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

That sounds great, i can't wait to get one now. But is it realy worth it?
It sounds like it is because memory will run faster and the integrated graphic card will become a hd6740g2.

Can you tell me your experience?
Also is it hard to change the processor? And iam now using 2x SAMSUNG 4GB DDR3 1333MHZ.
So i need to upgrade it to 16000Mhz or can i run this memory on 1600Mhz?

 

1600mhz won't make a noticeable difference because the 6520g sucks, and crossfire sucks. You're just wasting your money on the upgrade.

I don't know how much higher the A6mx can OC, but A6vanilla can OC high enough already.

You're getting diminishing returns and turning the laptop into a money pit.

 

Thanks for the reply. But the 3510Mx is an A8 and has a 6620G integrated.
With that combining the 6650M it will become a 6740G2. But it's still not worth the upgrade?

 

oh, you're getting an A8.

crossfire still sucks.

how much are you paying to upgrade? It all depends on the cost

 

The A8-3510MX is 70 euro i don't know how much that is in dollar.
Or the A8-3520, that one is 109 euro but the 3510MX is faster and cheaper.

But if i have to change the memory too i don't know what it's gonna cost then.

 

It looks like ebay has the A8-3510MX for $73 with shipping. The RAM will probably run you another $40 too. So it's a costly upgrade, I'm not sure if it's totally worth it. If you already have the memory on hand, then it's probably worth it to try it out

 

i've been upset today when i talked to a guy working for the geek squad and was telling me that my cpu was a dual core when it's a 4 core. he said 'its a dual core but 4 core virtually' dude.. rofl

 

that's $90 us.

you don't HAVE to buy the ddr1600. it will still work with your ddr1333.

If you are able to sell your A6 for $60 or more, I suppose that is a worthwhile upgrade.

 

I think it's good as a cumulative upgrade; the sum of it's parts:
SSD
DDR3 1600
A8 35xxMX
(optional) SATA drive bay for 500GB HD to replace DVD drive

This gives you better everything. And Crossfire doesn't ALWAYS suck. Depends on what you're playing. It worked really well for BFBC2, but I never really use it. I've just gone switchable, but I think I'll be going back to Crossfire soon just to see what's up these days.

Sort of a go all or go home. I don't see how it becomes a money pit, though. Once you do that, you're set, nothing else to spend. This thing is doing so much better than it was when it started now. Sucks the battery a little faster, but I usually use it plugged in anyway, or I'm working solely off the SSD (Steam/low-end games on airplane). In my situation, at least, I had to get it as close to a DTR as possible. Getting deployed and don't have enough for a real DTR.

 

Does anyone know the height of the thermal pads at the GPU memory? I can't tell it is 1mm or 1,5mm. I plan to replace them with a better conductive. Could someone measure it?

 

Then i will give it a try i think.
Iready upgraded to a SSD with optical bay.
But i also have to buy some termal paste for the upgrade.
But which one is good?

 

so.. been having this issue all the time with this laptop.. no overclock or anything.. its only been bad up until recently.

basically randomly.. sometimes when the machine comes out of sleep mode.. on the top of the laptop screen.. there are like black and white bars.. that move around... or white bars that move up and down on the screen.. any restart fixes it.. it either happens at the top of the laptop screen or down the middle.. once again.. i could go like 8-9 hours without this happening.. but when it does do it.. its rather annoying

any ideas?

 

I'm using arctic silver 5 right now but I heard that mx4 was an other good one that I may try in the future

 

I have the mx4 on my k53 right now, I perfer the stuff to silver based pastes because it spreads better and does not dry out as easy. But the conductivity of Arctic Silver 5 is damn good regardless. I am sure you will be fine with what you have.

 

pick any brand. Even cheap one like Tuniq will do the job.

amd drivers.

 

i did pay using CC.. and asus warranty ended in august
unfortunately , it still goes into battery mode when i tried 3 different A/C adapters...

i checked the power outlet of laptop and the whole inside socket (including needle) does move very slightly but its somewhat firm overall...

