Gateway Intros its First 11.6" Netbook

Well, been playing with the Turion X2 TL-56 in the LT3103u and been happy so far. With the stock cooler, the CPU has been running good at 1.2GHZ, .850volts. Full load stress test, one core reaches 73c, while other core 63c. It does get hot. On normal usage, battery and temp on par with the L110 CPU. Maybe a little more on the battery consumption. Will test more, but in the range of 4-5 hours.

Plays youtube HD and if pushed to 1.4 GHZ will play 1080p Roboticta WMV video (92% CPU usage).

A pleasure to use now.

 

Thanks TechGadget, for your valuable input

also, can anyone underclock/undervolt the stock CPU? the battery time is very important for me, can anyone downclock the cpu to under 1.2G b/c from some sources it sounded like that Gateway locked out powernow from the BIOS, at least according to the powernow driver in Linux.

I guess my questions in a more coherent way
1) is powernow working in windows?
2) can you downclock the FSB with one of these windows programs to get to under 1.2G?
3) if you can do 2), to what extent can you downclock?

Thanks,

 

I don't know if RMClock is available for Linux.

You can use RMClock for most Windows laptops. I haven't come across a laptop I haven't been able to use it on. I use it on my Toshiba and HP too (Core 2 Duo's). You can run the LT1303u stock CPU at 800 mhz if you want.

It downclocks by adjusting the multiplier (xFSB). Each CPU supports a certain range. RMClock will act like Intel Speedstep and Powernow. When the CPU is idle, it slows down the CPU and steps it up when needed.

The "Power Saver" mode built into Vista made the computer totally unusable with the original chip.

 

so you are saying that without RMClock, Vista does downclock to 800Mhz?

 

Fixture here are some pics...

 

You will need some CPU utility to slow it down since the BIOS doesn't support CPU frequency adjustments. The motherboard/BIOS definitely supports faster CPUs, but not the cooling system.

When I was in Windows I turned the CPU up to 1.8GHZ. In about 15 seconds or so, it froze up (heated up). Vista didn't have a chance to go into "battery/power saving mode."

I've used Window's power options with my P7350 Core 2 and Windows does slow them down while inactive. With RMClock you have a lot more options (ie multiplier/volts). These slower processors are already so low, that slowing them down makes them really sluggish.

 

Nope, normal quality at stock speed since I haven't managed to overclock it. I didn't try HQ. I got audio/video out of sync on one video in fullscreen, but it was fine in another video. To tell the truth, I think it's too many pixels. 1366x768 is almost 1.5 times 1024x600.

 

Ok, I am new to the whole mobile computer scene, I have always been more of a gamer and have built several of my own Desktops, anyways, I was looking into this Netbook for college or really anything, the only games I would run on it would be Halo or GTA Vice City, anyways, I have two questions, 1.) how well do those games run on it... and 2.) if I were to replace the processor in it, how would something like a Sempron 2100+ stack up to the L110 already in it, I don't know alot about mobile processors(especially the L110) but would it be faster??? it's pretty energy efficient...

 

New finding...with my X2, the computer boots up at 1.8ghz and is able to run while I'm in the BIOS (ran for 5 minutes). Initially the included Vista would hang and I thought the CPU was overheating. I didn't want to blow up, so I would shut it down. This time I left it in the BIOS. The exhaust temp was 160F!! though.

I have been experiencing hang ups in SIS Sandra too. I would try a bench and it would freeze. Don't know if OS/drivers yet. Maybe I will try Windows 7 and XP and see if it has the same symptoms.

So we know now, that it can take a S1G1 X2, your basically limited by the cooling system. Even at 1GHZ, it definitely functions faster that the original L110 processor. Oh, the video operates at 44 mhz on load, 16 idle. GPU clock tool doesn't work on it to overclock.

 

I have only tried the free Gateway games. They are simple 3D and they were smooth (this was with the L110 processor). Can't say about other games. There's a 9 watt Sempron 1GHZ socket s1, but I've read that it's embedded. I couldn't say which architecture would be faster, but L110 has 512cache and Sempron 256?

 

Explain this 44 mhz load and 16 idle ?
Isn't that vastly slower than its actually supposed to run ?

 

Thanks TechGadget, appreciating the pics. I have to say that locking away PowerNow is a dumb idea on Gateway's part.

 

It appears to be heavily downclocked. When I looked at the motherboard, there's no cooling on the graphics chip. I put a small heatsink on it though. I also tried to speed it up a little but can't find a utility to do it yet.

Also, as it turns out, my processor is too fast for this stock computer. It froze up in the BIOS too. You will need to do other things, ie Windows updates, OS install that's outside of underclocking; so it's best to find a lower wattage CPU.

Will post again when I find a compatible X2.

 

Isn't that an EXTREME down clock ?like 10 fold because its supposed to run at ~400 mhz?

