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

If you think A8MX are better overclocker than our A6 you are wrong, it gets hot really quickly. I would just oc that A6 and match or outperform any A8 performance for free.

 

ok that's encouraging since I've been fine with the A6 anyways . The only other advantage is the 6620g graphics for crossfire, but not really a big deal since most of the work in games is accomplished by the 6650m.:thumbsup:

 

Yes, 6620g with 1600mhz DDR3 memory does help, if you are using a iGPU but there is still no support from AMD it's useless using a dual-graphics.

6650m/7670m oc'd to 700/1000 does a nice job indeed.

 

So was 13.8b2LeeKM drivers the last driver to work best for us?
13.9whql just came out, but I read that it's performance isn't as good as 13.6b2 or 13.8b2 so I will stay with 13.8b2. (also not sure if 13.9 has missing switchable gfx menu).

LeeKM came out with another recent update 13.10b (a little smaller file size 253mb vs 263mb). I'm wondering if this one will finally work correctly on our laptops if we do a proper clean install. But I don't feel like trying it again until some newer games like BF4 etc are released.

 

13.8b2 leekm fix works great, 13.10b not.

 

Any tried "new" 13.9 whql? I wonder if switchable graphics work with it...

 

Haymanali mentioned PX settings not working (I assume he means switchable gfx menu). I had hopes that AMD fixed everything for us, but it doesn't look like so.
>> Slickdeals.net - View Single Post - ASUS K53TA-BBR6 Laptop: AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M 1.4GHz APU, 15.6" LED, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6650, HDMI, WiFi-N, 6-cell, Win 7 Prem 64-bit - $450

I also confirmed a bug in 13.8b2 leekm (bug first reported by baii) where some apps are locked (eg. all movie players, skype, and browsers firefox& ie but chrome is ok.) All was ok on 13.4whql and earlier. It hasn't bothered me much since all games run off high performance gfx & I don't play bluray/mkv movies files very much on my laptop. All of those apps run ok off integrated gfx but they would have been better with high performance gfx.

UPDATE 9/21: According to Haymanali, the most recent updated 13.10b by LeeKM works on his Win8x64 APU laptop with working switchable gfx! (just make sure to do a fresh install by uninstalling old drivers first; I have not tested them yet on my Win7x64 system).
Also LeeKM released 13.9whql PX fix so if we want to try those they are also available. I am guessing 13.10b is the best to date with best all around game performance, very similar to 13.8b2.

 

Just tested 13.9 whql on windows 8 install and switchable graphics menu was absent, fail to install "Install manager" error on install, thats on a fresh install so no previous install... double checked

On Win 7, 13.8b2 LeekM runs great even with locked profle nice icon, and i think i will stay on this for a foreseeable future (ran 11.12 for 2 years) as AMD dropped llano even for 8.1

btw there seems few different version of modded driver from LeekM : I got hands on this ^ AMD_Catalyst_13.8_Mobility_Beta2_PowerXpress_Fix.7z (325 mb)

 

update 1 : new LeeKM's fix is out AMD Catalyst Mobility PowerXpress and Enduro Fix Drivers (13.9 WHQL)(177 MB) doesnt work for us

update 2 : LeeKM updated the driver cause of negative feed backs, and its working now cheeerrssss AMD_Mobility_Catalyst_13.9_WHQL(PX_Fix).exe (179.5 MB)

Special Thanks to LeeKM​

not: LeeKM also updated 13.10b gfx menu working but buggy maybe need fresh install to use 13.10b

 

Good to know, thanks.

PS : What about brightness problem? Is that fixed...?

 

Thanks for all the updates! Which one do you prefer:? 13.9, 13.8b2, 13.10b, or 13.4.
I'd also like to know if brightness problem exists in 13.9 (and other bugs like locked power saving switchable gfx for movie players and browsers; ) and general game performance? (lot of gfx driver choices; is 13.9 better than 13.8b2?)

--It's probably good to keep 13.4whql as a backup if we need bug free high performance from movie players and browsers & the LCD brightness control back (maybe best all purpose driver for all functions). I'm guessing games will play best with 13.8b2 & 13.10b (not sure of 13.9).:hi2:

 

Hi guys,

What is the best and safest overclocking set up for the K53TA? I am amazed on how much you guys now about getting the best out of this laptop

I read some previous post but i am completely new to overclocking so i do not want to do anything wrong. you huys perhaps have some tips for me?

Thanks so much!

