Xi 1546

Yes, you can use the BIOS from either the Xi 1546 or Xi 1554. The Xi 1526 BIOS should also work, because the models use the same motherboard. You could also go for the Alienware BIOS, and then you will get the Alienware splash screen on startup, instead of the Fujitsu Siemens one.

The warranty shouldn't be voided if yu open the rear of the ntoebook, so its probably the best way to clean the notebook. Try not to touch any of the components, and make sure you remove the battery, when cleaning.

 

So I have finally bought 2GB PC2-5300 CL5 memory and I have run a few tests. (Kingston KVR667D2S5/1G)
As I would expect games that require a lot of memory will load a lot faster. Running with Mobility 7.4 drivers.

..................................................1GB...................................2GB

3DMark06......................................3089.................................3089

Sisoft Sandra (V11.35)

Memory Bandwidth
Int Buff'd iSSE2...............................3482 MB/s.........................3538 MB/s
Float Buff'd iSSE2............................3520 MB/s.........................3564 MB/s

BF2
Game start......................................56sec..............................40sec
Map start (Palian Plant).....................2min 5sec.........................1min 19sec

I would expect that my 3Dmark score would go up a bit, but it gives the excact same score. I find that a little strange, so I will re-run it again to see if something is wrong. Espicially since I then tried with powerplay turned off and got a score of 19xx.

 

Wow look at those loading times! I have always said that upgrading RAM helps loading maps (especially BF2) and here is the real prove.

 

I have also just tried to change the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu to Arctic Silver 5 and when doing SuperPI the temperature has dropped from 65 to 61 degrees celcius. The cpu was also completely packed into the other thermal paste

This was done when only running on one core. When running on both cores the temperature gets as high as 67 degrees celcius. After some weeks and the termal paste has had time to set then the temp. should improve a bit.

 

Yes that is correct, sometimes you have to wait a week or so. Good job on changing the paste, I am scared to do so.

 

Hey, I also upgraded my ram to 2GB about two weeks ago. It's even exactly the same (2 x Kingston KVR667D2S5/1G) as yours, ledderlappan. It certainly smoothes out performance in games, especially in those which use high resolution textures (Oblivion, FEAR, Dark Messiah.. etc.). And now I can finally use X1800 to it's full potential.

I would also like to change the paste to Arctic Silver, especially for the gpu because it's propably taking more beating and runs a lot hotter than the cpu during heavy gaming. I've also overclocked it to 450/500.

Oh. seems like I have to update my sig. Hmm, where's that unpacked image again...

 

#255 Notebook Solutions:

It took me about 20min to do it, so it is quite simple. But then again I am a bit of a hardware geek, so it might not be a simple for everyone. I did take some pictures during the process that I could post if it had any interest.

#256 ronkotus:
Ahh so you have as fine taste as me No I simply bought the cheapest ones that I could find and at ~63 euro a pair I can not complain!

One thing that I also notised is that when I exit memory intensive games (BF2, C&C3) then with 1GB the desktop looks kind of funny just after exiting - like windows needs a few seconds to recover, but with 2GB that is gone

 

Wow, that certainly is cheap. I also bought the cheapest , but I paid ~90 euros total. Well, everything costs here more than in most other countries of Europe. And could you please post those pictures. They will be useful atleast to me since I have never exchanged the heatpaste in notebook (Yes, this is my first notebook ).

 

Hey it's my first notebook too. So welcome to the club

I have posted the pictures here:
http://soren.hegner.googlepages.com/xi1546arcticsilvermod

 

Hi all,

Received my Xi 1546 today, and am overjoyed by the notebook so far.

Only one thing: the proprietary version of Windows XP that's been put on it is horrible. It's bloaty even from first boot. I want to reformat and put on a clean version of XP Media Centre, but I can't load the SATA drivers to enable me to reinstall Windows via the boot setup. It says there are no hard drives detected. If I press F4 to provide my own drivers, it tells me it can only accept drivers on floppy disk and the laptop doesn't have a floppy drive.

