7811-FX upgrade time!

Okay, So I've now had my laptop for going on two years and it was a refurb when I got it. I still think it has some life left in it, even as a medium range gaming rig. So after looking at the prices of some processors on ebay, I've decided to pull the trigger and get some upgrading done

I do have a question though: Once and for all, is quad core supported or not? THe BIOS says it should be but my forum search yielded posts saying it isn't.....but those were a year ago....

Here are my options

-X9100 ( Intel Core 2 EXTREME X9100 3.06GHZ (ES) - eBay (item 350409558475 end time Nov-08-10 04:15:31 PST)) for ~$250 would be my dual core of choice. It would be the indicator of "when this processor becomes slow, I;ve hit the end of its life as a gaming machine"

-q9200 ( NEW* INTEL CORE QUAD Q9200 2.4GHZ 12M 1066 CPU > Q9100 - eBay (item 320609598632 end time Nov-26-10 17:00:06 PST)) for 250 or q9100 ( New Intel Core2 Quad Mobile Q9100 2.23GHz 1066FSB 12M - eBay (item 110593883003 end time Dec-01-10 17:32:48 PST)) for 200 are my options in the quad core ring. I'm leaning towards the q9200 for the extra .2ghz for 50$ (every little bit helps)

Any thoughts and opinions are welcome

 

Quad is not supported

 

That makes me a saaaaaaaad panda.......

But I thought for sure gateway sold an FX model with quad core. Did that one have a different motherboard?

 

New Intel CORE2 X9100 QHBQ Super low Temp! - eBay (item 250715694496 end time Nov-22-10 04:19:24 PST)

this is better it was 300$ but someone else competed with the price so this seller lowered the price and it is the lowest i've seen.

 

Yeah I am going with that x9100 when I get home. I found it on my lunch break.

I might also be getting 8GB of ram though newegg. 140 isn't bad for doubling ddr3 ram count.

 

They did P7808u

 

How about a T9900? I got one for my 7811 for $379 and it is smokin.

 

Yep it will work but for the same price as the X9100 which can be overclocked with throttlestop. T9900 cannot except with hardware mods.

 

Back when I had my 6860 I had an X7800, great all around proc, bumped my 3dMark score up by around 2,000 points. Great multitasking, I'll be dropping one in my G71 quite soon.

 

It's official - I ordered the X9100 for $250 shipped

I'm also in the works of making a laptop case schticker for it to reflect my new mods. Inspired by how race cars put the brands of parts on their body as stickers, mine has all of the brands that helped make this thing a beast proudly displayed.

I also got an 8GB kit from newegg so this thing should be a tank.

 

Nice, I wish I had DDR3 *is jealous* tell us your idle/load temps once you get it

 

The X9100 is a nice processor and good match for the7811 you will be happy with your choice.

It's amazing how much the price has dropped on 8gb DDR3 kits these days

 

I was thinking of doing the same when I build my AMD Bulldozer/6870 Crossfire watercooled desktop next year, have a black case with red lighting and black stickers of all the brands on the side panel, would look sick!

 

So both parts should be arriving sometime this week. I'm in the process of finishing up the sticker, should look something like this image. I'm playing around with the FX logo and i might just upload a blank one if anyone wants to upload their own brands (seagate hard drives? corsair ram? linux?)

 

Hmmm, if you make all the brand logos the same color and run them up one side it would look better IMHO.

 

X9100 just came in and was installed successfully! Temps at idle are an icy 30C (dipping to 25C :O )I will attempt to play a game or two after it sits for an hour or so (just to be safe) and make sure I applied the arctic silver correctly.

One thing I did notice - my startup noise changed. Not the windows sound, but the mechanical whine of the computer powering up. This one was much more high pitched and was almost like a turbo on a car.....very cool!

UPDATE: After one round of CoD:MW2, core temps of cpu were between 60 and 70C. Temps dropped to 40 almost immediately after. GPU temps were hovering at 65-70 as well. There is no overclock on either.

 

It's official! Both the X9100 and 6GB kit were installed successfully! Total cost of the laptop is as follows

Base price for a refurbished 7811FX w/ 1920x1200 screen - $800
2x 500Gb WD scorpio Blues - $150
X9100 - $250
6GB of 1333 DDR3 - 150$

Total cost for an essentially maxed out 7811FX - $1350. Not bad at all

 

Yeah not bad. I paid $1350 for my 6860fx.

 

I can haz benchmark results?

 

So runs of 3Dmark06 have revealed something most disturbing - My shader power is absolute garbage. Firefly forest kills my framerate and the end of proxycon is a killer as well. It's not temps since the rest of the tests are fine and I end up with over 9000 overall but it should be much higher. Out of the box I was doing 8600 with no OC. What video driver is recommended these days?

 

Are you in high performance mode? what was your CPU score? You should be getting close to 12k if not more.