 

Thanks for the answers. I will go for the MX4 then.
Just bought the A8-3510MX for $65. Think that's a nice deal!

 

My problem is still exists. When I'm playing my cpu speed is changing. I checked BF3 and i capped the fps at 35. It can run 95% of the time on 35 fps but sometimes its dropping to 30 and I can see in HWinfo that 1 core at 300Mhz and one another lets say 1600 but its changing. After I'm leaving the fps drop area the cpu running again at full speed.
Is this mean it cannot handle my k10stat options? With prime it's stable 1.05V-2100Mhz-all pstates-boost off-dg off


On the right side of the picture you can see hwinfo and the different clock speeds. A tried 1.9Ghz-1.05V-all pstates but sam results.

Just tested it occurs even on stock settings. Can someone test this same as I did? It would be a big help!
Oh yes during Linx or prime or whatever the clocks are stable I have this problem only during gaming.

 

Same here. It looks like a horizontal line or lines flickering from top to bottom and back top. And as Link626 said, I suspected AMD drivers. At first I was afraid of any hardware problems, but find it reassuring it's probably just buggy drivers. Ever since I've been using 12.2 in the past and AMD 12.7beta recently, I occasionally see this happen randomly after a graphics app like flash video or some game triggers it....not sure really when it comes since I rarely let my laptop go into sleep mode. But a restart usually takes care of it or it goes away on it's own maybe after background running programs stop.

 

I bought that k53tk and i'm happy- games run smoothly, overclocked to 2400mhz it doesn't go past 80 C, turboboost (3Ghz OC) is actually some times overclocking 2 or 3 cores at same time= it works, keyboard isn't that bad, battery life is really good... :thumbsup:

 

call your credit card company and see how they reimburse. You could probably get it fixed at a private computer shop much better and cheaper than you would from BB Weak Squad. Don't ever let BB touch your stuff.

keyboard is one of the best. I've played with chiclet kb's, and i type slower on them.
it's not as high fashion as chiclet, but more functional, with bigger keys.
also, chiclet kb's still get dust and junk under the keys, and they're hard to clean.

 

Same person I got it from. It was well packaged and all of the old paste was off of it. That's about the same price as the A6, so sell that after those A8's are gone. When I bought mine, he/she had four of them left.

MAKE SURE that after you install it, use Driver Sweeper to get rid of the old drivers and install the new ones. If you don't, your dedicated card will disappear until you do. Nice thing: new drivers (and maybe old ones, don't know), let you do switchable graphics AND Crossfire with all four graphics settings set ON on the bios. So now, Crossfire-enabled games will auto-recognize and use it, while others can be set to just the dedicated card. Or you can disable it in Catalyst, if you please.
I was pleased. This thing is a dream now that it's fully upgraded and the drivers work better.

^^^^^Exactly. I thought about going chiclet. Then I typed on a Lenovo chiclet. You know, Lenovo: best keyboards ever? No. Our dinky stock keyboard is easier to type on than that. And if it messes up/breaks, it's cheap to replace.

 

Funny thing is it was the keyboard that first lead me to finding this laptop last year before I knew anything about dual graphics gaming laptops and overclocking a cpu; great performance became a bonus capability at this price. I tried out all of the other laptop keyboards and this one felt the best and sturdiest. The other laptops had keys that looked like they'd break off easily over misuse and chicklets were saved for more expensive laptops. ASUS even sticks this keyboard on some of their more expensive laptops, so I knew it couldn't be bad.
It's nice to see our keyboard is appreciated. I know it's nothing pretty to look at but definitely functional. But I sometimes accidentally rub my palm on the touch pad while typing, causing me to correct my typing.

 

This is correct! Except for me I purchased my replacement keyboard off eBay and it appears to be stiffer than the original keyboard. Perhaps it needs to be broken in but right now my wrists are getting a workout just typing this message. I suppose it is a good excuse to use my laptop more though.