I've pressed tab at boot to get the RAID options, but I don't want to set an array, I just want Windows Setup to be able to detect my hard drives, so I'm able to wipe the system hard drive clean and reinstall my own copy of Windows onto it.

How can I do this? Please note that while I'm pretty tech savvy, I've not dabbled in RAID or SATA drives before so if you could provide some kind of step-by-step instructions that'd be amazing.

I have all my driver discs (the SATA/RAID drivers are on there, but Windows Setup doesn't allow drivers from CD). Can anyone help? Please?

Thanks in advance. Loving the notebook so far - my first ever notebook!

 

davers, you can install SATA drivers on the Windows XP disc you are using, but you need to slipstream them using a program called nLite. It will allow the Windows installation to assign drivers to see the hard disk. Alternatively, have a look at the sticky in the Fujitsu forum, as the process should be detailed in there.

 

hi, hahaha, im really quite shocked. ive been doign EXACTLY the same thing. looking for 2gb on memory. but cant find anything thats a good blanace of price and performance. (im in the U.K so natuarally...we get ripped off, prices here are ridiculous!) anyway...ive got my arctic silver...but ive been looking around for soemthign like those pics...thatnk you DO much ledderlappan
gonna be huuge help. ill post some temp changes with various games if i could...see how good things are running..and ill do again after a couple of weeks. right now..the most intensive game ive run...C&C 3 gets my cpu running to aobut 65 - 67 max!!!! OH...come to think fo it...what memory would you reccomend...and will i be able to buy from outside U.K to save myself some money??? thanks

 

Congrats and welcome to NBR.

I once made a guide how to configure RAID on F&S systems.

Follow this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1704903&highlight=raid#post1704903

Let me hear if everything went ok...

 

kamikazefly:
This is not a bad price?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-ValueRAM-1024Mb-667Mhz-Sodimm/dp/B000B5U9UK

 

That is actually a great price, it is around 35 euro's. 70 euro's for 2 GB aint much. Should work fine.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my GOD!!! since when DID memory drop by THAT much...when i bought my notebook a few months ago....two sticks of 1gb would have set me back 130quid!!! this is great!! brilliant!! so so good i cant believe it!! gonna get a pair NOW! wait..one second..what would be better?

the kingston or this? (corsair) this seems to have a cas latency of 4. I dont know much about this...im more of a software fiddling guy!! im ok with my hardware...but which is better...ill google and see if i can understand. thanks.

heres the link: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=462692

 

Notice that the 1GB in the page you linked is a kit of two 512MB sticks. I don't know if there's 1GB PC2-5300 (667MHz) sticks for laptops with cas latency of 4. If there is, they are propably a lot more expensive than CL5 sticks. There are however 1GB PC2-4200 (553MHz) sticks with CL4, but generally cas latency isn't as important as the clock speed of the ram (of course fsb being the limit). There is only minor performance difference between the two and the price should be about the same. So my advice is just to get the faster ram against the slower with lower cas. This great article might prove helpful. Especially check the Bandwidth vs. Latency section benchmarks. You can see that 667MHz CL5 is only a bit faster, 553MHz CL4 being very close in most of the benchmarks.

 

RAM with a CAS latency of 4 is available and can be found in an increasing number of places, and the price isn't bad at all. In the UK, one module of 667 MHz 1 GB is sold for around £45, with CAS lantency of 5. For £50 you can get one with a CAS latency of 4, but like ronkotus said, the performance difference isn't there, and its normally better to go with the cheaper.

 

not at all!! should i go nuts aobut this?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=217961

seems pretty good to me...the CAS 5 is aobut a quid cheaper!!

 

omg that is a crazy price...im not trying to sound patronising but this is for notebooks right? because that is a crazy find!

Wow!

 

kamikazefly, excellent find there. I had a quick glance at RAM prices when I originally posted on 05-16-2007, and the prices I quoted were about right. But the price you have found is very good indeed, but the RAM is pre-order. Other shops are selling what appears to be the same RAM at around £30, but they all have a CAS latency of 5. Just goes to show how fast RAM prices can change, and how fluctuant the RAM market is.

