HD3650 in ifl91

The Acer Hd4670 is a MXM v3.0 type A not MXM III, those are completely different thing. The Poland people probably got their from a MSI EX625, problem is they don't see where they got the card from....

 

Thanks! Very nice tool, it even has native 64 bit support. Definitely worth using.

 

I got the HD3650 into my IFL90 (Sager NP2090) and it works!!!! (I couldn't believe it). Before I seal everything up I have a question regarding cooling...

What do I need to make sure to do in terms of thermal compound for both the GPU and the CPU? Will artic silver 5 suffice or should I order some thermal pads?

 

AS5 should be enough. Just reuse the heatpad from the 8600m.

 

I just tried to blind-flash bios with my new Hd3650 because I had no signal on the monitor... guy told me the card has an acer bios and was in his amilo notebook which he also upgraded...
when i inserted the card I had no signal but windows booted first.... and then I inserted my old card which was deffective, well I thought so (it showed only 4 bit low resolution and windows in 8 windows, also in bios there were 8 windows)... now after many trys to get HD3650 to work, finally my old 8600M GT works without any pixel-error... strange!?!

HD3650 will not boot any more (fan goes on, notebook is turned on, but it doesnt boot) and if I want to go to bios (even if I dont see it) and press F10 to save changes(computer should then restart), but it doesnt do nothing, so thats why I geuess I cant even enter the bios... I want to boot my USB with the bios from *ayle* but no chance...

First time when i inserted it it booted into windows... why not any more?
card defective?

 

Hi Damir.
I ' ve same problem, before i do not update driver.
What is your 3650 driver number? I was succesfull only with Catalyst mobility 9.1 driver.

 

Put the 8600m, plug the flash drive and set the flash drive as first device to boot from and save the settings. Turn off the laptop and put the hd3650 back and turn it on.

 

Thank you for your instructions on modding the heatsink Ayle! I just installed a HD 3650 into my IFT00 (basically a IFL90 in a 14 inch case) to replace the broken 8400M GS.

The replacement card was taken from a HP 8530w and this was the information atiflash.exe provided about the existing BIOS file:

SSID: 30E7
DeviceID: 9591
Product name: Vox M86M A11 DDR3 16Mx32 256M 200e/400m
BIOS version: 011.000.000.000.027062

The card crashed every time a game was loaded, or when I scrolled too quickly in Windows Explorer.

I replaced the BIOS with a file uploaded by user Kayldera to this post.

Here is the information provided by atiflash.exe on the replacement BIOS file:

SSID: 9591
DeviceID: 9591
Product name: Acer_MXM_M86ME_DDR3 M86 GDDR3_16Mx32 128bit 256MB 500e/700m
BIOS version: 011.000.000.000.027096

Since replacing the video card BIOS as above (note the clock speeds, which are considerably higher than those of the stock BIOS), the card performs very well. Using AMD GPU Clock Tool, the peak temp recorded during a short gaming session was 71°C (this seems suspiciously low, although the motherboard was sitting out on a book at the time).

The only problem that I am having is that the DE-15 plug no longer outputs anything (regardless of BIOS version). I can't try the FN+F3 key combo at the moment because my keyboard is broken (accidentally pulled off the black plastic plug from the ribbon cable). It's not such a big deal since I rarely use an external monitor, but it might be something to others may want to consider before upgrading to this card.

I also wanted to add that on this card there is a capacitor next to the "big gray thing" that is slightly higher than the adjacent memory chip, so the raised area on the bottom of the heat sink that corresponds to this memory chip will need to be filed down to prevent the capacitor from lifting this corner of the heat sink.

Cheers!

 

It's been a long time since I've been on the Compal forums, but this has got me interested; the best card that we know of that works with the IFL-90 as a simple swap is the HD3650? Any HD4xxx series cards that match the TDP and the MXM2 requirements of the IFL-90?

EDIT: Reading through the thread a little, I guess HD4xxx mobility cards don't exist yet or are at least in MXM II form factor. The 9600M GT is another promising candidate as it's based on the 65nm G92 with GDDR3 memory, which should help greatly in high resolution gaming. However, if the HD 3650 for $100 on Ebay should set me right for Counter-Strike Source at 60 FPS+ at 1680x1050, I would be content with that too.

 

Well, I tried it four - five times to flash the ati bios and the result is main-bios-crash, or mainboard error, or ...

