Xi 1546

Well, ive had it cleaned once, where the glitches got really bad, also replaced the thermal paste, with some regular cooling paste. It helped a little, but as with undervolting, only extended the time before occuring :/ Had it just been such, that it would have to be taken apart once or twice a year, whit air cleaning each month, i could live with it. But when i cant even stress the gpu, without it overheating, i cant really use the comp for which it was bought :/

 

Guys,

just want to give you a headsup. I recently tried out Catalyst 7.10 (downloaded from DriverHeaven) with MobilityModder. It crashed my system completely and I couldn't access Windows properly anymore. FSC-support gave me mediocre advice on the matter and I almost wound up installing Windows completely whiping out all of my important files (some of which I hadn't yet backedup). Luckily I used my own head and managed to get things right again.

So I'm back using Catalyst 7.7 with MobilityModder which is IMO the best and the most stable driver in Catalyst 7.xx series. Don't try 7.10 without backing your files up!!!

 

Thanks for the info. I also switched from regular Mobile Catalysts to Omega drivers, since I couldn't play Baldur's Gate in fullscreen (the screen was upside down). With Omegas it runs correctly. Other great thing about Omegas is that I finally have on option to use resolution 1280 x 800, which is the same ratio 16:10 as the native 1440 x 900. For some reason Mobile Catalysts didn't give me this option and the closest to this it had was 1280 x 768, so when using it, the screen either had black bars on the side or was stretched a bit.

But I still have the same problem with shadows in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 as I had with Mobile Catalysts. The shadows' edges are blocky (=jagged) like a sawblade and look really ugly. I rather disable dynamic shadows altogether rather than play with them set on.

Maby I give the modded desktop Catalysts a go when I have finished the BG 1, again (Yeah, I love certain old classics ).

 

yeah im using the latest omega drivers too - they are just so quality!
And thanks for the heads up I was thinking of checking out the 7.10s
Whos playing UT3 -its bloody chaos.

 

are any of you fellow xi1546 owners playing the crysis demo???
whats performance like?
runs ok at low everything! bah! but you gotta run it at at least mid on the shadows and shaders for the right lighting! then it can be slow.... but stable.
seems pretty cool....

 

I just tried Crysis demo. Seems to be hardly playable at 1024x762 and medium details, fraps says 15-20 fps...

HW Xi-1546 w/ T7200, 2GB 667, 2xWD1600BEVS@raid 0, no OC. SW XP MCE, mobile catalyst 7.10

 

What? 15-20 fps? That's terrible man...

I play on a F&S Pi1556 with 7600Go 256 MB DDR2, T5500, 1 GB and 120 GB 5400 rpm with old nVidia drivers of F&S at 1280*800 with low settings. It runs pretty good, some lag in crouded places.

I truelly expected the X1800 to run it at 1440*900 with medium settings with an acceptable fps... seems like a driver issue to me.

 

HAHA! Sorry dude, not a chance. When you run on low you're running Crysis without any shaders, shadows, bumb-mappping etc. The game looks like dog sh*t. Hell, it looks like the pc port of resident evil 4 so of course it will run well!. At medium settings the game is a slide show. I'm not flaming you or anything It's just that modern day games scale down horribly and I'm fed up with it . Far cry, Doom 3 and HL2 look pretty good at low settings (back in the day at least) yet games like crysis and bioshock look horrible, like cheap ps2 ports.

Sorry people but our xi1546s just aren't next-gen.

@Ronkotus. Good find! I installed 7.9 Omegas and now I have the option of choosing 1280x800 in 3dmark06, but it doesn't seem to work in Fear EP (I tried editing the system.cfg file). Any suggestions?

I think that the 7.9 Omegas are good choice for anyone with an x1800. I've had numerous crashes with catalyst 7.10 and not a single one since I've changed to Omega.

 

First i tried with Mobility catalyst 7.5, then upgraded to 7.10, no difference. I also tried other settings after last post and now with 1440X900 and most advanced settins medium and some low-> ~22 fps. Maybe this game likes nvidia more...

 

Hm could be true that this game likes nVidia more...

 

Hi,

First post! I have a probelm with my Amilo Xi 1546, a problem I would imagine most people to have. I haven't altered it in any way after buying it a year ago (ie no overclocking) and am aware that the ATI card is underclocked. Is it because of this that I cannot install the latest ATI catalysts?

