks all day. But when stressed for any length of time, it will throttle.

 

Thanks for sharing...the A8 performance improvements look well worth all the hard work! Did you get the Cpu between $80-$100?...that's how much I see it on ebay.

I have no experience taking apart a laptop and switching out the cpu, so probably won't try it, but was it a very difficult involved procedure, with soldering and resoldering, and having to repaste with cooling thermal paste? (...maybe only difficult for someone with no experience .) Who knows, maybe I will try this one day in the next year or 2.

It definitely makes a difference!
I made a comparison of GPU overclocking with CPU overclocking at B0 2.6ghz P0-P6 2.2ghz just for Batman AC since it has its own built in benchmark tool, and it made a big difference +7FPS.
Using 11.12 drivers at 1440x900 (all tests with oc cpu & gpu oc of 650/1001)
non oc gpu----> oc gpu:
Maximum FPS 53 ---->60 (so a +7 fps)
AVERAGE FPS 39 ---->47 (+8fps )
So I have to assume all games(Skyrim, BF3, etc) are improved with gpu oc atleast by +5FPS!

 

No soldering required. The CPU socket has a locking mechanism where you turn a flat head screw to unlock it. The CPU just lifts out after that. I've done it a bazillion times over the years and it's probably pretty impossible to mess up

http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/178/2.jpg

^^^^ that is obviously NOT our laptop, but just to give you get an idea of what the socket looks like

Dismantling this laptop is probably one of the easiest ones i've ever done. It's very straight forward. As long as you keep track of what screw goes in each hole it will be easy to take apart and reassemble.


EDIT: ALSO, to upgrade the thermal paste you don't need to take out the CPU. You just remove the heatsink assembly, clean the heatsink and cpu and gpu, reapply paste, and put it back together.

 

I also upgraded mine identical to yours.

I used BF3 to get it hot for like 10 seconds, I don't think I should load it up again as it hit 107C.

Does any1 know how to tell which die is gpu1 from the photo below; is it the apu or the discrete gfx? could it be that I got a little bit of the thermal compound on the resistors on the die? or could it be that the a8-3500m I bought on ebay is no good?

 

Did you remember to plug the fan back into the motherboard when you were putting your laptop back together? Or did you remember to tighten all of the screws on the heatsink assembly? That's extremely hot in general, let alone after 10 seconds of load...

 

Yes, the fan is running and I double checked all the screws.

 

Did you thoroughly clean everything before reapplying new paste? What paste did you use?

 

Just did a quick test. I wasn't able to get 0.9875v at 2GHz. So I just tried 0.9875v at 1.95Ghz and no error at all... So just play a little with your frequency and you'll get it. Hope it helps you.

 

In MSI afterburner, the Gpu1 should be the discrete gfx (6650m). Press the "i tab" near the right top side of the program and it will indicate the information of the graphic cards : gpu 1 should state AMD Radeon 6600M and 6700M Series. Not sure why the temps are so high (since I've never taken apart one of these laptops before)...very strange... it has to be something to do with how you reassembled the part with the graphic card...maybe a fan isn't moving or cooling paste..you're probably going to have to take it apart and examine it again.

 

Hi guys, i want to ask u if it is safe to update the bios.When i open the winflash utility a message pops up saying that updating the bios is risky.Is it true?
Has anyone the bios 206?Does this version (206) have the option to choose a graphic card through the BIOS?I want that option cause i cant install linux to the laptop,i need to disable one graphic card before booting the OS but my BIOS doesnt give me that option.Whats new in version 206?

 

None of the BIOSes for this notebook have such functionality. Based on the responses I've received from Asus support, it will almost certainly never be implemented.

 

Hi guys!

Here is an ICC profile for the K53TA notebook. The screen is definitely better with it. A Hungarian IT tech page made it.
ICC profile
Here is how to set for every startup. Google translated from Hungarian. You don't have to install any monitor driver just move to the next step!
How to set it

 

What is ''UMA VBIOS'' for?Its in the version 206.

 

It was an update to address the screen banding issue that was present in the initial release of the notebook.