First I dont get any monitor signal after trying to flash HD3650... My old card doesnt show any signal, my pc starts, the fan turns on 1 time and I even cant shutdown the notebook. I have to take off my battery or plug off, you cant restart.. nothing... I thought the flashing could have destroyed my main-bios... so I bought a usb floppy-disk drive and tried these methods: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=326954, also with phoenix bios recovery software... when I push "Fn+B" the fan goes on and work during the whole time like it should, but USB, Floppy USB, CD-ROM Drive is not working.... My floppy usb drive shold then start and flash the mainboard bios, but it doesnt.. If I try to put in an usb-stick in my pc, no matter in bios recovery modus or bormal start modus: there is a small led on the usb-stick(for example) it goes for a second on and then it turns off...

However I think there is no power-problem (battery works and charges) main power works... I tried also to take off the battery... no result...
USB stick- gets power for a while... there is a small led on the usb-stick(for example) and then gets off... if I put hard drive in... it do something and gets power.... CD-Rom Drive never gets any power!

Mainboard-defect?
any suggestions?
my notebook is worthless now...

 

Lol I am Kayldera

Tell me exactly what you did.

 

So, I'm guessing a 9600M GT 512MB GDDR3 wouldn't work with the IFL-90? Or is it just a matter of time before a BIOS patch exists so that it can work? For me, the HD 3650 doesn't seem to be worth the upgrade as my notebook's screen is 1680x1050.

Any more information on the 9600M GT's compatibility with the IFL-90, Ayle?

 

Not working. Unless you can somehow get the 9600m Gt bios to replace the 8600m bios included in the system bios, I don't see it working. And the hd3650 don't have any problem running games at 1680x1050, remember that all of those are mid-range cards. You cannot go overboard with the graphic options. But it is definitely an big upgrade compared to the time-bomb that is the 8600m. If you really think that the hd3650 is not enough for you, you can always try the hd4650 which is faster than the 9600m from here: http://www.notebook-doctor.com/it-pi-n-VG_M9606_005_VGA_Board_ATI_Radeon_HD_4650-pId-2032764.html
It's expensive but ATI cards are more likely to work than Nvidia's.

 

The HD 3650 might have better potential in less heat generated...the 8600M GT just gets hot.

 

I can vouch for that. The 9600m in my gx620 gets pretty toasty too

 

Okay, so if I were to upgrade my laptop with an HD 3650, what would be required in terms of a BIOS upgrade? I've skimmed the thread and I might've missed it, but detailed instructions would be very helpful for me and others.

These are the HD 3650s I'm looking at, one is a green PCB and a red PCB, I don't know if there are any other differences between the two other than the PCB color.

 

I had a red pcb. You don't need to do anything with the system bios. You can always upgrade to the latest if you want but I don't think it will change anything. The only problem you might have is receiving a card with a weird vbios. That is easily fixed. I can provide you with link to my vbios. Flashing is pretty straightforward. That's pretty much the only problem you might have.

 

So, it's safe to say that red PCB HD3650s from Acer laptops should just be a simple matter of replacing the video card and then installing the appropriate drivers in Windows?

 

In theory. Mine was from an HP but I had to use an acer bios to get it to work properly.

 

Hi Ayle,i got 3650 subvendor HP(103C) clock rate is 680/750 and card cant handle this clock.Can u please provide link to normal clock 600/700 and explain how to flash bios?

 

Sure! Here is the link for the bios with regular clocks: http://depositfiles.com/en/files/eev02jgwv

First you need to create a bootable usb drive with the zfactor's tutorial here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=246530

Once you are done with that. Get atiflash from techpowerup:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1123/ATIFlash_3.60.html

Then extract it at the root the flash drive then copy the bios file in the flash drive. Boot from the flash drive and type:

Code:

atiflash -f -p 0 bios.rom

When the flashing is done just reboot and you should be set.

 

Thanks for help

 

No problem.

 

I've been using the HD 3650 for quite a while now but since last month I encountered strange graphic issues in most games. I ran the card at 660 / 770 about half the time when I was gaming. Temps were between 88 and 92°C under full load.

Out of the sudden I experienced clipping issues when playing GTA IV, also there the problem is not very obvious. But if I fire up other games like Settlers 6 or The Witcher you can see the problem clearly, e.g.:

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/2943/55593482.jpg
or
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/473/16578858t.jpg

In other games, e.g. Age of Empires III, I dont see any problems...

I checked in FurMark and in GPUTool for artifacts but couldn't find any.

I had this problem already last month, I did some things (changing clocks, restarting for a couple of times) and then the issue was gone. But now it's back and that solution does not seem to work.

What could it be? Is the card defective? I already re-installed the drivers a couple of time (once the original acer driver and once the newest catalyst driver), but didnt help.