What do I have to do to install new drivers for the X1800? The drivers never let me and just direct me to Fujitsus own drivers, which are ancient. Is there an easy, no-risk way of doing it?

 

Omegadrivers mod have the latest version of catalyst intergrated. (XP only)
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/win2k_xp.php
Otherwise, its mobility modder.

Accroding to ATI many manufacturers (such as FSC) doesn't allow ATI to provide drivers for their models from its web site.

My guess is that the underclock is by the manufacturer in order to prevent overheating. I wouldn't even dream of overclocking my GPU as its overheating as it is, and i'm getting artefacts after an hour of gaming (never overclocked any part of my laptop).

You could overclock the GPU core using the Omega driver tools. I wouldn't recomment overclocking its memory though.

 

I also tried Crysis demo.

Doesn't seem to run very well, no matter what I tried. At 1280x800 I had to lower the shader quality to low to make it run decently, which makes the game look like s**t. Shaders are, after all, what really makes the game shine. The best settings I got it running (~30fps) was at resolution 1024x640, textures and water quality at Low, everything else at medium. It looked quite ok, but nothing spectacular and certainly nothing "next generation" but still, quite good. Well, what could you expect at that resolution.. And of course, no AA, so there were some nasty jaggies apparent at some places.

I also tried fiddling with some of the variables/settings available in the .cfg files, by making my own System.cfg for them. But there wasn't much help there. I mostly used the medium settings' variables as a base and changed some of them nearer or the same as minimum settings' variable. Some alterations to object detail's, texture's, shadows', shaders' or volumetric effects' variables could raise the fps by about 1-2 without too much sacrificing image quality, but again, nothing spectacular... And about HDR; it was a total kill. No matter how low the other settings were, the fps stayd lower or near 20 with it enabled.

EDIT: Here's a great guide for tweaking the settings: http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11614&p=1
There's loads of information. I'm quite positive the demo can be get running decently at 1280x800 or maby even 1440x900 with good image quality. When I have some more time, I will post some more results. I think the shadows and environment (trees, grass etc.), LODs and other distant effects should be tweaked a bit more to get better performance. They porpably affect performance most after shaders.

Here are some screenshots (at 1024x640) and the System.cfg file (note: attachment allowed only in .txt format, so change it to .cfg), which some of you may want to try at 1280x800, you might find it playable (I didn't):

 

Dont worry. Games like crysis and rainbow six: vegas are games that got shouted out in the media that it would be optimizied. Sure crysis is a little optimized, but it doesnt use both of the cores(proccesors) I got it ran on 1024*768 on medium with 30 in fps average. What i did? Overclock the graphic card to stock clocks.

Crysis is a game like far cry, lots of bugs and memory leaks and pretty unoptimiezed some places, but patches will come. And when they come you will gain an fps from 10-15. I can promise you that. If they just release the dual core patch it would be great.

Half-life 2 episode 2 would also use dual core, but when i watch my task manager i only see a consumption of 30%. And i was running everything on high with hdr enabled, 2xaa and 2xantistropfic with average of 40-50 fps on 1280*920 or something.

If developers could optimize games then you wouldnt have to change your computer every third year.

And lets not forget that ATI loves direct3d and Nvidia loves OpenGL, so there is no doubt the game is better on Nvidia cards, its so sad

Peace out

 

I never got great performance on my Xi 1546 for games unfortunately, even with T7200, 2GB, RAID0 etc, Im averaging 40-25fps in stuff like HL2 at 1440x900, which although it sounds playable isnt really that good as it drops to 25-20fps as soon as you get into the action, even on lowest settings. Im currently using it as a network bridge in my living room, as Im not moving round right now, and the graphics performance is too poor to want to use it for gaming when my main pc is available. I'll reinstall WindowsXP sometime and try the latest omegas and see if that helps, compared to when I last tested on XP.

Even at lowest settings, a lot of games like HL2 only run about 40fps at native res, its strange, its almost as though the card in these machines besides the downclock is artificially limited, as it seems like it should have the potential to go a lot faster than it does (about X800 desktop speed), makes me wonder. Part of the thing that makes me wonder about this is regardless of settings/resolution, a lot of games seem to maintain fps in the same rough region. You'd think that settings should have a larger effect than they seem to, because thats certainly the case with most other cards I've experienced.