 

hey all again, now with new problems in mind.

so i was planning on buying 2x 1gb memory sticks for my xi 1546 and i read this forum about the sticks you guys bought, and i noticed that you Ronkotus and ledderlappan have bought 2x Kingston KVR667D2S5/1G .. okay first of all, i went to kingstons page and it says that the only one that fits my FS is KFJ-FPC165/1G .. and then i checked the prices in our local ComShop and it had both of them on sale, the 667 is 45,90€ and the 533 is for 99,90€ .. the thing i wanted to know, is how come the 667 works in the laptop if Kingstons page dosnt ever recomend it..? and whats the difference between those 2..

thanks in advance

 

Hello! I've got some questions on NHC, maybe I should be posting on a different topic but I think I get directly to 1546-users this way...

I'm having some oddities with NHC, surely I'm not the only one? Not too experienced with this program so I don't know really... But anyhow, the thing is that the HD temps show up rather irregularly. I really haven't noticed any pattern with it: sometimes (this happens most often, actually) it's unable to show temps at all, other times it show it only for one of the drives and only seldomly it shows them without a hitch. What gives?

I had this problem on Pre-Release 04 and when I updated to P-R 06, it was gone! ... Until I started the program again later. So no difference there. Maybe it's because of "Pre-Release"? Just guessing...

Now while we're at it, some else on NHC too: on Hard Disk tab, if I click Show HD SMART (this obviously only the times temps are showing up...) I get: "WARNING! -> SMART reported problem!" But all the status are "OK". At the moment HD temperatures are 41 degrees and I haven't seen it get higher than 49 so surely it can't be it? Do I have a reason to worry?

One more thing. Back to Hard Disk tab, on the first drive Advanced Power Management, value is "custom (239)", Acoustic Management is "custom (136)". For the second drive values are "custom (74)" and "custom (42)". Are these good values, should I change them or is there anything to really to gain for me? I know "don't fix it if it ain't broken" rule but I'm just curious on this one.

Thank you already, you got a great forum here!

 

The prefix KVR means Kingston Value Ram. That memory is industry-standard, generic memory manufactured to a particular specification (i.e. 667MHz DDR2 PC2-5300). Meaning that it should work in all computers which have compatibility to that specification.

The other memory, KFJ-FPC165 (=propably Kingston Fujitsu...etc.), is system specific memory. That kind of memory is designed, manufactured and tested to the specifications of a particular brand name computer system, in this case Fujitsu-Siemens Xi. Because of this, the price is also higher than the stantard memory.

The tool that you used in Kingston page to find memory for your laptop, searches only system specific memory. It doesn't recommend stantard memory for any systems. The stantard memory however is compatible with most systems and Xi 1546 is not an exception.

The KVR667D2S5/1GB is faster, cheaper and 100% compatible, so I can recommend it over the system specific one.

 

I have actually same problems in NHC. Sometimes my HDD's don't show SMART info at all, sometimes they do. And my Advanced Power Management and Acoustic Management are most of the time blank and not accessible. I think you shouldn't fiddle with those either. I think our problems is just because of compatibility/support problems for our HDD's in this NHC "Pre-Release" as you stated.

You may try other tools for more reliable HDD information. I have used DiskCheckup and HDDScan. HDDScan has very good SMART tests and nice error checkup comparable to Windows Chkdsk. DiskCheckup utilizes statistical analysis to predict possible failure date of the HDD. Both of them also have the regular SMART info.

 

thanks for the advice, and following that, I ordered the memory today (667MHz DDR2 PC2-5300). hopefully getting them at the end of the week.

thanks again.

 

Thanks for the insight, ronkotus.

 

I also had problems with SMART on my M1437G. Just ignore it. I am working for 1.5 years now and my hard drive is just fine.

 

Hi people @ Notebookreview

I owned this excelent laptop for more than 6 months and I'm very happy with it. The only problem I can recall it's the heat that turns into excessive noise sometimes. That's why I'm planning to do a deep cleaning of fans and put some Artic Silver on it.

I'm also thinking about doing a major upgrade as well, and that's why I need your help. I won't mind spending some money with this, and I use the laptop for my job (mostly 3d modelling, CAD and video editing).