I also tried (after the problem occured) to modify the VBios to clock at 605/705 @ 1V under high performance and 90/280 @ 0.9V for energy saving setting. However after replacing the VBios the clocks for high performance are still at the stock 594 / 693 and the clocks for energy saving are now at 297 / 693.

So, I'm wondering,

1) Is the card broke or are the clipping issues a sign for some driver issue?

2) How can I adjust the clock settings in the VBios properly?

Hope you can help me... Thank you in advance...

 

It seems my laptop monitor is not powered. I've been reconnecting LVDS cable but still not getting power. Is there anything else that might cause monitor not being powerred?

 

Is your display all black or is the backlight still on?

btw, I was able to find out about my questions. I had graphic errors because the card overheated when I left the laptop on for 48 hours. The VBios can be modded but 100 MHz is the lowest the card can handle, so I have now the values of 100/270 MHz @ 0.9V for battery saving and 605/[email protected] for high performance mode, saves a lot of battery life and makes the card peak out at 82°C while gaming.

 

The backlit was not on. I have brought laptop to local laptop repair shop and was informed the video card was no good. I am getting a replacement for video card.

 

If backlight was not on than the whole screen had no energy and so it might not have been the graphics card that was defective... anyway, i hope they will replace the 8600M GT with a HD 3650 ;-) Also hope it will not be too expensive.

 

hello,
somehow I destroyed my IFL90-notebook....
after many time try to blind-flash my book:

I destroyed my system bios... I m not sure why, because flashing my new ATI 3650 card should not affect system bios...
Trying to recover system bios with usb stick, usb floppy and taking off the battery didn't help!

I sold some notebook parts, display, HDD, wlan... and kept processor.

I got ATI 3650 from ebay and it didn't work in my Compal Fl90... I got black screen and tried a blind-flash... the card was always hot, so this may indicate that it works???????????

could I sell this card, the guy doesn't want the card back?


I bought a new notebook TOSHIBA L550 with an ATI HD4650 and 1024 MB DDR3.... I put my old processor T9500 instead of T6500...
3DMark06 - about 6500 scores;
3DMark05 about 14000 scores
PCmark05 about 7100 scores

Its the same like compal IFL90 with HD4670, but with better display!
I was very angry destroying my old friend IFL90, but sometimes we have to say good bye... gggghhh***

 

The card HD3650 has the number of it which is saying like I read in the internet that it is a model of HD3650 with 256MB GDR3... this card is tested to work in compal fl90, why not in mine?

 

I'm jealous. That's much more than my 9600m gt . Sorry to hear that your laptop went up in flames.If you want to resell it, supposing it's still working you can always try to resell it on ebay.

 

Hey guys thought I would share my upgrade experience with you all. You guys and this forum are pretty much the only source for anything in depth on the Compal's that I have ever found. Anyway, my IFL90 started having issues lately since I got back back into a little bit of gaming (Aion). I was getting bad video lockups lasting a minute sometimes but it would usually recover. At this point I decided that even though my laptop is a couple years old now its still a great machine overall and I may as well try the GPU upgrade. I got my ATI card from the OOS ebay store and the transaction went very smoothly.

My "upgrade" went great, took my time and referenced the tear down manual. My temps on the GPU are around 60C at idle which seems a little high BUT that is in a room that is an ambient 80F (I raise reptiles) so maybe that temp isn't bad. I'm half wondering if I put enough arctic silver 5 on the gpu, but I know to much can also be a bad thing so I'll let it settle a few weeks and also check temps while in another room. I did not have to flash the GPU bios and the clock speeds are normal.

In my pictures you can kinda see my cooling solution. I snagged a system board fan from one of our parted out laptops at work and wired it to be powered via USB and positioned it directly over the GPU vents on the bottom of the laptop. This not only cools the GPU dramatically but also takes the heat away from the esata express card I use that gets pretty warm.


Anyway on to the pics! http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/default.aspx?aid=87

 

60°C idle seems alright from my point of view... my HD 3650 idles around 57 - 61°C it seemed high to me as well, since my 8600M GT idled around 53 - 55°C, however the HD 3650 stays at 80 - 83°C under heavy load (85°C was max so far but that only happens if I run games at 1680x1050). If your not into overclocking you really should undervolt both your CPU and the HD 3650, it helps a lot so that extra cooling should not be neccessary.

 

Thanks for the temp reference Daniel, I'm sure it will idle much cooler when its not in this hot room. I forgot to mention in my post that I am undervolting my CPU, I have always gotten great results with that and am lower the voltage but a good amount. I have read about changing voltages for GPU's also is that possible with these cards? I will probably run the ati GPU as is for now but since I have the extra cooling "mod" in place I may play with overclocking it some.