 

Most definitely in high performance mode. Here's a more definitive assessment

In 3Dmark06, the framerate chugs at random intervals and there is a mild stutering at times. My monitoring suites have shown that the CPU voltage drops and then goes back to normal when running 3dmark. These spikes are somewhat consistent with the framerate death but inconsistent with the stuttering. Firefly Forest is a nightmare since the whole thing will plummet to <10fps at times and then jump up to 40+ fps.

This whole thing reeks of a driver issue where a setting somewhere along the line is being messed with. I've used rightmark cpu utility to disable all powersaving on the cpu but this did nothing. Overclocking the gpu yields significant fps gains but increases the severity of the frame rate drops.

All temps were normal during the length of the test. CPU never reached above 70C and GPU never reached above 70 as well. GPU is running stock thermal compound, CPU is on AS-5

I am looking on how to flash an updated GPU bios but I am getting the dreaded EEPROM error. I might undervolt the processor to see if that helps. My current drivers are 258.96

 

You are most likely over stressing the power supply. It may run icy cold but if the power is dipping too low the GPU suffers. Try no OC and then bring it up slowly. if w/o video oc you still get the problem try undervolting the CPU.

Another though too, monitor the TSZx temps, some of these have a bug that puts them up high and this kills the frame rates..............

 

Thanks so much TANWare - the undervolting on the CPU was significant, I dropped from 1.35V to 1.215V with no decrease in performance. I actually just stopped at 1.215 because I don't see the need to drop any further. 3Dmark06 was incredibly fluent with only very very minor stutter that is likely due to the program more than my hardware. CPU voltage remained very steady the whole time, not a single spike.

Original stock 3dMark06 - ~8500
X9100 at normal voltage - ~8800
X9100 undervlted to 1.215V and no OC - ~9600.

Up next is using the extra voltage I gained to do a bit of OC to the video card and processor

 

I can run Orthos 100% stable with the CPU at 3.2 GHz I use 1.1875 with 3.4 GHz I use 1.2625. Normal running I can get lower but Orthos will error. Remember though I have a 180w brick so I have power to spare.

If you game get the CPU vCore as low as stable, since you use the stock brick up one click so if the brick starts stressing it will not undervolt the CPU easily. From there start OC'ng the GPU.

If you can find one on the cheap get the Targus 180w brick and you will end the power game. I can run 3.7 GHz 1.3625 vCore and video clocks 700/900/1750 all day and the brick barely gets warm...............

Edit; if you see my other thread about the HS, I can run Orthos 3.6 GHz 100% stable 85c core 93c TSZx at 1.3250. 3.7 GHz is doable but it runs right at the shutdown border with Orthos but like butter normally with other real world stuff...............

 

Targus Home/Office 180 Watt AC Notebook Power Supply Power adapter - 180 Watt

Is this the power supply you're talking about? New I've found prices around 60$ so if its as good as you say it is then I'll pull the trigger.

 

That is the puppy................

 

Now I know why I visit here from time to time, you guys are always so helpful and awesome. I definitely gotta try that PS (the brick for my 7805 seems awfully hot recently).

 

Ahhh the good old days, I remember when those Targus bricks were selling for 30 buck. Good bricks even at 60.

 

I need a bigger PSU too, with everything OC'd to sig clocks I can't go any higher on video or the GPU drivers crash, even when the GPU is only at 65C

 

wow, my 7815u with core 2 extreme 3.06ghz scored like 12,384 overclocked to 3.4ghz and the gpu overclocked 10-15%. i dont game with any overclocks and the framerate difference was HUGE.

i did notice that my games will chug if im not using my coolermaster notebook cooler. keeping good airflow makes a difference for me.

 

How do you get a higher score just by undervolting and no OC? That doesn't make sense?

Also, maybe consider a Seagate Momentus XT or an SSD + fast storage HDD for another decent boost in performance.

 

What was happening was the laptop was running out of power if both the processor and video card were stressed. To save itself, the laptop would limit power to one of them (I'm guessing the gpu) and I would see a massive hit in performance. By undervolting the processor, I freed up some power when the CPU was at max speed. This was enough to give the gpu the maximum amount of power it was requesting at stock clocks. Thus I never had a hit in performance and so my 3Dmark06 score increased.

Think of it this way - A ferrari is faster than a civic right up until the ferrari runs out of gas. My computer was basically running out of gas.

And I do not care for SSDs. I think they don;t have nearly enough storage for the money and the speed increase is marginal when compared to other upgrades. I have twin 500Gbs in Raid 0 so I would need a substantial investment when I am more likely to be GPU limited in a game. Do realize that I actually do use a fair amount of my 1TB space for movies, TV shows, Steam games, Multiple OSes, and more.

 

I dunno, I'm mixed regarding SSD's. Upgrading from a laptop hard drive, it's pretty significant. For a desktop not so much. I see you are running RAID 0, but an SSD will still be faster, especially faster than a caviar blue even in RAID. The beauty of your machine is that you have two drive slots. You can throw a 60GB boot drive in one and a Seagate Momentus 750GB in the other! Best of both worlds. Unless SSD's are super cheap when I buy my next laptop (like Feb/March 2011 with Sandy Bridge) I'm opting for a laptop with two drive bays so I can boot off an SSD and use a standard HDD for storage.

