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

Yes you can upgrade to 16gigs with two 8gig sticks. 1333 is fine as well.

 

For our K53TA laptop, I believe the motherboard/ Bios doesn't allow more than 8GB ram to be recognized.

There were some HP DV6 laptops with similar configurations as ours(eg.6750m graphics) except they allowed up to 16GB ram (Our Asus didn't allow more than 8gb). No one ever made a big deal out of this since a majority of time in everyday use you probably wouldn't see a noticeable difference in speed between 8gb and 16gb. The largest gain in speed is best seen when installing an SSD.

 

Bought a K53 for my son about a year and a half ago. His had issues, would not boot, reinstalled Win7. Then he made the mistake of installing Win8 which had a lot of compatibility issues. So about 6 months ago got Win7 working again on a used HDD. It crashes, drive is dead. Buy a new HDD, Hitachi, and he had issues. I take it back, reinstall clean Win7, works for a month and now the system doesn't recognize the drive, cannot read the drive when put in an external enclosure, and am now doing disk check but th edrive seems dead. Bad drives, bad luck, or is this computer somehow killing drives?

 

Installed a second HDD with an OS on it and it booted fine. Reinstalled the original HDD and this time it asked to do a repair to the disk within Windows. After an hour or so it booted up just fine. It had previously tried to do a disk repair in a DOS screen and found nothing but unreadable files. This thing is flakey or I am clueless even tho I have built 5 computers

 

has anyone tried new drivers ?

 

Yes but seems nothing has changed...works fine though.

 

13.5beta2 drivers causes screen to stay as a black screen on standby or power save mode when LCD goes out (this problem is also experienced by others on guru3d forum). A reboot brings screen back but problem repeats. I sent AMD a bug report, so next driver update should fix that. So 13.4 is the latest we can use. I haven't tried this latest driver yet, so I cannot comment on game performance improvement (but should be fine like 13.3beta3 and 13.2b6).
update1: game performance is fine on 13.4. I'll stick with those until a better new driver is out!
update2: 13.4 game performance has improved nicely on Crysis3, AliensColonialMarines, and about the same or possibly better on older games! I'll stick with these for a while unless 13.5 or 13.6 also have good improvements! . No significant bugs, but I did experience one black screen during Skyrim when changing resolutions from native like ryanlecocq mentioned in next post. A reboot and running game in 1360x768 allowed Skyrim to work fine.

 

Confirmed, as I have noticed the same issue.

 

I actually have an update on that as well. There is also a bug in all drivers above 12.7 where if you use non-native res upscaled and alt+tab out of a game, it will sometimes put up a black screen in the same manner. Getting this a lot recently with Neverwinter beta and Guild Wars 2 as both let you upsample from a lower res for extra performance (I use 1280x720@1360x768 with low AA, best performance balance). Also seems to happen if you are downscaling as with Dark Souls and the internal render patch.

While I'm here I have a few more performance updates:
Newest CAPs rock the sauce for Dual Graphics. Tomb Raider, Dead Island Riptide and Far Cry 3 all see 20-30% gains in fps with minimal stuttering. Tomb Raider actually almost doubled it's max fps. Same dilemma as always where you have to choose between screen tearing with no stutter with vsync off, or no tearing with stuttering with it on. Never, ever use triple buffering with Dual Graphics or you will understand what all those ignorant reviewers are complaining about.

Tomb Raider: Normal preset with Textures on Ultra, a few other things up a bit. FXAA at native res. Make sure to keep hair on normal render and tesselation off as they will kill your frames. Av: 48.9, Lw: 39.7, Mx: 63.2 FPS.
Dead Island Riptide: All settings on high, shadows at default 512. Av: 52.1, Lw: 44.8, Mx: 67.8 FPS.
Far Cry 3: Most settings on Normal, a few up a notch, once again using FXAA (always do on laptops, sacrifice clarity for necessary frames) at native res. Could only get average as FRAPS was being evil. Av: 42.8 FPS.