 

DH can you point me in the direction of info on undervolting the HD3650? I am interested in trying it or at least learning about it. The current game I'm playing is Aion a brand new MMO and it uses the Crysis engine so its pretty intensive. Last night I played for a little, nothing to intense and then was just standing in a low population area when my video started to freak out like my 8600 had done. The temps in CPUID hardware meter said 107C! I wasn't running my GPU fan at the time as I wanted to see if it was necessary running stock clock speeds. After that I ran the fan the rest of the night and did not have a single issue with the video and I was doing more intensive things in game so my fan mod is greatly helping. Again I know being in a warm room doesn't help any. I may consider undervolting the GPU but I think my fan is enough...this game just commands good hardware.

I kinda want to try overclocking but it will have to be software based so I can OC only when not in my usual "hot room".

 

Dump your bios with gpu-z. Edit the voltage in radeon bios editor, and flash it back with atiflash. It is pretty straightforward.

 

Yeah, do exactly as Ayle says. It's very easy and as long as you don't mess around with the boot settings you practically can't mess up your card. You can change the Voltage from 1.1V to 1.0V for the 700/600 stock high clock. I don't know if you are able to oc then though. I tried to oc my card but I think the memory on my card is really bad as I got texture erros running 770/660 @ 1.1V with my card. I don't know what the other people including Ayle did with the card while running it oc but I really push this laptop a lot. Sometimes I play games really demanding games like GTA IV for 5 hours. That error only occured after several errors but I would not go away until the card cooled out again... and it was not just about temperature as the GPU peaked out at 93°C and stayed between 85 - 87°C most of the time. So personally, I would not advice you to oc that card but like I said, maybe it's just my memory that's bad. You could of course try just to oc the chip and not the memory... could help.

In any case: 107°C is too much. When I first installed the card it went up to 105°C. The heat sink didn't fit perfectly and I put not enough MX-2 on it. And don't forget to but one heat pad (a transparent one just like the one which was also on the 8600M GT) around the GPU chip - it really helped alot.

But one think is really killing this card (well not just this card, was the same with the 8600M GT): high resolution. I like to play Guild Wars, it's not very hardware demanding, but I play it at 1680x1050. My card goes up to 86°C. It stays at 83°C while playing GTA IV. May be no big difference, but while playing GTA IV or other newer games (like Risen) the card stays at 83°C and the fan is not even at maximum! But in GW it's at it max. So maybe your just playing Aion at a resolution higher than 1280x800. These medium ranged cards are not really made for high resolution, especially the HD 3650 as it only has 256 MB VRAM.

Anyway: To cut a long story short. I would recommend you to undervolt the GPU and just leave it at stock clocks, I don't think oc will make much of a difference as you will not be able to raise the clocks much higher with 1.0V.

 

To be honest I probably am really pushing this card...both cards. I run Aion at the max resolution. I can only do 1440x900 natively which is probably good as I would push it. The game doesn't get the best frames but looks decent...I could break down and lower the res and give the card a break but with that external fan the area around the GPU actually gets cool...it moves some air!

I'll look into the apps you suggested Ayle thanks. Does that small of a change make that much of a difference? I think if I just run the fan I'll be fine that way when I am not in that specific room or at a LAN party I can software OC the card...if I need to. I don't know about you guys but Windows7 really seemed to wake up my IFL90.

 

I became curious myself and found out that I can oc my HD 3650 core to 663 MHz @ 1.0V. Higher is not possible at that Voltage. I didnt touch the memory cuz of the problems discribed above. It is a 10% increase and at 1.0V the card still runs cooler than with clock speeds @ 1.1V. So it should work for you as well.

 

Thanks for sharing your results, I am inclined to to try it.

 

Changing the bios could not have been easier! I changed the voltage to 1.0 as suggested. The temp still gets up to or very close to 100 C if I don't run my cooling fan. I have a LAN party tomorrow so I will be making this machine work tomorrow with several hours of gaming and will get a better idea of max temps in a more normal ambient temp room. I used AS5 on both the cpu and gpu but I also have the ceramique stuff to. I may tear down again at some point and try using it on the gpu.

 

After my nvidia card died, I ordered the HD3650 from China off ebay after reading this thread. Under $100USD incl. shipping. The first time I put it in, the laptop didn't post. I thought I was out of luck, but then after giving it a second try (reseating card, more careful re-assembly), it now works!

Thanks for all the info on replacing the faulty 8600!

Oh, and this was the second time the video card died. The first time happened 3 days after I bought the laptop. I sent it back to Sager for warranty. This time it was out of warranty, but I'm glad I was able to fix it myself.