Also as a small note, if you use the laptop for gaming on the move, install Vista and ATI drivers, as you'll get the option to set the card to 'max performance' when it's on battery, instead of balanced as per the XP drivers, given the low performance relatively with gaming, you won't notice a huge difference between xp/vista for performance, aside from it will maintain speed when on battery.
Please note it has a battery life of approximately 1 hour like this!

 

Mobility Radeon X1800 is definitely faster than the desktop X800. But it may be a bit slower than the desktop X800XT, or it's predecessors like the X850XT, in some older games. But you must also note that X800 series doesn't support Pixel/Vertex shader version 3.0 as does the X1X00 series. So some newer games won't look as good on it, but may run better since some effects that affect framerates are disabled, IF the game actually supports it (PS/VS ver 2.0). Some of the latest games won't even run if your card doesn't support PS/VS version 3.0.

Resolution and some graphics settings definitely affect fps. For example look at my post about Crysis above. I have actually done more testing, and the demo looks and runs better now. Maby I'll post about it later.

Mobility Radeon X1800 should perform pretty much the same as the midrange desktop card X1800 GTO, which IMO is a great performance for a laptop GPU. But still, you shouldn't expect too much from it.

 

well, after what seemed to be an hour gone in a flash..ive been fiddling around with the crysis demo, ive alwasy OC'd my GPU. but im always careful and im using a cooler. and quite frankly..im more and more impressed by how much the x1800 can push out. to be honest...like ZEYORK and RONKOTUS said, games like crysis and far cry are funny little buggers. crysis seems to look better at times when running at 1024x758 then when it runs at 1440x900.

i have it now running quite well. although AA just.....murders it....and i have no idea why....i know its quite taxing....but the game goes from playable to just....a giant glitch instantly....



mind you...bioshock was a bit of a strange dissapointment. call of duty 4 another that ran quite well for me. everything maxed out at native res.

HL2 EP2 was what blew me away though. it might use what some might say an older engine now. but it runs BEAUTIFULLY. looks GORGEOUS..and dosnt even use up that much resources.

fiddle about and see what you prefer at the end of the day. its amazing how much can be pushed out of a GPU.

p.s just use some damn good cooling...i hear people are actually opening up their notebooks to let them breathe more!!!!

 

I wasn't that impressed with HL Ep2 performance tbh. At almost any settings, at native res, the machine was only getting around 45fps max, which isnt exactly stunning as the average was quite a bit lower.

 

really? thats strange, i got much higher FPS then that! are you using stock settings? or have you gone back to original clocks?

hmmm.....curious now..must look into it.

ok. here's a question. crysis VS COD4. how large are the graphical differences (envireonment size, texture details, physics) system resource usage, and why am i able to run it at high settings while with crysis everything goes c*ap?

 

Hi mate! Well, since crysis is a unfinished distrubeted game, it has the same symptoms like windows vista. It will never take max advantage off your computer, belive me. Patches will come, but they would rather fix the simpel multiplayer bugs, like cheats and unimportant things. Look at far cry, when it got released, it had so many bugs, the developers are still making patches to the game. Can you belive that, I mean, why release it if its not completed?

Crysis usage is higher than call of duty 4, since crysis uses it own terrible cryengine 2, wich got so much attention, dont know why, my personal opinon is that cryengine 2 is one the worst created engines. And the second off all, why dont crytek want to satisfy gamers? Like this: If they had optimized the game and removed glitches and bugs, they would gain more trust and gamers could really look upp to Crysis2(wich is about to come, dont know why, crysis sucked). I mean, dont they want to earn money and get more customers, well their marketing and storyline in games really suck!

Call of duty 4 earned my trust and I got so satisfied, that I have considered to buy more games from infinty wards. Call of duty 4 is so smooth and nicely done, from scratch. Nice optimized too, they really know how to do their work.

You cant run crysis on high settings, you need like 5 x1800 connected together to get a smooth feeling. Even the xfx8800gtx seem to struggle, so my advise, drop crysis and go for the breath taking call of duty 4, wich takes you so close to battle, without taking any risk

The usage and all that is here:

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/13801_video_ram_-_how_much_do_you_really_need-page7/

 

I've always been using stock clocks on the laptop, given your reaction, it seems you could agree with what I meant about my chip feeling artificially limited.