Keep in mind that I have upgraded to an A8MX and 1600MHz ram, with the throughput on both GPUS balanced as closely as possible for closer parity. So your Dual Graphics mileage may vary.

 

Who has installed a hard drive caddy in the optical bay?

how fast does the optical bay run?

any real speed tests?

 

Anyone experience extremely high temperature? my P0 2200mhz @ 1.0875 , B0 2600mhz @ 1.2750
my processor temperature hit 97C when I was playing Civilization 5 . Without cooler, never ever change thermal paste since I buy.
Is it because of thermal paste?

 

Max sata 3 speed if I'm not mistaken, I think somebody posted in this thread before this.

 

Max sata 3 speed if I'm not mistaken, I think somebody posted in this thread before this.

 

For me, SATA III speeds with the bios mod to activate them.

I benchmarked a Seagate Momentus XT ST750lx003 and found SATA III speeds through my caddy
http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...66481-k53ta-best-deal-ever-could-untitled.jpg

It could be the paste, it could be dust on the heatsink, it could be that it's hot where you live, it could be that the 6520g was under heavy stress. Good chance it's built-up dust after 2 years, though.

 

Why so high volt for B0? I am having mine P0 2200 1.0875 / B0 2600 1.1875 max temp 81 while playing Crysis 3. Perfectly stable.

 

Good call, it probably is the extremely high voltage.

 

Didn't load any game or any heavy application.
Just on youtube, facebook and I hit this temperature.
Anyone has a complete guide on how to replace thermal paste?

 

alright k53ta owners.

Ive done it.

Ive gone off the deep end.

Ive added a second fan.

K53TA Second Laptop Fan Mod

 

Nice work there !
so hows the result? Before and After.

 

this laptop does not like when you mess with the air flow.

like knarf posted, the front end gets really hot.

it's the same effect as when you tilt up the keyboard to let more air in from the top. results in hot palmrests.

If you could point the fan anywhere, you should point it toward the palmrests.

 

He should do the opposite- he should put the fan into a position in which it would suck air from wents underneath palmrest and blow it out to other fan or trough some hole in casing away from heat producing parts, so air would be moving maximally far distance to fan and it could take more heat away from internals of laptop.

 

It's not that voltage that's causing it. I actually run my b0 at near the same, because undervolting too low strains the transistors and wears out your chip. Go back through the thread and look at how many people have dropped off over the last 2 years after frying their A6 from running too fast with too low of voltages. There is a reason stock settings exist and that AMD pays their engineers more than most of us make.

ODU-Geek is the most correct likely. Clean the dust out if you are suddenly running hotter than you did originally. Asus uses thermal putty stock which tends to accrue dust and crap on the edges, which are sticky and exposed. This results in a bunch of crap along the heat diffusion rails that clogs things up.

 

the b0 is so rarely used that it really doesn't matter.

 

hy all,
i was searching for my Asus X53Z which support sata3/6gps until i found you

on asus website my lastest bios version is K43TA.214 which i have read here it was modded by you

also what is the difference and what it means :

K43TA.SATA6.PXfixed.212 supports sata6 and.....what is PXfixed
- K43TA.SATA6.6520G_1GB.PXfixed.212 supports sata6 and.....? i do have now 6620g and not 6520g!

thanks a lot, this community rules
cheers, chris

LE: i put the modded bios and it's working, bios modded only for sata3/6gps. So yes it works for Asus X53Z with K53Z motherboard; it's working in a caddy an samsung ssd 830 128g

 

So I finally upgraded to 13.4 drivers (thanks atoneapone for posting so many updates about them here and on slickdeals). Performance seems to be about the same as my tried and true old ones, but has a few updates that improve performance in my newer games. I actually upgraded before my previous Tomb Raider and Dead Island Riptide tests, just forgot to mention. Here are a few more.

Metro: Last Light (xfire off, native res, normal settings, SSAO and Tessellation off and audio in RUSSIAN of course!)
34-57fps. av. 44.

Resident Evil Revelations (xfire off, native res, all settings maxed, FXAA3HQ)
40-60fps at 60Hz Not a huge surprise since this game was originally released on 3DS. It has pretty marginal buffering due to the original stereoscopic presentation, so if you drop a frame below 60, you're at 40, whether vsync is on or not.