 

Who knows, it was probably to fix some banding issues with certain screens, or was that a previous bios? You also have the option of using the 211 bios from the k43ta, as it seems to share the exact same bios files with our k53ta (can compare the 206 for both; it's the same file). I posted on this a few pages back that the 211 bios works but doesn't seem to offer anything new or easily measurable. As saturnotaku mentioned, there's no option yet to simply switch to the 6650m fulltime. All we can do is wait for amd to come up with some solution to this, which is very unlikely.

Flashing a bios on any piece of hardware always carries a tiny risk of the flash failing, so the flashing program will always give you this warning. If you're not comfortable with this, don't do it.

add: just noticed there's a 212 bios for the k43ta, will try it out shortly. Likely nothing changed, just says "Update EC Firmware" again, but it's dated Jan 16th.

add: 212 installed, no new options in bios menu. The bios itself was dated from Nov, just like the 211, so maybe they're just slowly getting these through quality control?

 

After 5 tries, I've found that you have to put at least 3/4 what the manufacturer originally placed, which looks a lil excessive.

Apparently I should have been a lil more generous with the thermal paste. Now during intense BF3 sessions my max temps are 72.

 

After 5 tries, I've found that you have to put at least 3/4 what the manufacturer originally placed, which looks a lil excessive.

Apparently I should have been a lil more generous with the thermal paste. Now during intense BF3 sessions my max temps are 72.

 

I was messing around trying to enable/disable crossfire with dx9 games and all had no difference in FPS which I know is wrong so crossfire seems to not be working no matter all the 100 different ways I have tried. UNLESS the game specifically has dx11 which it will then turn on.

Anyways that's problem #1 and here is #2:

I was in registry trying to turn off EnableUlps and i disabled it in a few wrong areas and forgot the original settings (yes stupid me)

anyways can anyone tell me if it is set at "0" or "1" in all the folders named "amdkmdag"? There are 3 of these folders in the registry in "regedit". I just need to confirm which of those 3 are "0" or "1".

 

yeah, i've given up on asking them for the option to switch off the igp.

it's probably nearly impossible.

anyone notice any difference ?

 

Reporting in to say that Star Wars: The Old Republic (MMO) works excellent on the K53TA. I'm getting 40-50FPS on medium with an overclock and that's including instances and BG's.

I picked up the game 3 days ago and I'm totally hooked - best MMO ever and the story is unmatched by any other MMO's out there. The quests are so good that it doesn't even feel like I'm level grinding - Plus, you order your companions to level up your professions, which means barely any grinding on your part. You can just sit back and enjoy the game content.

Note: CPU is overclocked to 2.0 and no GPU overclock yet. Temps are about 65-70c at all times and it NEVER gets hot.

Can't get a better deal for the price, that's for sure.

Only thing I highly recommend is replacing the awful 5400rpm HD because loading screens take 60-90 seconds on certain games. It's an absolute must to upgrade or else your gaming experience will get frustrating. SSD is always recommended. I'm personally going 120GB SDD/500GB 7200rpm soon and removing the optical drive.

If you guys are contemplating on getting this laptop, you will not be disappointed.

 

This has been driving me crazy and the story/fix below is what I wrote on my Facebook 10 min ago - For anyone using IE9 or IE in general with slow start up once your laptop is done starting up.....:

Finally have IE9 starting in 5 seconds or less after my lappy is done booting up.. Took forever to figure out. I've done totally clean OS installs just trying to figure it out. Also thought it was tied to Windows updates since they sometimes hurt things. Anyway, this time I've had no updates (turned it off) & have still had the problem at one point. Well apparently the fix is just a checkbox..

Internet Options - Advanced - "Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering” option under Accelerated graphics..

That box needed to be checked. I can't believe that one.. even people with top of the line PCs with the newest cards had this problem.

So yes, checking that box... well I tried it & then totally shutdown my lappy each time so I could check if from start up because that's where the delay is every time.

I still had the same issue with the box being checked though.. well as it turns out THE BOX WASN'T STAYING CHECKED.

Everyone that suggested using that box had told everyone to do it using the Internet Options in control panel, so I did that.. even though it's the same thing as going to it via IE..