What drivers have you been using, I'd be quite interested in resetting my laptop OS with the included driver disc and starting from scratch again if I got a significant performance improvement.

Also if you've overclocked, what programme are you using and what settings?

 

Just wanted to drop by and say i've had nothing but trouble from this laptop since I bought it last year.

Within 4 months it was BSODing, graphics was glitching in all games, in 5 months it was sent back to Fujitsu for a new graphics card after it burnt out.
Within a year the graphics burnt out twice and the motherboard fried itself once. This is used in a clean room, no overclocking, by a cool window on an akasa notebook cooler.

My insurance company have branded it as not economically viable to replace due to the unreliability and have bought me a different laptop.

 

Sorry to hear about that

I too suffered a dodgy gpu, and then 2 dodgy sound daughterboard/mobo issues which means I've had to send it away 3 times since this february

If it does it again, I'll be trying to get a replacement (higher specced model) from F-S, but touch wood its ok for now!

 

WOW!!! really?!?!?! my units been flawless.....*touch wood*
still havent experienced a single BSOD.

my OS is due a refurb...as my HDD is packed full and needs a refresh. i think every 6 to 8mnths is a good time to refresh any compy!

anyway...first i used to OC to original ATI clocks of 450/500

then i got a notebook cooler and tried to push more(by the way, cooler helps STUPIDLY) i now have it comfortably set to 500/550 and i get quite surprising results. but to be frank...i only overclock when its necessary. i usually have it on stock.

i use powerstrip to do the dirty deed!

so far its the only one thats worked without ATI powerplay messing everything up.

i get quite adequate frame rates. im playing bioshock on a resolution i cannot quite remember but its quite high, everything on max including shadows. and i get around 22fps on ABSOLUTE minimum and 35fps normally.

umm...not sure what im supposed to rant at more...

to alexrose1uk.....
maybe your gpu is set to the annoying clocks that came with the notebook..or its still stuck to battery optimized clocks which are something silly like 292/398 or something along those lines.

 

hi guyz i need your help on something.. i pluged in a cable from a proffesional console in my lap after that no more sound can be played from my sound card onboard speakers
it doesn't anymore realize if something is connected...
ps: when i touch the cable i realized that there was no ground connected on the whole system cause i 've had a small electric shock so my conclusion is that the chip has burned out...
any idea how much does it cost???
i still have my warranty can i use it or they say me that its my fault...
I am socked since i did this a lot of times and never had any problem in a lot of professionals mixers...

ps: i did a drivers update
ps2: i checked all the setting on realteaks hd audio pannel..
ps3:the device manager says soundcard is ok...
ps4:with an other sound card sounds is ok i checked it
ps5:everything else works fine....

thanxs in advance hope to hear you soon
happy holidayz to all....

 

Hello,

I have a bios 1.25 update query. I have tried doing it via Windows and although it seems successful, when I run dxdiag, it still shows Ver1.00PARTTBL.

Should I try the bios flash on boot option? WIll it work using a USB drive as obviously, Xi1546 doesn't have a floppy drive? If so, which file do I need to load to the USB drive - the xi152x1.25 application (winimage self extractor file) or the xi152x1.25.IMA file?

Apologies for the numerous questions but answers much appreciated.

/edit - accessories->system tools -> system info a.k.a. msinfo32.exe displays it as 1.25 so I guessed it has flashed after all.

p.s. I am also trying to resolve the overheating and subsequent bsods during gaming (hardware malfunction/memory parity error). 55deg idle, 60deg on 10% load, hits 80deg during Far Cry, causing artefacts and crashes.

 

Read these threads:
- http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=192846
- http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=175118
If those won't help, the fan is propably not working correctly, so you need to get it replaced. Also check your ram modules: http://www.memtest.org/

 

THanks. I had already through the forums and bookmarked the fan cleaning and thermal paste pages to try myself but I'll also run memtest.

 

Sorry to repost everyone, I made a new thread with the following questions... didn't think to post it in the dedicated Xi 1546 thread, full of people who may be having/have had the same issues... DUH!

Sorry also for post length...

---

Hi guys,

I've had this Amilo Xi 1546 (T7200 @2GHz, 1Gb, Mobility Radeon X1800, running XP SP2) since mid May 2006. It's been a great system so far, though I've always noticed it ran kinda hot.