 

follow this and you`ll be fine : http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-dv6z-llano-overclock-optimization-guide.html

 

Updated to 8.1 Pro x64 , installed PowerXpress and Enduro Fix Drivers (13.9 WHQL) from LeekM and everything is great.

Beware : in win 8.1 office 2013 and bitdefender is 2013 are not compatible, setup for office freezes ~ 75% due to bitdefender.

 

I think I have heard a few issues of office in 8.1 actually. I just wish the latest batch of APUs were all unlocked and the scene would have been really bright for amd modders.

 

Should I only overclock the cpu or gpu? Or can I overclock them both? What are the experiences with the kt53a? I dont want to spend hours of work only to find out it has little effect.
I already get a tempature of 90 C (according to gpu-z) without overclocking anything and i even make sure that the fan gets extra air.

Thanks!

 

your welcome
i didnot test them, just looking for more stabilty some off apps still locked (that happen in drivers after 13.4) we should wait amd to fix it.

i use windows8 and i just cant set brightness with fn+f5/f6, sometimes it works, sometimes not
did u mean this problem ?

 

That can't be right. I'm on OC'd CPU to 2.3Ghz (turbo 2.6Ghz) for everyday use and still getting max 86c while playing BF3 which is quite CPU heavy. Check your temperatures again or change your paste. GPU is overclocked to 700/1000, works just fine.


PS : @haymanali2006 No i am talking about completely gone brightness slider, it's bug reported on guru3d forums and it's confirmed by some users, uncluding me.

On W7 ofc, idk maybe it's os problem...

 

You will want a mixture of both with the AMD APU as you need improvements in both to stop bottlenecking.

 

Clean it first, change thermal paste and AFTER that overclock gpu and apu.

 

Please note that a fingerprint or a piece of dust can ruin a thermal paste application. The two surfaces need to be absolutely clean before applying paste. Here's a good guide to applying thermal paste: How to Apply Thermal Paste

If you look closely at that video, you'll see that he often has a very dirty CPU to apply thermal paste to. All the prevarication about no air bubbles is secondary to having a CLEAN set of surfaces. No smudges, no lint, no fingerprints, no dirt etc.

 

A very small amount of dust should not ruin the application.

 

I refer you to this document by Arctic Silver about applying thermal paste

 

hey guys laptop boots with black screen when i put in an intel centrino advanced n 6230, is there any way to whitelist this wifi bt card?

 

I said dust, not fingerprints. Remember you are not in a dust free environment anyway, there will always be dust on the core no matter what you do unless you have access to a clean room.

 

Sigh, dust is made up of things like dead skin, and so on. It's MUCH thicker than a fingerprint for sure. So it's the same thing in terms of contamination. The point being, letting anything onto the surfaces hurts performance. if you clean it with a dust free cloth and apply thermal paste and the heat sink immediately you'll have minimum contamination. My point stands, dust, fingerprints, and other contaminants are worse than air bubbles.

 

Actually the grease on your fingers will conduct heat better than air, air is a terrible thermal conductor.

 

Yes. But that doesn't matter. Because the thermal interface between the rest of the two surfaces that don't have air bubbles is what really counts. If I have 50% coverage and 50% air, the air is inconsequential. If OTOH the other 50% where I have thermal interface happening is ruined by dust THEN you have a bad TI and bad heat transfer.

tl;dr: The amount of area transferring isn't nearly as important as how well that area that is transferring is in fact transferring heat. sigh.

 

Yes due to the area they would have a greater impact on the cooling than a few particles of dust which is why they would be worse, which is why I was saying a couple of bits wont be too bad as that would still leave 99% of the surface fine for contact.

 

Sorry that's just not how it works. The depth of the thermal compound / material that's stuck between two two surfaces is by far the the bigger issue.

I.e. if the thermal compound was now twice as thick due to dust / hair or other foreign objects, the thermal interface would have twice the thermal resistance. The thickness of the compound is the most important factor. As long as a fairly notable portion of the two mating surfaces are very very close with thermal compound in between them, you'll get good thermal transfer. Doubling or tripling (or even more) the thickness of that compound is the single biggest contributor to poor thermal interface. Anything that decreases the efficiency of the area where the thermal compound is is a far greater contributor to poor thermal transfer than any air bubbles. The problem with dust is that it's MUCH thicker than the film created by the thermal compound. The thermal compound, if not applied overly thickly, and properly spread out, will be VERY thin, on the order of 10^-4 inches, or 0.0001. That's MUCH thinner than a fingerprint or a piece of dust. Thermal conductivity is a direct inverse of this thickness (called Bond Line Thickness). So increasing it to 0.0005 (or more) with a fingerprint, piece of dust, hair etc decreases the thermal conductivity by a factor of five or more, easily. Again, an air bubble will not do this. (or you can consider it directly proportional to thermal resistance if that makes it easier to consider and understand.)

tl;dr: Halving the coverage area versus doubling the thickness of the TIM is about the same. Sadly, foreign objects like fingerprints, dust, or hair are orders of magnitude thicker than the actual paste, so they have a greater affect on thermal transfer than a bubble or two.