Well apparently it's not the same for me at least. I realized that every time I would turn the box on through the Internet Options in Control Panel, the box wouldn't be checked when I opened IE. It would still be checked in the Control Panel version though, which makes no damn sense at all.

So then I checked the box in IE... & the box unchecked in Control Panel. WHAT THE HELL?

So then I opened up IE9 64bit instead of 32 bit... lo & behold, the box was checked. As it turns out, the Control Panel route was controlling the settings in the 64 bit version not the 32 bit version. So with that stupid part figured out, I shutdown once more knowing that the box for the 32 bit was now checked for sure & it worked.

I guess it would've been perfect had I not gone via Control Panel the first time, but still I was comparing 64 & 32 because it saved me having to shutdown after trying 32 because after opening 32, I could open 64 and still have the same delay... but since the boxes weren't intertwined in the first place, I was just going in circles!

_____________________________________________________

Other than that ^ I have been playing SWTOR all the time...it's great, except I finally went into a PVP warzone = yeah definitely will need to build another gaming PC.

The Warzone was pretty much unplayable. I've also tried many games with lower rez, but the native rez always performs the best.. I also had all the SWTOR settings on low when I was trying the Warzone.. no change. I don't OC cpu or gpu either, doubt it would help in this situation with the level of unplayability it was giving me.

BF3 always plays fine though lol.. many posts ago I shared my settings & I've stuck with them & also play that nonstop.

 

shoot.. I've been using a wireless keyboard on top of the built in one just because I'm so used to chiclet keys I can't type very fast on anything else, let alone game on them LOL..

got an ext. monitor 1 mo ago (sold all my other ones months back with my gaming rig) so prob solved..



_______________________________________________________

I still have the banding issue sometimes with that latest bios 207 or later... drives me nuts.


Other than that, my name for BF3 is CaptainKronos or Captain Kronos, & for SWTOR I'm on the Lord Praven server: Alelus; Condo; .. can't remember the third name. I'm also on Swiftsure: Alelos. Can't wait until we can xfer servers for a fee or free.. also praying they allow an advanced class reroll/respec.. everytime I pick an AC I hate it & then make the other one & like it better, but it takes forever having to continually redo everything!!!!!!!!!! (At least for the Jedi classes... 6 hours or so to hit 10... Trooper takes 2-3). Haven't done any Empire chars.

Also dying to know how you all are actually saying the Warzones are in fact playable.. if I can achieve that, I'll hold off on building another gaming rig for now. Do I need to OC anything? I used to OC the cpu, but haven't needed to lately since I'm always in a game, not multitasking.

On top of that, I'm def. looking into the SSD option... either having it by itself or having it with a 7200. What about dual SSDs instead??

 

You're kidding right? LOL. Any time I raised a game over 1366x768 except for WoW (only have BF3, WoW, SWTOR on it right now) it kills the FPS.

Even more ironic, whenever I go under the native 1366x768 res, it also kills the FPS lmao.

As a matter of fact, I had to create my own driver for my ASUS ext. monitor because it wouldn't allow me to select 1366x768 via HDMI or VGA, what a PITA that was.


JTSMART, also wondering if you got that HDD caddy that you linked from Amazon way back.. otherwise I'll go the Ebay route that had a link while back. Unless dual SSDs would work okay....if there's a caddy for something like that haha

On a lesser related note, JTSMART, I stumbled upon your Facebook here.. funny we've both worked for a cable company in Texas doing tech support.

________________________________________________

Update for SWTOR: Soo... I played aroung with JTSMART's SWTOR settings in CCC & in game..... I found that out of everything, windowed mode gave the biggest jump LOL.. man that makes me happy.. no more loading screens to alt tab to check something online. I swear I tried windowed before but it was worse. Full screen windowed didn't work because it made the game 1366x768 scaled down vs my desktop res of 1400x900 so the game was like a box with 2 inch gaps on the right & bottom. I also maxed all the bars but found that it seemed to worked better as it usually does to have the two settings that you can choose to have the application control OFF of application control..now hopefully this will make PVP better... otherwise I'll just bump everything down for PVP & I'll be a happy camper as long as it's playable lol

 

interesting... it also kills my FPS or stays the same on most games when it comes to native res. Except for some game games.