However, recently I've been unable to play games at all. I'm not a major gamer, I'll occasionally stick on something like Medieval 2: Total War or Half Life 2 for a couple of hours, but that's it. However, I use my laptop for work as well as home, so it does get heavy usage, and I've definitely noticed that it runs a lot hotter these days than it used to. It's loud, too - the fan seems to be on constantly.

I downloaded Speedfan to get some temperature diagnostics and was rather worried at the results, with only Firefox and a couple of other open apps...

HD0: 53C
Temp1: 84C
Core 0: 59C
Core 1: 59C

EIGHTY FOUR DEGREES ON IDLE?! Speedfan gives that as the ACPI temperature... I thought ACPI was just a specification for your PC to control fan speeds according to temperature, so I don't even know whether that's accurate. All I know is that the laptop runs hot.

I tried running HL2 earlier today, a game that I've had installed for a few months and has always run perfectly well before (last time I played it would have been September/October '06). Now I get fairly major artifacts after only about 30 seconds of play (having not even picked up a weapon or seen anything graphically intensive), before the GPU crashes. Same thing with Medieval 2 - even the campaign map is too much for it. The worrying thing about M2 crashes is that it just hangs, then the monitor slowly fades out. I have to hold down the power button to switch it off. But if I try to switch it back on, it lights up for a second before dying again. First time that happened I almost browned my pants, but luckily leaving it for 5 minutes to cool down allows it to boot up again.

What do you guys advise? I don't trust myself to open up the PC and clean it myself. I'm pretty technically minded but far better with software than I am with toying around with hardware... should I take it to a repair shop and get them to clean it, or is this a major issue that I should take up with Fujitsu Siemens? It's still under warranty, and I'd rather do that than pay hundreds of pounds just for someone to spray some canned air around the insides and reapply some thermal paste. Problem is, since it is a work PC, I need it every day, so sending it away for a month for F-S to fix it isn't really much of an option.

I'm pretty worried about it, as it was a very expensive machine when I bought it, and it really should last more than 9 months without getting to the point where it's running so hot it's threatening to crash after a minute of doing anything more intensive than just running Windows. I've got a bad feeling something's going to fry soon, I'm doing daily backups of documents and emails just in case...

 

hey,
this might be a very stupid question, but I'm been not able to "study" this mater for the lack of time atm, so I'll be asking ya guys now . I also own this excellent Xi1546 and was wondering, if i change the dvd'drive or get a external hd dvd player, will this laptop show it in hd.? dont laugh

 

Hi. Advise needed. What thermal pads(tape) can you advise for X1800 memory chips? After changing thermal paste on CPU to AS-5, it didn't get lower temperatures, it keeps on 55-56 C on idle. But, thats' not a problem. The problem is memory chips on X1800. They are overheating. While playing Caesar4 some 20 min. the artefacts became all around. 2 of 3 such tests ends with BSOD: hardware malfunction. I think old thermal tape (pads) aren't so good now, after taking off cooling system twice. So, which thermal pads?

And one more question. Some time ago my DVD started working very bad. When reading DVD it loads one core of CPU to 100% and it is a Hardware Interrupts (due to ProcessExplorer) and read speed is no more that 1x. What may it be? Is it dead?

 

ahhh bummer...you might have same problems i had before...although not as severe...

ok...for the pads...im not sure its that...thats a tricky one...one person you could speak to is ICE-TEA..he specializes in MXM-III cards..which the x1800 is part of...he has supplies..ifff you want them replaced..although im not so sure...so im not guaranteeing anything.

ok problemo number 2

i think youre drive has gone into PIO mode. ok....check this out:

device manager, IDE/ATA controllers, expand that ad right click on Primary IDE channel, on the advanced tab, both setting should be on DMA. if they're on PIO youre drive is running at half the speed.

heres a link to the thread. there should be more threads on this matter. i hear its quite common...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=109213

but...i might be talking outta my arse anyway..

good luck mate.

 

Thanks kamikazefly. I'll try at home with that PIO mode.

 

Ok. It helped - dvd works now at full speed. But another problem arose - after uninstalling Primary IDE channel windows can't find correct driver for it (neither on recovery dvd nor dvd with drivers ), so it isn't the Primary IDE channel now but just IDE channel with exclamation mark on it. I think only windows reinstallation would help, but are there some ideas where can i find appropriate driver?