 

That is one of the things that is nice about these systems. A primary SSD and secondary HDD..............

 

Hi there fellows:

I have the configuration htwingnut was talking about. i have an Intel SSD 160gb and a Segate 500gb. I'm not using RAID of course. I must say the SSD improves the performance of the FX P-79 by a bunch. It makes games run more smooth and programs launch faster. My computer loads Windows 7 in less than 15secs.

Yet again time of course will make SSDs cheap and better than what they currently are.

 

Which 8gig memory upgrade kit would be better I have a mostly stock 7811-FX with 2 320 gig HD
I looked on Newegg they list 2
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model CT2KIT51264BC1067
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model CT2KIT51264BC1339
Who would be the best person or place to buy an X-9100

 

I just went for the 89.99 deal on G.Skill 10666 and it works like a charm. You can see my other thread. I'm a very happy camper now............

 

Ok you guys are making me want to upgrade my 7811.

 

Hey themanwithsaouce,

I see your CPU Temp around 30c when idle, how did you get the CPU temp that low. I have a P7815u and when idle it stands at between 45 -50 (I have stock components, i did install a 2nd 1TB 7200 HD).

Do you think I need a cooling pad.

Thanks,

 

So would these be appropriate for the 7811?

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ

What are the differences between the different x9100s?

 

The memory is fine, I'd stay away from the 7200.4 as they tend to have vibration issues and get either the WD 500 7200 RPM or 7K500 or even the Samsung 640 GB 7200...........

 

Hey themanwithsaouce,

I see your CPU Temp around 30c when idle, how did you get the CPU temp that low. I have a P7815u and when idle it stands at between 45 -50 (I have stock components, i did install a 2nd 1TB 7200 HD).

Do you think I need a cooling pad.

Thanks,

 

Have you replaced the stock TIM with something like AS5? I just got a p-7811fx from a friend for free after his dog knocked it off a counter and shattered the screen. I've replaced the TIM with IC Diamond 7, but I don't think I'll ever get to see how cool it stays since I can't get a picture out of it after replacing the screen.

 

I will get down to 35c with the ambient being cool. Ususally idle is about 40c. This is with ICD on both the CPU and NB. I just went to 9c.23.00 and before GPU sould see about 45c idle with powermizer off. Now with powermizer off I see between 70-80c idle on the GPU with powermizer off, about 40c with it on.

 

Lokgolo,

So I replace the thermal pad on the CPU with IC Diamond 7 and i see a great drop in temp on my CPU. When it idle i see the CPU temp around 30C and when i have StarCraft running its at around 55C. Really am happy..i guess replacing the thermal on the CPU helped out....That should have been my first troubleshooting

Thanks a lot.

EDIT: also note i have a notebook cooler

 

Glad to hear you got your temps lowered

 

Hi guys, i see that you guys are overclocking your CPU and GPU for this laptop. I had a few question, how are you guys overlcoking the cpu on this laptop? I tried to search the forum for an answer but i can't find a thread for it.

I'm recently bought a Gateway P-7811FX w/ Core2Extreme X9000 CPU. i had bought the laptop for around $500. It comes with X9000 CPU @2.83 GHz and the seller is also including the original P8400 CPU that came with the laptop as well.
It also ships with a Targus/LiteOn 180W/19V aftermarket AC adapter (the original crapped out)

I was reading this thread and i saw that you need a nice brick and read that the Targus 180W was the ideal choice for this, and i'm getting that with this laptop
Now, the X9000 has unlocked Multi just like the X9100 that you guys are talking about. only difference is the .2 MHz and the FSB 800 vs 1066.


* should i sell both of my X9000 and P8400 and get me a X9100? if not, is there any Bios out there for this laptop that lets us increase the FSB or raise the multiplier on the CPU? ( the laptop will be coming with BIOS flashed to 9C.17.00) i'm sure i'll need to update that.

I've got a pair if Intel G2 80GB SSD's left over from my desktop build that I'm gona run RAID 0 with can't wait for that.

was my $500 well spent on this laptop? i know if i sell the P8400 for like 50-60 bucks, i doubt i can find a better deal on laptop for $450 correct?

* i was also looking at Gateway's website and it did not say that this laptop supported 8GB of DDR3. i can just sell the P8400 and get a 8GB DDR3 and for $500 this would be a beat

 

"was my $500 well spent on this laptop? "

I think you got a bargain! Good luck with this great computer and have fun with it. Let us know how it goes.

I believe there is a thread on adding more memory but it seems to have issues.

 

the 8GB ram is cool and all, but i'm more looking for overclocking the X9000. i don't think i'll ever use more than 4GB, but before i spend more $$$ on the laptop, i wana see what i can do with the CPU, i was reading lots of threads last night, but non of them help, ther are guys doing 3.5 GHZ's on the x9100 and there is no info on how to acheave that. I must be reading the wrong threads unfortunately.