So I tested BF3 just now and it worked like a charm and ran VERY well untill I got a BSOD from the game and now I get to reinstall my whole computer... Joy.... I haven't gotten a BSOD from anything else and it's funny how it decides to totally kill my pc as well. Even Crysis 2 and everything else never got near doing that to me.

oh nvm RMA time

 

Hi again guys,i have a problem.When i purchased the laptop,windows 7 was already installed and the application "gamepark" was also already installed.Its an application that lets you download free casual mini games.Some games (plants vs zombies,world of goo etc) were already installed.The weird thing is that this program is in the ASUS folder in the program files.Anyway,i dont like these games and thats why i uninstalled them but then the windows explorer started crashing multiple times per minute.I fixed the issue by restoring the system at the time before the uninstall and everything worked fine.I tried again to uninstall the games and again windows explorer started crashing!!Thank god windows 7 lets u restore the system without formatting the disk,otherwise this would be very annoying.How can it be that 3rd party software (already installed when i purchased the laptop) causes crashes??Am i the only one who has that problem?

 

I'm kind of 'happy' to see that I'm not the only one with the banding issue after the bios update! lol And I added you as friend on Origin.

FYI I just played bf3 64 mp map overclock 1.9-2.3ghz with 6650 oc to 715-1015mhz and it was running like a charm. max temp was 78C after 2h of play

 

with the newest ATI drivers, did anyone else lose the ability to turn on and off crossfire? I'm trying to turn mine off because I've read that it typically gives better frames

 

Nothing was lost on 11.12 drivers, but not sure of the newest 12.1 drivers. On 11.12, the AMD vision control center interface just rename "crossfire" to "AMD Radeon Dual Graphics", and you just Disable it to turn off crossfire.

 

Hi, got the same laptop. My question is, any of us know what type of wireless card this one is using? (by type I mean PCI, PCIe, etc)

Is it possible to replace it with a new one that has say, bluetooth capability and/or 5GHz N band? I opened the RAM compartment and saw the card but I couldn't tell what kind it is or if it's gonna be a pain to replace.

Thanks. Sorry if it's a noob question.

 

Ok can some1 with the 12.1 drivers can confirm that there's a bug when you try to join a server.. in the battlelog browser when I click join its written "joining" then "initializing" then "logging in" and that's it.. If i click on the bf3 icon in the bar the screen is white too

 

Ok I just found why.. If you install 12.1 and you overclock your GPU, don't forget to reDISABLE ULPS because when you install the new patch it's going back to enable. Now everything is working well.

 

Ok guys and gals I need some help. I have had this k53ta-bbr6 since october and I am just now getting around to really tweaking it and seeing what it can do.

I have installed the 8.863 chipset drivers, 12.1 catalyst MOBILITY drivers from the ATI driver website, k10stats, MSIafterburner, hwinfo64, cpu-z, hwmonitor, ulps disabled with HTwingnuts's registry keys, MSIafterburner eula modified properly. I also have a win7 desktop gadget called "GPUObserver37" which can monitor the graphics adapters.

k10stats works just fine and I have done several OC profiles but typically I leave it on p0 2GHz and slightly undervolted.

I am trying to simply verify that my radeon 6650m actually works!! I have disabled "radeon dual graphics" in the catalyst driver engine or w/e that thing is called. This should mean I run on the 6650m when I have power4gear set to "high performance", correct?

hwinfo64, msiafterburner (gpu#1 charts), and gpu observer gadget all report that the 6650 is at 0% usage, 100 MHz core, 150 MHz memory. Even if I run a game in windowed mode and watch them they do not change and the on-screen display available from msiafterburner also shows gpu#1 as 0% and always at 100/150mhz. Meanwhile the gpu#2 charts are bouncing all over indicating that everything I do is running on the IGP.

Am I doing something wrong? misinformed? or is my 6650 dead?