 

-----------------------------------------

Anyone Guyz Any Idea Help About That Problem????

 

Hi Guys...

Please could someone explain to me how to apply new thermal paste to my CPU and GPU. I've never done it before, and while I do now about computers, I don't want to take a chance messing my notebook up just coz I was to arrogant to ask. So if someone could please explain how to do it to me I would be so grateful.

Thanks so much for your help!

Oh and I've got an xi1546 with the T7200.

 

Hello, everyone.
I am currently battling against fujitsu siemens on a warranty issue on an Amilo xi 1546.

The cooling system of my 1546 malfunctioned and the secondary hard drive, motherboard and graphic card were damaged due to overheating. There was still warranty left on it so I sent it for repairs. After 6 weeks of tampering, they decided they can't fix it so they decided to send me an amilo xi 2528 because there were no 1546's left.

I protested, however, because I felt that 2528 is inferior in terms of game performance (gaming was the purpose of the 1546). They responded that the difference in performance is insignificant and refused to refund me. They also mentioned that this decision was partly made due to the fact that the 1546 was old (bought in august of 2006) - a lousy excuse in my opinion.

I decided to call up some officials on this matter and I was informed that I should be able to prove that the new one is inferior. That is why I now ask anyone that owns an amilo xi 1546 to run 3dmark06 on default settings and send me screenshots of the results (configuration, marks, settings, etc..).

I have already sent pm's to several people and received 2 sets of screenshots. I hope I'll be able to collect a sample large enough to convince the officials to force fujitsu-siemens to refund my laptop.

Thank you,
Tuplis

 

Here is my result.

 

I got a compare link to my old Xi1546 here:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2244939

Ive also had to return mine due to malfunction, got my money refunded by the reseller after it had been in for repair 6 times or so. Keyboard not working, 2x GPU overheating before it got fixed for first time, overheating in general, GPU overheating again and finally, hd's seemed to begin giving up, also temps raising over time with usage.

 

That seems really unfair. Hasn't the 2528 only got a smaller screen, slower processor and less good graphics? They should give you a proper replacement. Can you make a complaint somewhere?

 

Hi everyone !

This is my first post so i hope this will show in the page and could get some help from you people. I have this Xi-1546-21 laptop with factory settings and pretty much i have only updated my craphix card drivers and thats it and of course windows updates... so..

I have read this whole post and i decided to upgrade my memory, thermal things in cooling system and drivers and so on. But i have never updated BIOS, so i downloaded an update from fujitsus page and it is version 1.25 but i haven´t done anything with it yet, but when im going to, i need some advise what is going to happen. Do i just double click on the .exe file and then just follow the arrows or something? How does it go, is it hard ? Is there something special to be attention to ?

Another one guestion is i have tried to overclock my graphix card with ATT (newest) and powerstrip but it´s not working not both of them. I have 7.12 catalyst driver. Is this omega driver better and how is the overclocking done accurately? Im kinda rookie in this stuff . And my idle CPU temp is 70 C, according to NHC. So will it help when I clean the fan and put new arctic silver 5 to replace the old stuff from the cpu and gpu ? Something else to take in to consideration?

And one big question i still have, where on earth i get newest drivers to this computer, i mean where in h*ll are those. I have hunted these drivers from the manufacturer´s site but don´t know what to download and from where ??

Some marks i get:

3dMark05: 4691 (398 core; 468 mem) (NFS Most Wanted: average fps: 18-25)

3dMark06: 2508 (398 core; 468 mem) (Fear with very low settings: average fps: 11-21 (in action))

Every little help is extremely appreciated and links to the drivers if know where they are ?

thanx to everyone in advance.

Amilo Xi 1546-21
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 Ghz
Ati X1800 256 Mb
2x120 Gt HDD
2x512 Mb Memory (coming Kingston 2x1 Gb 667 Mhz DDR2 SODIMM 200 pin)

 

If you are going to do the Windows flash, make absolutely sure there's nothing that could interfere the flashing (e.g. automatic updates, virus scanning, scheduled tasks...) and that you are running AC plugged in. There are actually clear instructions in the file descriptions in the Fujitsu site. There's nothing special to it. I have always done Windows flash succesfully, but it's recommended to do either the Dos flash or the CD flash, since nothing can interfere them. Caution: If the flashing fails for some reason the system won't boot again.