According to the notebook's datasheet, the Xi1546 only supports up to T7200 Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and up to 2 Gb Ram (1gb + 1gb). I wonder if although no officially supported I could go for an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 (even knowing that I won't take advantage of the 800Mhz bus) or maybe the T7600 (as it has the same bus as the T7200) and two 2gb so-dimm modules like this ones (the laptop used in that review has the same chipset -Intel 945- as in the 1546)
Apart from that I'll probably buy two fast 7200 rpm units to make a RAID array in order to obtain some extra performance.

Any advice on this upgrade I'm planning to do?

I have found this forum recently and I really think it's helpfuil as it brings information not available in the official website or forums... so congrats for this great forum and thanks for your help!

 

The T7700 apart from a different bus speed, is not pin-compatible with the Socket M (the socket in your laptop) but you can use the T7600 (not much of a performance difference with T7700 anyway)

 

As mujtaba said, the Xi 1546 motherboard uses a different socket to the newer Merom processors that come with Santa Rosa. The notebook supports any other MErom processor from the previosu generation. So you can go for either the T7200, T7400 or T7600, if you want a speed boost. Bear in mind, that unless you are completing some very intensive processor dependant tasks on the notebook, a processor upgrade won't make all that much of a difference. It would be much better to upgrade the RAm and hard disk, if you wanted a more noticible speed increase.

 

Ok, thanks mujtaba and Zero for your help... I´ll stick to T7400 or T7600 depending on the price. What about the RAM? is it possible to have 2x 2Gb sticks? Are 7200rpm HD too much for this laptop?

Thanks

 

The data sheet indicates that it can support 2 GB of RAM, but it may be that some of the newrr BIOS updates, may allow more than that. Have a look at them on the Fujitsu Siemens website. The hard disk should be able to support a 7200 RPM drive, but it could get faurly warm. Current 5400 RPM rives sold with the notebook get hot, and the same should be true with a 7200 RPM drive. However, in my opinion, the performance increase from such a drive, outweigh the downsides.

You could also set up a RAID of two 7200 RPM drive, but I feel that the amount of heat put out by two drives will be alot more, and the system may not like it all too much. Having two 7200 RPM drives in RAID is also expensive, considering that performance might not increase by much in some applications.

 

Crap. My notebook is now suffering from the same problems it had when I first recieved it 6 months ago. The notebook starts for 5 secs before shuting down, then it restarts and keeps doing that until I remove the battery. I have sent it in for reperations once again :-( I guess they will have to replace the motherboard again like last time.

 

Weird problem. You said that it keeps doing that until you remove the battery. Did you try a BIOS update? It should fix such annoying problems.

 

The problem seems to be hardware failure since the last time I had this issue the repair shop replaced the motherboard. I doubt I can update the BIOS since the computer doesn't even get that far in the boot-up process. I'm a bit pissed right now about the quality of the components in the xi1546 but at least Fujitsu gives a 2 year warranty on their notebooks which is more than most companies.

 

Gyuz i had a weird problem with the monitor of 1546xi...
I have been working at home for an about 30 min..
then i put it in his bag cause i 've had to go to work after 20 minutes i get it of the bag and plug in the ac power and power it up(Without the battery) and then as a big surprise i saw a white screen and nothing else!!!!...
i thought it was a bios prob. and i couldn't do anything the particular moment about it, but when i typed my bios pass it booted ok in windows without any change in the screen situation it still saw white but the disk was working..
i've hited gently around the screen but no change at all so i pluged an dvi->vga adapter and pluged in a tft external monitor and as a big surprise it worked!!!!
It doesn't do good connection although and as a result the colors was red and blue so i pussed the adapter harder and a little right and it worked well but the lap. screen was still white frozen..
I went to catalyst control and it show both on board screen and the external monitor full working both!!!! I had no choice but to disable the on board screen and work with the external...

I shut it down after work and went home and power it again the screen didn't saw anything!!!! not even white and his lamps was of also(The back panel lcd lamp) and when i boot it again in both vista and xp the catalyst saw me only the external screen nothing else and i had the same connection problem as i mentioned before...