Neverwinter Beta (xfire on for huge increase! yay directx 11 native games! native res, normal settings, a few things like shader quality up a notch)
37-60fps, av 42.

 

Hey guys so i recently did a recovery reinstall on my k53ta and im just not sure if my graphic drivers are up to date


this is what i got for the software info

 

Your drivers are from 2011. Download the 13.4 and they work just fine. Don't download 13.5 beta, at this time.

 

Just drilled some hole at bottom case for some air intake.
few degree of improvement.
might add some heatsink on heat pipe for next mod.
what's you guys' max cpu voltage?
I set CPU freq to 3Ghz and Voltage 1.3. got BSOD due to lack of voltage and 1.3 is my max voltage.

 

Why cant we official install 13.4 catalyst mobility from AMD sites when trying to update the tool says something like no compatible hardware or software found, btw I know we can get our hands on the link provided by guru3d to official AMD repository but is this means our Sabine based dual graphics driver support is EOL

 

If you read back to the first few pages, you'll see that we found the max effective speed for the a6 to be about 2.367GHz. You can force it higher with all P-states the same, but it benchmarks exactly the same because hypertransport is full. I highly recommend staying at 2.25GHz on all p-states and 2.367 boost. Like I've said before, mine ran for almost 2 years like that just fine. A lot of people who went higher fried their a6 and stopped posting long ago.

 

Thanks for your info ! will take note ! what about GC ? OC GPU isn't a problem ?

 

The guide on the first page is still pretty accurate, except that you should use newer video drivers. There is a slightly updated version on page 10 of the K53TA Owner's Lounge. The important part is that you need to use the program "Sapphire Trixx" to disable ULPS, that's the easiest way to do it. After you've done this, you can overclock in other programs, but TRIXX is the only easy method of disabling Ultra-Low-Power-States which prevents overclocking.

 

The easiest way is to disable ulps in registry and use msi afterburner for overclocking.

 

Disassembly Procedure notebook ASUS X53, K53, A53 Series
k53 Page1

 

That's all correct above, but for Oc GPU you will also need to replace the ATI dll files that come with latest drivers with the ones I have uploaded in Owners Lounge GPU OC instructions. In the Owners Lounge WIKI "VI.overclocking GPU" on page 9 or10, See note 1 about the ATI dll Latest 13.xx OC files, and it tells you which folder to place it.


Also of Note: Another user of our laptop over at Slickdeals reported to stay away from the latest catalyst released [13.6beta CCC driver]; switchable graphics cannot be set properly for games so you're stuck at *based on power source*...it's very laggy so maybe only 6520g is being accessed instead of the dedicated graphic card 6650m. Hopefully AMD makes a better official new CCC driver for our laptop again someday instead of making one buggy driver after the next. (I'm fine with 13.4whql, but If anyone wants to confirm this, then more feedback by others is always welcome.....)

 

I did disable the ULPS but still unable slide the bar :/

 

I always have difficulty setting it up properly too especially with every CCC driver update, since that resets it back to defaults. After you install 13.4 CCC, Follow the wiki 'word for word' here >> http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...607232-k53ta-owners-lounge-9.html#post8489750 (scroll down to VI. Overclocking GPU

-Do everything in the exact order but it's important to click on HDwingnut's ULPS_Disable.reg file & replace the original ATI.dll files with ones in Note1, and edit the MSI cfg file to oc with MSI (I use MSI to oc). It wouldn't work for me until after a few tries of following the directions.

But overclocking GPU doesn't yield much advantage (maybe 1-5 fps at the expense of high temps 60C+ to 80C+). I only rarely use it for curiosity but then turn it down or off after seeing the little difference it makes. You could probably overclock very high past the recommended 650/1000, but without any cooling mods(eg. heatsinks, repasting CPU etc), this will no doubt increase the likelihood of burning out & killing your laptop.