 

Thanks for the information. THis all sounds great, can't wait for it to build it in my laptop!

What drivers are you using with it? And is it hard to build the processor in the laptop?

 

I'm using the newest drivers from AMD. Have no issues with them.

And it's not too hard, just be really careful, because the little brass parts on the plastic posts that hold the screws in break off really easily. I was lucky only to break two, and it didn't effect the structural integrity of the machine.
Youtube for instructions. It's not hard, but it's still good to have something to look at. If you've never taken apart a laptop before, you really need to watch a few videos of it being done (on any laptops besides maybe a Mac) and even find an old crappy one to practice on. If you're not really careful, you WILL break something. Might not be anything that important, but you will. The electronics aren't the delicate part, it's the plastic. Especially on these lower-priced machines.

 

get yourself some superglue for the broken plastic. You really don't want any weak spots

 

Yea, good point. Time to dig out that WH40k box.

 

what do you recommend in terms of drivers? which version?

 

Ok, this has been bothering me for quite a while regarding this laptop but does anyone have a good ebay link to a verified working Chicklet style keyboard?

I have them all all of my other laptops and this one by far is the one I like to use the most.

 

Here you go, but you could probably have searched for this, it was only a few pages back lol

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/601808-k53ta-best-deal-ever-could-402.html#post8818121

 

What is the fastest clock speed at b0 you have tried?

 

Thank you very much!!

 

These are the clock speeds for my gaming profile.

 

Wow... haven't checked this thread in awhile. 409 pages is insane! Anyways, hoped someone who read this thread more could help me out. My computer rarely wants to go to sleep. It sleeps for one second and then wakes up. Usually takes 3-4 times before it really sleeps. I thought this may be a motherboard issue and would see if I could replace it under warranty, but my wife ended up dropping it in the sleeve and now I have a tiny hole in the right front corner. Is the sleep issue common? And is there a way I can replace the front?

Thanks!

 

Mine looks like this- and it is working perfectly, I just wanted to know what are limits of our CPU, and if I could overclock it even more...

 

Overclocking more than 2.6ghz may typically result in throttling. Our cpu is more realistically able to overclock between 2.0 to 2.2ghz reliably & constantly without throttling. Plus it isn't worth the risk of burning something out prematurely if you plan to keep this laptop for awhile.

I notice slightly better game performance (3-8FPS) at the highest clock speeds, but I just heed the advice of others here and set a moderate profile around 2.0ghz and 3 other profiles of 2.2ghz, 2.4ghz, and 2.53ghz max.

 

So far, I've noticed with the A8, everything is so much quicker as it is (well, with the full combo--see sig), I haven't bothered overclocking it yet. With the A6, I was taking it up to 2.4 and didn't go any higher. I could have; I've had it up to 3, but I dropped it back down because it'd get really hot and throttle it anyway.

For the next mod, I'd like to find out more about the capacitors supplying the APU, and replace them with some that have a lower ESR (lower resistance=charges and dumps faster, supplies processor faster, and, thus, contributes to a higher overclocking potential, correct?). I can't find any info about those because they're not marked particularly well. As far as I can tell, they're solid caps, but they've made a lot of electrolytics look like that nowadays. Anyone know any more about them? One can be seen if you open up the RAM cover. I don't think that one in particular is supplying the APU, but they're all the same brand/series.

 

Still waiting for my A8 processor. Your message makes me wanna have it so bad! can't wait.

Thermal paste Chill Factor 3 just came in today so iam ready to make the upgrade!

 

Any1 tried new AMD Embedded GPU and APU Driver ?

 

Lol don't get too excited; it's not going to turn it into a G74, so don't set your expectations too high. Definitely helps, though.
--------------------------------
And with that, my K53TA starts its journey (with me) to the other side of the world to be tested in the hellish rigors of a foreign land. It'd better hold up; I was stupid and didn't grab my backup netbook and there is no turning back now.