I'm sure you tried it already, but just in case. Did you try using rivatuner to speed it up ?

 

fixture, thanks for posting your pictures!

 

Good point. I had forgotten about windows updates, which would occur outside of RMclocks underclocking. I was thinking maybe one of the 31 watt S1G1s, such as the 65nm version of the TL-60. It's also a 2 GHz, so I figure downclocking it to 1.4 or so should get me in range.

Are you using the 33W or 31W version of the TL-56? Truth is, even if you're using the 33W, I doubt I'll get much better results from 31W. I wonder if there's some sort of stock AMD bios that will give us more direct control over the multipliers.

What exactly do you mean when you said you put a heatsink on the GPU? Is it possible to increase cooling on the CPU in a similar way? Or adjust the fan somehow?

 

has anyone found out how to overclock this thing yet using set FSB or anything else?

i updated to windows 7 64bit. i also use core avc drivers for 720p mkv's and they play just fine

just wondering if i can overclock this thing, i like it so far, if something else comes out better for the price ill just sell it

 

I looked into the processor (TK-42) AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 1.6GHZ with a TDP of 20w.

It seems it is coming out soon, but only for Non-US.

I found this processer in a few laptops coming out in Canadian stores: bestbuys.ca and walmart.ca

Acer Aspire 15.6" Laptop featuring AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core TK-42 (AS5516-5196)
http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0926INGFS10126104&catid=28239&logon=&langid=EN
http://www.walmartcanada.com/Canada-Electronic.jsp?selection=listingDetails&assetId=49534&imageId=67940&departmentId=201&categoryId=836&tabId=1

Looks like we will just have to wait until this processor is sold separately. =(

 

OK, I've still been messing with my CPU upgrade. After a few different processors "and" cooling mods, I've ended up with a TK-53. This was the only processor that allowed me to function at the rated speed and work outside of Windows. When I say "function," I don't mean to run it full tilt. If I stressed test it, it would shutdown, simply because of the heat. As of right now, I'm posting with the processor at 1.7 Ghz. Battery shows 2 hrs at 48%. So, basically it allowed me to do Windows updates, check disk and work in the BIOS. This, I couldn't do before with the other processors.

As for the processors, the lowest wattage I tried was a Sempron 1.8 Ghz, 25 watt. It didn't survive the stress test (at the moment). The current TK-53 is a 31 watt 65nm CPU, the others were various X2's with 65/90nm manufacturing. It appears that 65nm CPUs worked better for me. I was surprised that the 25 watt Sempron didn't fair as I thought, but my intention was to get a X2 into this computer.

Temperature-wise the bottom does get warm when doing web surfing and typing. Hot when viewing video and CPU-intensive stuff. As for my cooling mod, I now have the system pulling air from the underside of the computer, by drilling some holes and modding and flipping the fan. Before, the airflow was very restrictive, it was just pushing the air.

Maybe the TK-42 CPU will appear on Ebay some time in the future, I might try that.

 

If you can run the TK53 at 1.7 Ghz then there should be no issue with the TK42 at 1.6 Ghz. Hopefully with the lower TPD though you may be able to get the ability to stress test. I am wondering if ICD for the TIM here may help a bit too...........

 

I managed to get the x1270 to clock up a bit. Open gpu-z and then in atitool goto settings and set it to driver level overclocking. Raise the clock speed up to 400 or so and it will raise the core to 70mhz or so. Then it will overheat.
I am going to hack on a heatsink this evening. Maybe try to dump the bios.
Counter strike source is almost playable.

I am going to order the tk-53 and see if I can get that going. Maybe solder on some copper from my old xps gen 2 heatsink.

I bought this laptop yesterday and I am loving it. Right away I upgraded to windows 7 rtm.

Im

 

Hey thanks for the atitool info. I used it on my ATI 2900XTs but haven't really tried it on the x1270. Before you get the Tk-53, please understand that I have totally chopped up my fan/cooling into pieces (and drilled holes into the case. Also, as I explained, I bought a few CPUs to try.

Also, the system will not operate dependably without some kind of cooling mod. All my CPUs booted, but they all varied in the temps they were pushing out. So, really consider the cooling, it's the main problem with the faster processors. The ram will need heatsinks too.

Oh, if someone have a CPU "pin mod," motherboard mod or BIOS mod let me know; it would make it so much easier to run a dual core.

 

I understand I am about to take the thing apart and put a heatsink on the ati chip. Ill take a look at the cpu heatsink when I do. Maybe we can up the fan speed or mod the heatsink in a way. I have several laptop heatsinks from broken laptops. Ill get the dremel out and see what I can do.

 

Techgadget09 how did you get the casing apart. I have taken all of the screws out and the thing doesnt want to come apart. I dont want to crack the casing.