 

Have you dremeled your heatsink? It might not be in full contact with the gpu.

 

Think so too. The first time I put the HD 3650 in I only dremeled it a bit, so the temps reached 105°C. After I dremeled it some more and applying more heat pads especially around the chip itself the temps drop by 20°.

 

I did not dremel, but I did see posts about it before I did my install. When I put the heatsink on it was not touching the gray Box where yours and some others did.

 

I'm back to post some updates about my toying around. I've been quite happy with the HD3650. I started messing with the clocks tonight using GPUTool. I'm not sure how much faith to put into that software. I let it detect the max for clock and mem and then bumped it down and was testing playing Aion with the OC settings. It kept shutting down the machine to dead off I think around 670 core. After that I put the voltage back up to the stock setting and went down to 660...ran a bit longer then another dead off. 650 ran great for nearly an hour of activity in game then just before I was going to quit...no real activity or movement going on I got another dead off. I may play with it some more to see if I can get a little bit of an OC out of it and keep it stable. With OC'n tonight I was able to turn on anti-aliasing in game and run without a lot of jerkyness i get at stock clocks w/ lower voltage.

Here is a strange thing...in all of my messing with higher clocks tonight my GPU temps are reporting much lower under game load! As well as my laptop "feels" only warm rather than hot, not to mention the air coming out of my GPU fan mod is also cooler to the feel. -I don't get that!

 

So the laptop crashed at 660/770?

I never used the detect max clocks option. However, I played around with the clocks a little bit and my card runs stable with 688/801 @ 1.0V, a few MHz more on core or mem and I get artifacts. Still thats a pretty good result temps stay between 85 and 91°C. It only bothers me that I have to use GPUTool to get those clocks. When I flash the vios with 688/801 for high performance the card is stuck at 290/650 or something like that under windows. Seems like you can choose clock rates with GPUTool that will not work when flashed on the bios directly. I tried to underclock it to 90/250 for low energy mode, which is possible with GPUTool but when flashing the bios, 100/270 is as low as I can go.

I think the bios allows only a certain range of clock rates ... has anybody an idea how to change that?

 

When letting gputool "find max" the memory clock goes on for what seems like forever. I watched it run for a while then walked away and came back and it was saying that it had no errors over the point 900! I've seen most say 800 here on the forum so I didn't try and game any higher than that for mem. But yes I got crashes at 670 for core after a period of time. I lowered in increments of 10 and the running time under game load was better each time. As I mentioned 650 for core seemed to be good until just before I was about to exit the game for the night it crashed on me anyway. Its not from heat so maybe its one of the other factors you mentioned. I thought I would try flashing the clock at 650 but after reading your message about how you had issues forcing the clock in bios I'm not sure if I should try that or not.

I'll probably try using GPUTool at 650 core again tonight while gaming and see how it handles.

 

The overclocking ability of a card depends on various factors and is different from card to card... I'm pretty impressed that I can go up to 688/801 @ 1.0V, which means that the card could go even higher with stock voltage. However, I would need some better cooling solution to do that. The memory should be able to go quite high, as GDDR3 is made for high clock rates, some cards out there run GDDR3 @ 950MHz although with 1.2V I guess. However, the memory is not connected to the copper part of the heat pipe in the IFL90, so it will most likely get way to hot with those clocks and just produce errors.

Btw, what kind of crash do you get? The system freezes? When something is wrong with the GPU I usually get a windows error stating that the vga driver had to be reloaded or a blue screen if I really clocked the card too high. GPUTool has an inbuild benchmark to check for artifacts. I somehow cannot believe that your card crashes at those clocks... like Ayle said, the HD 3650 overclocks quite well.

 

The crash is I was getting was while playing Aion which is a brand new game and pretty graphic intensive. My laptop would just completely shut off. No blue screen or driver reloads as you said you have seen (I have seen these in the past).

I played last night for a good 2-3hrs using gputool at the 650 core clock and memory at 800 with absolutely no crashing. I have to say again that it appears the GPU is actually running cooler now that I am back at the stock voltage and overclocking. I know it shouldn't work that way but hardware monitor is reporting max temps of around 80 +/- whereas before it was 90 +/- pushing 100! Maybe my thermal paste has fully "set up" or something as it does say it takes so many hours for it to do so. This is also using my attached GPU fan mod.

I may try setting the clocks in bios this weekend and see what happens. I noticed in the ati flash tool I can select 1.2 for voltage. Is anyone pushing MORE voltage to get higher clocks? I realize the dangers in this but this is what a lot of desktop guys do to push the cards higher. I also still have my nvidia gpu for this laptop as a backup until I can sell it.