Yes, Omega drivers are generally better. I have succesfully done overclocking only with Powerstrip. With other software(ATT, Rivatuner, AtiTool, etc.) the clocks wouldn't stick, but would reset to original after starting a game or 3D app. Your idle CPU temp is way too high, so you shouldn't be overclocking. Idle temps should be around 50C. Yes, the cleaning and thermal paste replacement might help. Try also other temp monitoring programs, like Mobilemeter or Intel TAT. Other things to consider is that the fan or the thermal sensor might be broken.

You get new drivers from particular device's manufacturer's site, e.g.
- Mobile Intel® 945PM Express Chipset driver from Intel
- Discrete Serial ATA RAID controller VT6421 driver from www.viarena.com
- Realtek ALC880 High Definition Audio Codec driver from www.realtek.com.tw
etc. those are the most important ones (including the gpu drivers, which you already know). Other devices' drivers can found in similar way. Just look up the device's name and go to that device's manufacturer site and search it for the particular driver. It's not that hard. Use www.google.com for help.

Those scores are way too low even for stock clocks. They should be: 3DMark05 ~5600, 3DMark06 ~3000 and FEAR with close to maximum settings ~30 fps.

I recommend you to familiarize yourself to these guides to learn basics about Windows, drivers and how to get the best performance out of your system: http://www.tweakguides.com/System.html

 

thank you so so much ronkotus,

i did the thermal thing and memory thing but the reason im asking for a help this time is that i tried top create raid 0 and i failed i guess cos my computer wont boot from the windows cd and i really dont know what to do i followed the instructuions notebook solutions wrote here but it doesn´t work i tried everything and all i get is "operating system not found" as if it won´t boot from the cd and another thing is when i create raid: i make these steps: Create array - Set Raid O - I Select both disks - put 64k - and start create - Create complete - I push esc and and push enter at set boot array and select both disks - i push esc *2 and select yes to complete it after that bios shows only 1 HDD and it wont boot,. first time it did boot and i installed windows succesfully but i had only 1 HDD even i partitioned those to two so i thought it would have made 2 HDD´s available but it didnt and then went to the raid setup again and this time i deleted array and then it showed 2 HDD in bios but it wont boot ffs. Can anyone help me ?

I managed to boot from the windows cd and it is installing it. wehee, altough i still don´t know if i have two HDD this time but i think i have. I will post new 3dMark Scores and thank you again ronkotus Im so glad this planet has people who are willing to help others. Thank You

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I have managed to install windows again and now it is working at the moment. So my RAID experiment is finally over. I didn´t get RAID 0 but i guess i don´t need it that much. But now my computer is working again and i start to download newest drivers (thank you ronkotus for giving all this information to my guestions) and see if my idle temp is lower know when i added arctic silver 5 and cleaned the fan and everything basically. Now I start to fix it to F.E.A.R condition. And try to get those 30 fps.

Few questions still, I did try powerstrip before I formatted everything and there was these logos of core and mem. My Core was 398 and mem 250 something, now. I double clicked those logos and set the number to 200, then i managed to put the mem part to 500 and core to 450, which i have read is the normal clock for this graphix card. But when I try to get those numbers to stay that way,.. they don´t... what ever button I press it takes those numbers back to stock ? So what am i doing wrong ?

And another one.. to ronkotus... Do I miss a lot if I don´t update the BIOS or should it be done ? Im kinda afraid to f*ck this computer up again. So is it very necessary to update it ??

Thank you for your responses already and im so glad people make these kind of foums

 

It would have been wise to download the drivers and burn them to disk before Windows clean install. That way it would've been a lot more convenient and easier, like a new driver disk, just like the one that came with your laptop.