 

There are sort of hinges that snap together on the back, front and sides. Start with the back ones first. There's also one right above the power connector--that one is kind of hard to get off.

The keyboard is tricky too, there are four little protruding plastics that hold the keyboard down near the top. You will need a small piece of plastic to push the knobs back and pull up the keyboard from the top. The little electrical ribbons that attached to the motherboard for communication need to be taken off with care too. The black plastic hold down hinges pull up.

Be careful of the screen, if you work on the computer while it's attached, make sure the screw holding it from the bottom of the case is still in; I strip my left side.

My case is pretty worn out from all the disassembly. They don't "snap" anymore. Oh, there's not much room for a heatsink. The heatpipe and a thin piece of copper sits on the CPU. You'll also notice that the keyboard plugs the hole to the fan--which makes it very restrictive to outside air. I'm sure this is to keep the fan noise down.

Also, a used TK-53 should cost no more than $20 on ebay. And if your computer doesn't start, boot it with no CPU, ram and battery a couple of times, then put those parts back and try again. This non-booting sure gave me a scare. As for testing the boot, all you need is the monitor connection, power button connector (thick cable by the hard drive), AC or battery. I find it easier with the AC.

 

I just ran 3dmark 01 2294 3dmarks. Multi texture fillrate is 397mtexels. Barely faster than a voodoo 3. I dont know why they even bothered putting the ati graphics sticker on it.

 

Wait barely faster than a voood 3? I though that ATI gpu was suppose to be a little better than intel GMA950, and I though the gma950 was better than the voodoo 3. Odd.

 

Yeah, It was getting less than 30fps on game test 1, on the nature test it was less than 20. Its combined score was 800pts better than my old voodoo3. I scored 2294 with the x1270. A geforce 3 scores around 7000.

It appears the chip is running at 110mhz in games. You can check in the catalyst control center.

 

I don't have the gateway, but I do still have a voodoo 3 card in one of my machines. I was just wonder. You can't get it to to work faster or anything? Cause like I said the intel 950 is much better than the voodoo 3 heck even 4 and 5, and I was told this ATI card was better than the intel 950 so this does not make too much sense to me.

 

Yeah its at 44mhz, Looks like their may be a clock divider. I overclocked it 500+mhz and it showed up as 70 in gpu-z. I am going to stick a heatsink on the ati chip if I can ever get the case apart. It does crash at 71mhz btw.
I cant believe they run the thing with out so much as a heatspreader on it.

 

Can you explain how you are getting this chip to overclock? I am on win7 with I believe atitools .26 and can't find the driver level overclock. thanks!

 

Click on settings x1100 settings and check driver level. Keep in mind i was above 450mhz before it raised. I just tried 3dmark01 at 67mhz and it overheated on test 4... Gonna have to put a heatsink on it.

 

Remember it's integrated into the RS690 chipset, which already has an aluminum plate on it. The other chip that you will see is the southbridge which has nothing on it. Page back a few you will see some pics I posted.

I can't adjust it either.

 

I have one of these, I may have to try putting a new cpu in it at a later date =P

 

I was wondering if anybody has succesfully modded bluetooth into their LT31 (I have the LT3103u).

From another post about another gateway (acer) laptop, there was a special miniport that they used in conjunction with another cable to attach a broadcom bluetooth module to the motherboard. Ref: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=310447

While you were inside of there TechGadget09, was there another half mini pcie? Did you see a BLUE1 8-pin port to attach a bluetooth module?

There is also a small 6 pin port that acers have on the motherboard for bluetooth as well. Ref: http://paulsiu.wordpress.com/2007/0...arket-internal-bluetooth-module-on-acer-3680/

Thank you for your time.

 

F4 is a function key for bluetooth, but I don't see another connector inside the machine. There's space in the compartment where the wifi goes but only one connector.

 

They prepared this computer to have bluetooth, so there must be some connector or mini pcie that does the trick.

Of course, it may be a different motherboard and different model that you have to buy.

Throwing Win7x64 on tonight.

 

Windows 7 x64 runs so well on this machine. It just needs some tweaking but it's pretty freaking awesome.

Anybody know how the cousin (AO751h) gets bluetooth?

 

Hi I am a noob on this forum, but I just bought a lt3103u and have become really interested in tricking out this bad boy. Im also kind of a noob when it comes to computers, so I need some help.

First off, I really want to upgrade the processor on this thing. I bought an AMD Turion X2 TL-52 from ebay. I did my research and the processor should fit onto the mobo.

Secondly, opening up this bad boy is a real pain in the , its really shut tight. I know that another forum member replied and gave a detail on how he/she got the lt3103u opened up, but if someone can give me a step by step, that would be sweet.

Thirdly, I know that the turion will overheat...so I will need to underclock it from 1.6 to something manageable. I heard rmclock is a good little tool that can help underclock the cpu, but does anyone else have any suggestions. Also, I'm a noob when it comes to overclocking...I've never actually done an overclocking job, just read up on it. If someone could give me a step by step, that would also be sweet.

