Asus M50s Video Card Problem/Question

I`ve had my Asus M50s laptop for two years or so and so far all I have is praise for it. Yesterday, however, after playing Homefront, I quit the game and put it in stand-by then powered it back up after 30 or so mintues. It seemed to boot just fine but the screen wouldn`t start. I though that closing the lid for a few years may have disconnected some wires or something so i connected my PC monitor to it via an HDMI cable and after that didn`t work I tried the good old DVI and no signal was sent to the monitor that way either. I did some research and asked a specialist and he said that the video card is gone and i need a new one. I browsed the net and i found a 9650m GT refurbished video card at a decent price but I`ve also been told that when it comes to notebooks, anything other that the card it came with will not be supported by the BIOS or something and given the fact that the old card was a 9600M GS I`m quite doubtful the higher performance one will work(even though I`m starting to need it in the latest released games).


To sum up: Can I swap my old 9600M GS for a better video card such as a 9650M GT or maybe even a 9800 if i can find one?


Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post

 

You may be able to swap it with a G50V 9700m, but make sure the card is the same shape and that's for an asus. Asus MXM cards have a flipped layout so a regular mxm will not work. If you swap the card with a different one, just beware that if it does work there may be problems like the fan running full speed all the time. I haven't seen a mention of the M50 using a better card so I'm not sure if this is the case or not.

 

So any card that came off an Asus and is the correct slot will work. I heard something about modding the BIOS. Is that an option ?

 

If you buy a card that fits the profile you mentioned & could come with your model already ... I mean if your model can come with various cards & u choose one of them ... I don't think Bios modding will be required ... for example your model the M50s could come with a Nvidia 9500GS or 9600GS or ATI HD3650 DDR2 ... any of them should be supported by the current bios ... as for other models cards I guess bios modding may be required

 

I am pretty sure even a GTX 260 flipped asus card should work. I have seen many cheap ones on e-bay recently.

My asus is one of the "odd" ones out that uses regular mxm slot but M50 I think uses flipped so you are good to go.

Do take note of Allur's comment that your fans may go to full speed. I had same issue when I upgraded from 8600M GT to 4670 ATI card. I fixed it by doing a mod to manually control the fans.

Here are a few links to ones that are selling on ebay now. Pick the one that will fit your machine the best. All are flipped mxm II 2.1
http://cgi.ebay.com/Asus-G71GX-Nvid...446?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a653f25de
http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-G60VX-vide...388?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3cb7263d74
http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-G50VT-G51V...464?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item1c1bb0bb88

 

Thank you very much. I will post here when I have news.

 

Great. Note your current card looks like this

http://cgi.ebay.com/Asus-M50-M50V-9...920?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item1c12fd5678

Although the GTX260M may work take note that to accomodate the new card some small modifications may have to be done to the heatsink. Shouldn't be at all hard though. Very much worth the work considering the GTX260M is still a good high end card! Plus its costs the same as a 9600M GS replacement!