Again, I really don't recommend you to overclock, especially to that high(450/500), unless you really get those temps down and if you have additional notebook cooler. I just want to warn you, because I have read so many cases about this particular laptop getting it's GPU overheated and eventually broken.
But here goes:
Powerstrip should be uninstalled and reinstalled after each GPU driver update and it should always be installed over the factory default graphics settings of your GPU. Meaning that when you have installed new GPU driver, do not do any changes to graphics settings in ATT, Catalyst Control center, Control Panel or whatever, before you have installed Powerstrip. Otherwise Powerstrip might not work correctly. And remember to read that ATI Catalyst tweakguide i posted, if you don't know how to make a clean install of GPU drivers.
And about the Powerstrip usage: the default clocks should show ~398/468 when you start , not 398/250 as you stated. Then you just raise the sliders up to the clocks you want and press the Apply (tai Aseta suomeksi ) button, so no need to double click any icons or anything. You can then see the clocks by hovering the mouse cursor over the Powerstrip taskbar icon. I also recommend you to spend some time to customize the program settings. There's the question mark button on the upper right corner of the window which you can use to get detailed description what each setting actually does. For example, I have disabled all other functionality except OC'ing from Powerstrip and it OCs the GPU automatically when i start Powerstrip. So I use OC only when I need it, quite rarely.

Again, you should read the file descriptions in the fujitsu download site. There should be information what each BIOS version fixes or adds. If there's nothing in the update information you would need, then there's no need to update. For example, if I remember correctly, version 1.20 adds support for Windows Vista.

Yes, and these kind of forums too (ja ihan suomeksi ): http://keskustelu.plaza.fi/muropaketti/bbs/t438230,175

 

Thank You ronkotus (Kiitos paljon, noista ohjeista oli erittäin paljon apua) Thanks

 

Hi All. As I have written earlier I had a thermal issue on my CPU. It seemed to be to hot on idle and while gaming (56 C idle, >80 C gaming). So I've used AS5 on CPU and GPU. When I've done it for the first time it helped and I got lower gaming temps (<80 C) while the same (56 C) on idle. A few months later it began to overheat while gaming again. Usual fan cleaning didn't help so I've tried to replace thermal paste again. Here is my problems started - with GPU. Thermal pads on memory were a little bit broken after the heatsink was taken off for second time. Some item on graphic card started to overheat and I've got a lot of artefacts in almost every hard for GPU game and BSODs. I've decided to replace thermal pads (TP) on memory and place a TP on GPU. Almost all TPs where 1 mm thick so I bougth the same thickness. What was my mistake is to buy the same thick TP for GPU. So when I've placed them all to graphics the TPs on memory weren't pressed by heatsink. There were 0.5 mm gap between them. So, because TPs on memory were the issue why I've done that all I've removed TP from GPU and replaced it by AS5 again. Now heatsink sat nicely to its place and all TPs were pressed by it. But artefacts were there again. That's why my noti was in service center in a few days. Because they can't fix I'll get new Xi2550 in a few days. I'm lucky because they didn't watch on warranty.
The lesson for me is - no any HW tricks ever with my NB.

 

I Hope i won´t face the same problem in the future, because i have just done everything like you (few days ago) except chaged the TP´s, altough they were broken when i took the heatsink off to clean it, but so far my idle temp is 50 C and few web pages open it is 54-56 C. Altough I don´t play any hardware demanding games anymore or atleast not yet. So we´ll see whta will happen. But I think we should be able to clean the hardware and not being afraid of what will happen if we do that. Like in your case it didn´t get any better in the end. I hope i won´t have to open my noti in a awhile. By the way jarni, was i like you sent it to service center and your waranty was over and they just didn´t notice it and you got a brand new laptop.. nice !

 

Ive just returned my Xi1546 because of overheating. Ive had it in for service several times due to overheating and other lock-ups, just hope that mine was an extreme case. Have had TP changed 3 times and GPU + TP changed once, it have also been in with keyboard issuse, and lately (thats why it was returned) overheating once again and HD troubles...

TBH my time with the Xi1546 has been a lot of hair pulling for the year and a half I had it

Sadly, as I loved it, with its slim business design and portability for a 17"-lappy.

 

Made accidentally a terrible terrible find when googling some Xi1546 fan information: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17979

So DO NOT update the BIOS to newer than version 1.17, if you really don't need the updates and fixes in the later versions.

I had BIOS version 1.25 and I downgraded back to 1.15, and now my temperatures are 5 C lower. Idle CPU temp is now ~45 C when it before was ~50 C and the fan runs at higher rpm a lot earlier than before at high temps. I'm just wondering what the h*ll was Fujitsu thinking, when changing the fan operation worse in latest BIOS versions...

 

That is indeed a screwup by fujitsu :s

That model runs hot enough, 5° extra surly wount help at all

I ran mine with the 1.17 BIOS and it still OH'ed, 5° more and I guess it would fry the GPU if stressed.