Anyway i send it to the shop i get it from and told them the problem and they say they would sent it to Fujitsu service....

Any idea about what it could be???
Is The Product warranty covering me on screen fault??? (Warranty is still valid since i have it only 3 months now) but I'm a bit scared about what it would be...
IS there any chance the motherboard is broken or graphic card broken or is it just the lcd inside connection get of...

i must mention that i used the lap. in very hight temperature (40+ External temp but i wasn't using the graphic card cause i was just listening some music last time the screen was working and it was on battery mode..)

I'm so sorry for the big post but i really needed to explain you everything in order to understand the conditions and reply me if anybody have a clue....

Thanks a lot in advance....

 

Welcome to the forum djscooby!
It's seems like you have a faulty lcd or a loose connection as you suspected. The GPU and motherboard are probably fine since you can get an image when you connect an external monitor. Fujitsu will certinaly cover the cost of replacing the faulty screen.

 

Razer-D Firstly glad to be a member here i mean it.....
I found a lot of help when buying my fist lap here....
2nd.. Thanks for the guick reply and sorry for my little (i hope) bad english...
And as a 3rd i wanna ask you is there any chance it broke donw from temperature???? or may it broke cause of moving (bumpy road etc???)
if it broke down cause of bumps when moving it still covers in warranty??

 

djscooby, I wouldn't worry, laptop screens are not supposed to go blank after 3 months usage even if on a bumpy road... I'm sure they will replace it under warranty.

 

Welcome to NBR Djscooby,

It is not because of overheating, or else you wouldnt see anything on your external monitor. I think it is because of the bumpy road.

F&S will cover it. They dont cause any problems when it comes to warranty issues.

 

is there any way fujitsu won't cover it cause of the different os i've installed or they wont bother at all about os changes?

 

No definately not. F&S usually uses Linux and other OS for their professional series. They will never do such a thing, because it is based on software.

 

How on earth can i clock my underclocked x1800 mobility. I play often some games, but i want to get higher fps, i tried atitool, rivatuner, powerstrip, but none of them works. Powerstrip let me overclok to 500 mem and 450 mhz, but then the pc just shutdown. please tell me how I can overclock.

My specs: core 2 duo 2 ghz on each core=total 4ghz and 4mb cahce
2gb ram
x1800 gddr3 256 mb ram
240 gb hdd

And I want to tweak my computer to, I have done that multicore patch and changed some values in regedit. I have tweaked my cpu, but the graphic card, I am not that happy with it, and is it supposed to hear a discant from the speakers, on loud tones theres is crispy sounds, dont know why.

Im interested in return it in to service, is the guraantee avoided if i fickle the cabinett on my lappy, I was curios on my pc and tried to take off the cabinett, i pulled out 2-3 bolts, but placed them back, you think FS will accept my pc if i return it?

WIll the gurantee go off if I put in new memory? An how to set my hard drive on raid 0, I tried it but got stripe array error, what am i supposed to do, 32 kb, 64 kb, dont understand, and after i tried with via raid tool i restarted and i got operative system not found, is it a safe way to set on raid 0 without deleting everything on my lappy? every help is appreciateted )

 

Today I got my Xi 1546 from eBay.
Unfortunately, straight from the box there is a BIG problem.
Every other vertical line on the display is missing.
The higher the resolution, the worse the image.
It occurs in BIOS screen, in safe mode and in normal mode.
I didn't test it on external monitor yet.
Is there anyone who got this problem and solved it?
I can send the laptop back and get refund, but I really like the specs and would like to solve this problem.

 

ZeyOrk: they cannot detect that you have overclocked your video card. If it shuts down, then the speeds are resetted anyway. Voltmodding however will avoid warranty for sure.
You can also try Notebook Hardware Control. It should work well for overclocking.

Changing memory is a strange issue actually. Everybody says that it will avoid warranty but no one has ever had problems when sending it over for warranty. We, as a company, have changed the RAM a few times and send it over to the support and they fixed the notebook without any problems. But still, I am not responsable if something happens.