 

Power brick Died on me, Reading a lot of issue with same on their Eee series

 

I don't think your gpu is broken. Mine show the exact same thing as you can see in my screenshot.

 

ok thank you. I will also grab this gpu-z utility tonight when I am home. But when you run a game shouldnt the gpu usage be fluctuating in at least one of those monitoring applications? Mine remains at 0% while doing anything/everything but meanwhile the IGP %usage fluctuates from 20-100.

Also when you overlcock the gpu in msiafterburner and press "apply" can you see the frequencies/temps/%usage change in the afterburner gpu#1 charts?

 

The Only time my 6650m kicks in is when the game has directx11 within it. Otherwise I NEVER see any FPS difference nor does any program say it's actually being used.

From what I can tell is that 12.1's custom profiles don't work with the dual graphics options.

It's a shame too since it's such a nice graphics card compared to the 6520g. I'm even able to run games in dx11 mode faster than dx9 mode and that I don't get.

 

so you're telling me that this card is useless for playing Starcraft2 since it is a directx9 only game?

since the dualgraphics option (aka crossfireX) is well documented as only supporting dx11, I believe this explains why you see better performance in dx11 vs dx9 in the same game (assuming you had crossfireX enabled). what happens when you enable it and then play a dx9 only game? I am wondering if it defaults to the 6650 since crossfire wont run and the 6520 is inferior. I can't remember if I tested that scenario.

If it doesnt work at all in dx9 then I will be very sad because the primary things I play are still warcraft3 and starcraft2. Well thank god I still have my desktop and only got this as a "capable back-up" to my desktop. I am most saddened because I just pushed my friend to buy the HP dv6 with A6-3400 + Radeon 6750 because it could handle SC2 and has good battery life and in his price budget.

SOMEONE out there has to know the proper settings to run dx9 only games with this laptop and actually get the 6650 to be active, hope they start responding since I think those of us active at the moment are not real clear on this issue.

 

I just remembered another very technical issue regarding these dual graphics A-series systems that I learned over in the HP dv6 threads. If you install RAM such that you are operating in single channel RAM mode (aka 1 stick only or mismatched pairs) then the discrete Radeon 6650/6750 will not be detected and not used!! The user over there found the "fine print" written about the chipset that the discrete gpu must have dual channel RAM installed in the system. In my case, this is not an issue as I have dual channel (2x4gb).

 

Anybody know of an integrated bluetooth solution that works for this laptop?

 

Quick question: What kind of battery life are you guys getting from stock voltages? I'm sure by now most have OC/undervolted, but before then how long was the system lasting of the charger?

I've had unfortunately terrible luck with this computer and am currently typing this on my 3rd system (4th if you count the motherboard they just replaced....). From what I've read, 6-7 hours seems to be the norm for owners of this laptop while just doing some light browsing and what not. I myself am barely getting 3.5 on a good day.

A quick rundown of my situation: My first system was returned to Best Buy with a broken touchpad and then the second with a broken DVD drive. Shortly after getting my third system, I started noticing a squeal coming from the computer and saw that my battery life from the first two computers had drastically decreased. I sent it in and Asus more or less didn't believe me and sent it back. After I got it back I diligently documented many of the problems I was having including an audio recording of the squeal, then sent it back. This time they replaced my motherboard, battery, hard drive, and a section of my case. Since I got it back i've noticed my system runs hotter, louder, and is getting about 30 minutes less on a charge then it did before I sent it in! The squeal is coming from right above my touchpad which is where I believe the CPU is according to pictures of the board I've seen. What I am not sure of is if Asus replaced my CPU when they replaced the motherboard.

Am I going crazy or does anyone else think there could be something wrong here? Any ideas?

 

Very interesting... I actually have a kingston and the default Samsung for 8g (works fine on everything)... This could very well be the issue, like I said it works flawlessly for dx11 but otherwise it does nothing.

even though they have the same specs in every way because they are different by brand and such it could possibly make these effects. I may just need to buy the same stick again. I have an issue with my pc and it needs repairs so I could only confirm this within a few weeks or so. Is anyone else up to confirming this? If you are already getting some more Ram then it would be an easy test.