 

I took AMIBCP and started creating my own personalized BIOS for my K53TA, but in my burning wish to forever disable onboard graphics, I set them disabled in BIOS, and then flashed... guess what happened next?! That's right, an unusable laptop... So for those who want to test different settings for K53TA's BIOS, here is what you have to do to recover a corrupted BIOS: Format a flash drive FAT32, download the original BIOS, rename it K43TA.BIN and than copy it onto the flash drive. Remove the laptop's HDD, and than, with the laptop shutted down, press and hold simultaneously CTRL and HOME keys, power on the laptop, than in about 2 seconds after power on release all keys... After that watch the flash drive's LED to see if the BIOS is flashing: first it searches the needed file in the flash drive, and than in about 2-3 minutes it flashes the BIOS. Theoretically after that it showld shut down automatically, but in my case it hung up with the flash drive LED on and not blinking... Left it like that, and after about 15 mins i got borred, so I force shut down the laptop by holding power button for 4 seconds, but before another attempt to recover the bios i powered it on to see if something happened... Surprise, it was up and running, with no problems And now I'm running with a modded BIOS, with no problems, and with fixed - dynamic switching unlocked. Didn't try a bencmark software, but my win7, from a previously 6.0 score for graphics (gaming and aero), it now scores 6.7 ... So it must mean something... Good luck to you all, sorry for my english if I made any mistakes, and my conclusion is one: I'll try to sell it as soon as possible, and after that i'll go back to Intel I5 with nvidia!

 

Hey guys - I have a question. Just remembered about this thread and thought I'd run it by you.

A few months back I accidentally spilled some water into my laptop, this model. Ever since, when I try to run anything on "High performance" under the "Configure graphics settings" menu, I blue screen when trying to load that program. I get an error message that says "STOP 0x00000116" and "Failure to display graphics driver".

Tried everything software related that I could think of. I'm not entirely sure if the spill has anything to do with it, as the two events didn't immediately occur together (graphics started acting up after about a week). But it's all I can think that would have caused it.

Anything loading on "Power Saving" mode works perfectly. Does this just mean that my dedicated GPU is toast, and I'm stuck with the integrated.

If that's the case, anyone know if the integrated one will run GW2? Sorry for my english.

 

you probably shorted your dgpu.

and the igp is crappy. I think someone said gw2 runs like crap on the 6650m, so igp should be much worse

 

Can any1 confirm this works?

 

@link - I don't think it's an issue with the igp/dgpu themselves. I've heard A LOT of complaints with GW2 performance issues on AMD graphics hardware. I think it has something to do with the game and/or drivers.

PS: I've been having issues with the newer AMD drivers and changing between balanced and performance modes. With our setup, I'm found that performance mode is useless. IF you do put it into performance mode and loose your 6650m perminantly AND have issues reinstalling drivers (CLI and MOM errors with Catalyst):
Driversweep your AMD drivers entirely FIRST,
then run .net Framework cleanup tool and wipe that out, then reinstall Framework then drivers.
Then, never use performance mode again.

 

What is performance mode exactly? new feature for 12.9?

 

It's just the battery saver setting that is supposed to favor performance over battery.

 

Well, from my experience, if you have any video/graphics related issues on this machine you should always look to reinstall the AMD Catalyst drivers from scratch before you look at the hardware. The drivers that AMD released are just horrible in terms of stability. But all and all this laptop is pretty awesome. I am still using it and the keyboard I bought off ebay is starting to loosen up and become easier to work on.

 

I sold my k53ta about 6 months ago and actually just bought it back yesterday. The screen is now broken, but otherwise in pretty good shape. I had heard people mention in the past that there were 1080p panels that could swap in without mod, did anyone actually eve manage that? Haven't been able to dig it up in this monster thread.

I'll also most likely put a 3510mx, new RAM and a fast SSD in there. I really missed this machine and I can see it becoming my 70s Ford Maverick. The thing you love and put all this work into that nobody else understands.