Also, these extra heatsink mods that you guys have been talking about, do you actually make the parts yourself? or do you scavenge around for the parts you need?

MAJOR PROPS to anyone who can help me out, even the slightest. I hope to become a dedicated member on this forum!

 

Hello all,
a few updates:

Gateway's site now has the LT31 series drivers.
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/ddaStep.asp?Tab=All

Also a good site for overclocking cpu i found is:
http://www.gatewaynetbooks.com/index.php/forums

As for the dual core cpu "tk-42" i have seen a few web page's list it for sale but, the company's that i called for it still don't have stock.
http://www.memory4less.net/ametk42hax5dm.html

Oh, I am also going to upgrade my memory to the kingston 4gb this week =)

 

You are probably referring to me. You may want to hold off until you can find a lower wattage CPU, say the TK-42 which is 20 watts. Even that, though, might require a cooling mod. The original L110 is a Athlon chip that puts out 13 watts, and that was fairly warm also.

I currently have a 65nm TK-53 in mine which is a 31 watt CPU (and yes it is hot in the notebook @ 1.7 ghz). I tried 4 different CPUs and this one worked the best, but it's not reliable. Even with drilling holes in the case and drawing outside air in, the notebook will crash on stress test.

As for using another heatsink, that's probably unlikely, simple because there's no room. There's a heatpipe in there and it's directly on the CPU. You defintely want it this way so the heat is drawn out. I've tried a lot of different things and I've concluded that you either need another heatpipe or a larger one on the CPU (and a better way to move the hot air). Also the fan is 40mm and you are working in a space of about .50".

To open up the case you'll need to start off by unsnapping the area behind the battery. Make sure the screws under the keyboard and case are off. The keyboard ribbon is removed by gently pulling up on the connectors.

 

I popped open my gateway and installed an amd turion. When i tried turning on my netbook. the screen would not turn on. I checked and made sure the socket was connected. Any ideas to why the screen wont turn on?

EDIT: TechGadget09 - I just read your post about the turion voltage being too high and have started to disassemble my netbook to put the athlon back in. -- any ideas on the screen situation?

UPDATE: I reassembeled it back to the way it was. The screen is working! YAY! -- I must thank techgadget for the help! -- THANK YOU!

 

I've been following this thread quite a bit, because I just bought one of these and was amazed of the power with how cheap it was. That, and the expansion to a possible 4gb and even a dual core made me happier of my purchase.

I work on Dell's for a living so I know a bit on how to take laptops apart, it's quite scary if you're not used to it. You just have to keep yourself organized and have patience.

I've written up a step by step process on how to dismantle the thing to get at the motherboard. Take a look at it here:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=30&pagenumber=154#post364413583

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

 

You will need to have Windows ready (with the downclock). I use RMclock. When the machine boots with the X2 it will surely overheat. If you are lucky, you may have time to underclock to 1.2 GHZ.

My screen didn't come on too (many times). I resolved it by taking the battery off for a bit. Other times the ram and other times booting with no CPU. It would vary.

 

I managed to get PowerNow! working under Linux.

I ended up disassembling the ACPI DSDT table, copying the contents of a SSDT table from an old Gateway MX6543 into the DSDT, compiling it with Intel's ASL compiler, and performing a kernel DSDT override. But this was not enough...it still wouldn't work with the powernow-k8 module. Enter linux-PHC. I compiled their phc-k8 code, inserted the module with the "direct_transitions=1" parameter, tweaked a few sysfs values, and ended up with this:



Unfortunately, it appears that the voltage is locked on the L110. I hope to find out if this is true when I acquire a Socket S1 Sempron/Turon. Getting PowerNow! working is a step in the right direction, since I could tell cpufreq not to utilize the higher (hotter) frequencies.

 

Cool That's neat.

 

Nice work Turmlos!

I'm gonna have to give this a shot tomorrow.
I can tell you that the voltage is not locked on the L110.
Using RMClock I can bring it down from 9.5v/1.2ghz to 6.75v/800mhz. I think I even hit 6.5v if I remember correctly and it crashed at 6.25v.

 

Thanks.

That's definitely not the voltage of the processor. No modern processor runs that kind of voltage.

I'm fairly certain that it's locked at 0.900v. I'm hoping to try out a TL-52 in the LT3103u tomorrow.

 

I'm sure he means .65v and it's not locked. Mine is stable at .75v.



My TK-53 X2 1.2 ghz at .85v.



That's probably how far you want to run it at 100%, but who does. You can get by with it throttling between 1.2 and 1.5 ghz so that you can save a little battery. With those settings I get about 4 hours surfing.

 

Hey TechGadget ,about your cooling mod that you did could you post picture if you can ?