For RAID 0, go for the highest amount of cache possible. The best thing is always to do a full install of XP again. Everything will be deleted by the way.

Matz: try installing new drivers or reformatting your PC. But try to hook it up to an external monitor so you can detect if it is either a video card problem or screen problem.

 

Yesterday i connected the laptop to an external display an it works just fine on all resolutions.
It seems that the internal cables (those connecting LCD to the motherboard) are causing the problem. At least I hope, because the alternative is the LCD itself.
A diagram of LCD cables wiring would be of great help, or at least the part numbers.

 

After a short holiday (with a fresh mind) I solved the problem.
It was the display connector (on the back of the display) that had a bad contact with the cable connector (probably due to transport shocks).

 

I've owned this notebook for about a year now. I got it as a replacement for a broken M3438G. I've generally been very happy with it and have had virtually no issues (especially since finally updating the HD Audio Codec and thus fixing the hissing issue). However, I'd now like to ask you for your advice on two matters:

1) Updating the graphics driver

As you know, the Fujitsu-Siemens website doesn't show downloads for this model anymore. My current Ati Mobility driver is the one that was last available in F-S website. As I'm now buying newer games and will soon be connecting a new LCD-TV via DVI-HDMI cable to it, I'd like to update my graphics driver. But how... If I visit Ati's website and choose Mobility Radeon drivers for XP (Media Center doesn't have Mobility Radeon -option) I get to the Catalyst 7.7 download page but apparently Windows MCE doesn't work with that.

Some of you are using Omegadrivers. Are they any good? What about Driver Heaven's Mobility Modder? Would that be a better option?

2) Hardware malfunction

A month ago I started having this weird problem. If my notebook is on for a long time and especially if I've played an hour or two of some game (I usually play CS:Source) suddenly the screen turn to blue with a message:

After that, I have no choice but to reboot.

Based on what I've read, this could be because of two issues: overheating or RAM problem. I haven't measured the temparatures, but after a long gaming session this notebooks feels hot (although I haven't played since I installed the new BIOS today... before that I had really old BIOS version as I hadn't updated it for like 9 months). However, that blue screen has appeared even if I haven't played anything (although virus scans and the sort have been on). So could it be a RAM-issue. I took the RAM away for a little while and then put it back in (I read somewhere that this could help). However it didn't change anything. So do I have to try to control the temp or buy new RAM (2x 1Gt)?

I would appreciate the help! Thank you!

 

Update:

Just wanted to let you know where I'm currently at.

1) Graphics driver

I download the newest omega-driver and installed it properly. I had beforehand updated my BIOS to 1.23 using Xi 1526/1554 BIOS. Everything went smoothly but after I started a benchmark (CSS Stress Test or 3DMark 06) or started playing CSS, within one minute my system crashed. I rebooted and tried again and again but the same thing happened every time. I even tested an older BIOS (1.22) and an older omega-driver (the one based on Catalyst 7.1) but nothing changed. Finally, I installed my Fujitsu-Siemens Ati-driver back (luckily I had saved it) and my system didn't crash anymore.

In the website from where I downloaded the omega-drivers it said that the crashing is most likely due to "a bug in BIOS" and that this problem goes away if I update my BIOS. As I had the newest BIOS possible, this clearly wasn't the answer. Perhaps F-S BIOS doesn't agree with omega-drivers, perhaps the drivers don't go together with Windows Media Center, or perhaps omega-drivers are just unstable. This is a pity since I really wanted new graphics drivers.

EDIT: I found the 1.23 for specifically Xi 1546 by searching with "Xi 1547". I'm going flash that BIOS and then, for the last time, try out the latest omega-driver. With luck, the crashing was due to the BIOS of Xi 1526/1554 not being totally compatible with my notebook.

2) Blue screen with "Hardware Malfunction"

Since I updated the BIOS, chipset and other components, this problem hasn't appeared. However, I haven't yet played extensively so it could appear again. By they way, I measured the temparature of my notebook and it swung around 65-72 degrees Celsius. I believe this a little hotter than normal but nothing alarming.