 

amd catalyst 13.10b2 is out, swithable grapics is still missing (tested on windows 8)

 

LeekM came out with his 13.10b2 enduro APU fix driver.....did you test those or just the official 13.10b2?

 

official ones, i will not test the new fix, i get bored from fresh installs
is there any way to test them in virtual pc ?

 

not sure about virtual...definitely boring.... it always takes about an hour or longer to do all the steps of a proper clean install. And if it doesn't work then it will take twice as long to put back the last working drivers. I was thinking of trying out LeeKM's 13.10b2 later, but not ready yet (since I've been ok with 13.8b2.) The only incentive to get them is for latest games like BF4 or to see if any switchable graphics bugs go away (but I bet none of the bugs will go away ).

update: one user of our laptop on Guru3d has tested LeekM's 13.10b2 to work fine with switchable gfx on a Win7x64 system. But I suspect the same bugs (video players & browsers locked on power save) still exist. I may give these a try over the weekend to see if performance feels any different from 13.8b2.

 

It doesn't work on windows 8 though.

 

That's very unfortunate. I just successfully installed this on my Win7x64 system. It works as well as 13.8b2LeekM driver. Not sure what is making Win8 have problems. Did you try a clean install?

Here are my precise steps of installing:
1. Uninstall ccc normally. reboot.
2. Use DriverFusion Uninstall AMD display driver in safe mode. reboot in normal mode
3.I use Windows Installer Cleanup utility 2.5.0.1 to remove any residual files related to CCC/ATI. reboot
NOTE: STEPS 2& 3 can be replaced by a single step using DDU in safemode.
DDU can be dowloaded here>>> http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html
4.(OPTIONAL) install latest Asus chipset graphic drivers.Win7_64_Z890300000. reboot.
5.install 13.4whql so you can make sure video players (MPC& SKYPE etc),browsers (FF, IE etc) are set to high performance if you don't want them locked on powersave in later beta drivers.reboot
6.install 13.10beta2LeekM or latest desired Beta drivers "on top" of that.reboot.
Then it's Ready to use!
7. For overclocking gpu, you must do registry fix to Disable ULSP.

* Everyone has their own method of clean install but these steps have worked fine for me....it took about a 1hr process involving 3 graphic driver installs.

Update: I tried Battlefield 4 beta, and it runs very laggy but it was slightly worse on 13.8b2 compared to 13.10b2. I expect the final game to run much better.
Both 13.8b2 and 13.10b2 generally feel about the same, hardly any difference in game performance. I never tried 13.9whql so not sure how those compare.

UPDATE 2 10/9/13: another new driver AMD Catalyst 13.11 BETA1 & LeeKM APU version came out, but not sure if it supports our mobile graphic systems...I'm sticking with 13.10b2 unless if I find out it works on our laptop;

UPDATE 3 10/11/13 : The real "MOBILITY" AMD Catalyst 13.11Beta & LeeKM APU "FIX" came out..so don't get LeeKM's 2 drivers confused. I suspect they both may work. I may give the newest Mobility a try it if I get some time. (If anyone tests it to work then let us know....)
Update 4: The Newest 13.11b LeeKM fix works fine on Win7x64 after a clean install. (but generally nothing feels much different since 13.8b2; the last good jump in game performance came from 13.4 to 13.8b2. sometimes you may think older drivers were better, or it's too close to tell.)

 

HELP!!! K10stat not working.

 

Did you change profile and lock P-state? Try enabling clock control...

 

yup I did both of them....no change at all

 

Not really sure but maybe there is a conflict with one of your recently installed software, (eg. recent graphic drivers, or something else)
Have you tried some "lower" overclock profiles that only have P6 around 800mhz? Not sure if later graphic drivers are causing stability issues with K10stat. Also are you on Win7x64? Just guessing that you have to retrace your steps of what changed on your system since it last worked. Maybe installing older graphic drivers like 13.4 or 13.8b2 will help it function again & become stable for ocing with K10stat...

