Acer extensa 5220 upgrade.

I have an acer extensa 5220 with a celeron 540 @ 1.86ghz chip in it.

It has a GL960 chipset in it ( ive opened it and removed the heatsink to check visually. )

Now all i have read about this chipset lead me to believe it was socket P so i checked ebay for second hand socket p chips and found a few.

I then noticed as i refitted the cpu that my socket is actually marked as "mPGA479M" on the actual plastic surround of the socket. I was of the understanding that the celeron 540 was socket p and that all sockets using the GL960 were socket p !!??

What the hell is going on with my mainboard? ;P

Ive bought a T5600 core2 chip cheap of the bay ( socket M ) so hopefully that will work seeing as the actual socket is labelled as socket M.

So clearly not all GL960 use socket P as ive seen mentioned, or is my board some sort of freak

 

Noooo. Don't tell me you went ahead and bought the T5600, reading the big M on the socket.
What a waste. If you can cancel the T5600, do it. And get a T5550.

 

It was only 30quid ill just sell it on.

So you cant trust whats printed on the **** socket plastic anymore? great... this naming comvention for laptops is just so confusing.

Its definately a 960 chipset so does this make it 100% definately a socket P then?

And why on gods green earth would a socket P have a big M printed on it

 

Hahaha....I never looked any further than CPU-Z, but I'm pretty sure the M means Micro....mPGA479M -- being 479 Micro-FCPGA ZIF Socket.

I think the 479 socket is being used since ages, probably 2000-01, but the CPUs that are released, have a difference electrical pin-out and sometimes slightly different PGA. Same is the case with Socket M and P, both are not pin-compatible.

Have a look at this guide. BigO had the same problem initially. He tried a T5600, to realize later on that his notebook only supports Socket P CPUs.

Socket M and P basically refers to the PGA of the CPU.

 

To be honest im glad it IS a socket P as i have a greater range to choose from.

Ive messaged the seller so he may not have sent it yet and he may have some socket p chips so we can work something out, if not ill just sell it on.

Live and learn

 

Ive done some more research and using the intel chipset identifier it tells me im running a GM965 chipset. Which is odd as the actual northbridge had GL960 printed on it????

Im so confused as to what to trust anymore, why would the actual chip have 960 printed on it ( SLA5V ) and the intel identifier then say its a 965 and so suggesting i can run 800fsb chips properly?

Agh this is doing my nut

 

What you see printed on the chipset die is true. Software can be buggy, and anyway, both the GL960 and GM965 support 800MHz FSB CPUs very well, all the way upto the X9000.

 

Thing is i want to be certain as im planning on upgrading the ram to 4gb and ( supposedly ) the 960 doesnt like more than 2 or 3 gb yet the 965 is fine with 4gb.

When you say software can be buggy, sure the intel identifier should know how to identify its own hardware. In an ideal world i want to get the 4gb ram first then a faster 7200rpm hard drive and bide my time looking for a bargain T7xxx chip on the bay.

If i did get 4gb of ram ( assuming i do indeed have a 965 ) will the fact im running a celeron mean it couldnt address it anyway?

They really dont make life easy for people wanting to upgrade laptops do they

 

Trust me, the intel identifier is buggy. Software that recognized the chipset as a GL960 with a celeron or a Pentium dual-core, was later recognized as a GM965 with a Core 2 Duo installed, though the chipset physically remained the GL960.

4GB of RAM is not going to improve performance in anyway, unless you are actually running out of RAM and using the HDD for cache (pagefile). 2GB of RAM is enough for even Vista, but get a 320GB 7200RPM drive first, and you'll see your system fly.

Have a look at this thread.. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=319893

The memory will be fully addressed (with a 64-bit OS) irrespective of the processor type, if the notebook had the GM965 chipset. It depends upon the memory controller. At this point, it is unclear that whether the GL960's memory controller is unable to support 4GB, or if the BIOS limits the memory capacity to 2-3GB.

 

Thanks for the info.

You are prob right about the ram side of it. Ill get a pair of good fast 1GB modules and a nice fast HDD then trawl the net for a bargain cpu and take my time. To be honest im never going to get amazing results from this laptop anyway seeing as its got the intel x3100 gpu.

Still it will do me for the odd game of warcraft on the road

 

Well i got a pair of 1GB modules and its made the laptop a whole lot more responsive in games. The fps in battlefield1942 has almost trippled somehow! and UT2004 is very playable now even at full setting at 1280x1024 ( screen max rez ).

Im getting a fast HDD this coming weekend so hopefully that will speed things up a bit also, in the meanwhile im looking round for a better cpu at a bargain price

Im thinking a T7300 T7500 or even a T7700.