 

The rule of thumb with new drivers is that they break the switching/hybridCF until the first hotfix or two comes out. I honestly used the 12.4 drivers until 13.4 because they worked just fine and there seemed to be no benefit from updates. I only finally updated because atoneapone assured me with a ridiculous amount of testing that they worked exactly as well, but with a few useful GUI updates. To be safe though, don't upgrade compulsively. If it works and you are getting good performance, LEAVE IT ALONE! 9/10 people who break these K53TAs and DV6s do it because they try to tweak harder than they have the skills for.

Also, be very careful other users suggesting modifications to the AMD drivers. I personally use that method, but I don't recommend it every time someone pops up here saying "How do uz overclox?" Sapphire Trixx only works 75% of the time and sometimes takes a couple reboots, but it's one box to click. I may just be paranoid, but in my experience, any time you tell beginner users that the registry and the dynamic link library even exist, a month later their PC is a mess and needs a reformat.

If you hate reading and skimmed all of that, here is all you need to know: IF YOU HAVE A GOOD K10STAT PROFILE AND VIDEO DRIVERS CONFIGURED PROPERLY, YOU ARE BASICALLY AT PEAK PERFORMANCE. If you want more performance, the only significant upgrade is upping your CPU to an A8MX, because the faster APU cores and RAM controller will improve performance across the board.

 

How has your A8-3510MX been holding up? I found THIS seller on ebay selling them for $70 and have really been debating this upgrade. I bought a hdd caddy and some arctic mx-4 so I'm waiting for it to get here to give this fella an update. I wondered if throwing in an A8 would be worth the time and money. More interested in the GPU performance compared to CPU. I don't plan on upgrading laptops for a long time so thought about just throwing a few into quickening this one.

 

Don't brother upgrading CPU unless you 100% sure you can sell the old one, better iGPU and faster mem controller only benefit if you run crossfire or on the iGPU.

 

Well. I think I just do some cooling mod, remain current k10 profile and stock GPU clock. I live in hot country, crossfire on , crysis 3 hit 92.3celcius. 2.25Ghz - 2.3Ghz.

 

Yeah I don't think you want to be running hotter than that!

 

Try lowering to 2 Ghz. Performance should be about the same, but with a 10 degree difference

 

Mine has performed above expectations. I was actually doing just fine with my 3400m, but I got ahold of a a Toshiba with the 3510mx and 8GB of 1600MHz ddr3 that was busted. On paper, it doesn't seem worth it; it's only about 10% faster in each area, but the benefits cascade. You can then OC your A8 higher than your A6 while still maintaining similar heat and voltage. The onboard GPU is about 15% better (especially using faster RAM), so not only is it more feasible to use only it for some games to save power, but crossfire is improved. Crossfire actually improves a lot because the two graphics are now much closer in output, so microstuttering is also greatly reduced.

Overall, if you want to spend $100 to keep your k53 at a similar level for a year longer, you will not regret a 3510mx and a couple new RAM sticks.

 

Well since everything is together in one chip, upgrading that is going to be more significant than upgrading a single chip in a multi chip setup.

 

Alright, well i need some help then since when I go the amd website and try to get the drivers the verification program says i have incompatible hardware, ive tried going through manually and using the auto detect...

 

AMD drivers 13.6 beta 2 just came out too, but not sure if it's giving problems like 13.5 and 13.6 b1. I'm still on 13.4whql and have no need for the new driver at the moment. But link is below for anyone who wants to try them:

Code:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=379190]AMD Catalyst 13.6 BETA2 (13.101.0.0 June 4) - Guru3D.com Forums

 

hi all, has anyone changed the processor in this laptop for an a8 processor? is this possible?

 

Hi guys, I am facing some problem in my K53TA laptop. its 1 year old laptop. My CPU and GPU temp touches 100C when i am playing games and it automatically restart after that, I haven't applied any mods yet. without gaming temp remains at 65c to 70c. Please help me , what should i do so the temp remain below 80c. Any advice would be appreciateable.

 

marcel - yes

coolwaves - try to change the paste on the cpu, maybe is dry...and make a clean inside, sure it's full with dust..