I'm on 13.11b, and when I first tried my highest overclock profile, the PC froze and I had to reboot ; everything has been working fine after that. (but your problem may be unrelated)
-Here is a pic of my highest settings that did that.(but I usually only oc to 2.0gz with P6 at around 750 to 800mhz.)

 

thanks for the reply....
actually the problem is weirder than it looks....seems nothing can ramp up the CPU from 800 MHz.....I tried using k10stat on a freshly installed system (no drivers loaded) and then on a stock-drivers installed system....no effect at all.
Then I tried changing the voltages keeping clock at 800....can't even change voltage.
Then just as I was thinking maybe the software has gone bizarre I tried an impossible combination ( I mean very high clock and very low voltage)....the system froze....so at least the software works.
Any ideas what to do???

 

thanks for the reply....
actually the problem is weirder than it looks....seems nothing can ramp up the CPU from 800 MHz.....I tried using k10stat on a freshly installed system (no drivers loaded) and then on a stock-drivers installed system....no effect at all.
Then I tried changing the voltages keeping clock at 800....can't even change voltage.
Then just as I was thinking maybe the software has gone bizarre I tried an impossible combination ( I mean very high clock and very low voltage)....the system froze....so at least the software works.
Any ideas what to do???

 

New Driver:
LeeKM's AMD Catalyst 13.11BETA3 Mobility PowerXpress Enduro "Modified driver" AMD Catalyst Mobility NON-PX/PowerXpress/Enduro Modified Drivers (13.11 BETA3) - Guru3D.com Forums[/url]

General all around performance is "maybe" slightly improved & a little smoother than previous beta driver with Similar bugs as previous drivers (eg. switchable gfx is locked for ie and ff browsers and vid players). But 13.11b1 and 13.11b3 are very close. So these latest drivers by LeeKM installed.
UPDATE 10/24/13:
I WAS WRONG; BSOD occurs with battery operating laptop. (but it works fine when electrical power brick is used)
--SO THIS DRIVER IS partially Broken--wait for the next driver and/or roll back your drivers to previous one. (eg. wait for Leekm's APU "Fix" driver version or later 13.11 beta6.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uttaran, not really sure what to do except to try to restore laptop to a previous state and see if that works; or back everything up and do a full system restore.

 

New Driver:
LeeKM's AMD Catalyst 13.11BETA6 Mobility PowerXpress FIX DRIVERS">> AMD Catalyst Mobility NON-PX/PowerXpress/Enduro Fix Drivers (13.11b6) - Guru3D.com Forums

I will test these shortly. Everyone should just skip the previous driver (13.11beta3) due to the battery BSOD problems.

update: 13.11b6 installs & works fine. Performance is about the same as past drivers. I tried Batman Ark Origins and it has fair performance on our 2 year old systems. It requires a good mix of low and high settings to play well. It doesn't play as well as past Batman games.

update 2: wow there's already a 13.11b7 LeeKM APU Fix ; it supposedly improves crossfire in BF4 but I'm not ready to update my drivers again....

 

hello guys i just made this forum account cause i wanted to ask something about this laptop.So,i have this laptop but the cpu is the bottleneck and i m thinking to replace it.What amd and intel cpu models can i put on this laptop?Thx in advance

 

oh, if you have an amd a4-3300m it might be totally different from our laptop (I thought you had the same cpu that everyon else has on this forum A6 3400m); so not really sure about the compatibility with cpu/bios/motherboard etc.

update:
Just passing on the word of 2 beta releases in 2 days 13.11b7 & b8 LeeKM APU Fix Beta drivers:
13.11b7 LeeKM APU Fix ; it supposedly improves crossfire in BF4
13.11b8 LeeKM APU Fix -maybe fixes crashes in bf4;
(Don't have bf4 so I'm sticking with b6)

 

I installed amd_catalyst_13.11_mobility_betaV8, seems fine. Leekm`s fixes, b7 and b8 didnt works for me.

 

Official drivers work? I though i see someone reported missing switchable graphics menu...

Edit : I dosn't work, only LeeKM fix V8 worked for me.

 

Thanks for the driver updates, guys!

For me, the official 13.11b8 does not show a switchable graphics menu. Underneath the Power tab, the switchable graphics options are absent. However, LeeKM's b8 fix shows a switchable menu, so good to go!

Popeye, you still overclocked to 2.8ghz? Surprised it's holding up! :thumbsup: