HD3650 in ifl91

TriTurbo overclocked the card using 1.2V. But I think you don't need such high voltage. Like I said, my card is stable with 688/801 @ 1.0V, imagine how far I could go with 1.2V, but the cooling system could not take it. +0.1V basically mean +10°C and that is without overclocking. I ran the card with 700/800 @ 1.2V for a short time... I hit 105°C after 20 mins... I don't like temps over 100°C ;-)... altough I think that I could lower the temps to 90 - 95°C with a cooling pad... but I still need to buy a proper one...

 

I've never been convinced into buying a laptop cooler, I did buy a stand at my last job but its purpose wasn't for cooling. When I think of cooling a laptop I want specific cooling not a generic deal that just blows air at the bottom of my laptop. I have put together a couple various coolers of sorts and always use USB to power any fans. I think my current setup is the best so far and no real extra bulk:

http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/default.aspx?moid=1522

The feet are just stick on feet that you might use under small furniture so as to not scratch the floor. The fan is a slim fan that came out of another laptop that was torn down for parts at work. The size was nearly perfect to situate it right over the GPU vent. I just wired it with USB and plug it in to turn it on. Makes a world of difference!

More notes on my GPU Temps...I'm not going crazy! Even the idle temps are lower now. The thermal paste I used was Arctic Ceramique (i have silver 5 also but tried the ceramique). It does say that there may be a break in period where the temps could lower more...and they have!

 

Unless I'm changing the wrong values in radeon bios editor I'm running into similar issues with flashing higher clocks. I tried flashing my clocks but I don't think they are being applied. I am using AMD gpu clock tool to look at my clocks under load and they don't budge over the stock clock unless I use GPUTool.

 

I went through your photos and I have a question: Did you install the heat shield / pipe onto the gpu right after taking the last picture? I notice that the small grey things next to the gpu chip are not covered. There was a thin thermal foil covering those things on the 8600M GT. First I forgot to install that, too. After I made a foil out of very thin cooling pads I bought, the temperature dropped by 10°C. Could be my imagination, cause I also applied more Arctic Cooling MX-2 the second time, but I thing that thin layer is quite important. Maybe that's the solution to your high temperatures, altough you say you have them under control now...

Btw, I really like your custom cooling solution. But I would need something that is more flexible, as I move this laptop constantly, altough I only play at one place.

 

I think I covered everything that makes contact with the heatsink. The ati gpu came with new thermal pads so I used those. Is that what you mean by foil? I just checked the 8600 and nothing else was left over on that.

The fan isn't to much of a bother but I don't move the laptop around as much as it sounds like you do.

Thanks for keeping in touch and replying!

 

I mean this babies:


As far as I understand those could be the shader units (HD 3650 has 48, maybe they come in pairs...). As they do a lot of work especially in graphic intensive games with high shader model, they should get pretty hot. There was a thin transparent foil on the shader units of the 8600M. Only about 2mm thick. It did not connect to the heat shield. I think it's the same material which is under the vga board, protecting the rest of the board from the heat of the mxm module. I bought some thin transparent cooling pads from ebay and cut the a whole in the middle so that they cover all shader units and the chip itself can still be cooled by MX-2. I dunno if you could use MX-2 or MX-3 on the shader units itself, in any case abstain from applying AS5 or any conductive substance to them as that will most likely break them. Come to think of it... could be that the foil only served that exact purpose: Stopping the themal paste that is applied to the gpu chip from connecting to the shader units or the rest of the chip...

 

I've had ifl90 for almost 3 years and didn't know that there was a forum or compal notebooks.

Btw, Today i've been checking all these posts related to upgrading cpu, ram, gpu, and something like that.
I found this today http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-HD3650-HD-3...emQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item2303d333ff
Don't know if it'll work on the ifl, btw, It has 1GB instead of the classic 512mb.
Regards.

 

Welcome to this forum.

Umm, I only know of two versions of the HD 3650. A version with GDDR3 and 256MB memory and a verison with 512MB of DDR2 memory. Something is wrong with the card you found.

That sound very odd to me. You can see in the picture of my previous post that the card has only 8 "memory slots". 4 on top of the side and again 4 on the down side. I think the HD 3650 supports only memory units of 64MB, as stated by the seller. 8 x 64MB is 512 and not 1024MB. The 64MB x 16 makes no sense as their is only space for 8 memory units.

In any case that card has DDR2 memory which is considerable slower than GDDR3. If you replace it, then choose a HD3650 with GDDR3 whichs memory is clocked at 700MHz, otherwise you will notice almost no difference to the 8600M GT as the HD3650 with DDR2 the memory is only clocked at 500MHz. Right now I can't find any version on ebay which has the faster GDDR3.

Anyway, if your looking for a GPU upgrade, you could just go for a HD 4650. Even though they are only available with DDR2, you stille would notice a big difference to the 8600M GT because the HD 4650 has much more shader units than the 8600M GT or the HD 3650. You can find the HD 4650 here:

http://www.acer-ersatzteile.de/product_info.php?products_id=507458940
http://www.acer-ersatzteile.de/product_info.php?products_id=140957458940
http://www.acer-ersatzteile.de/product_info.php?products_id=507443626

We don't really know about the difference in price. I think it's the same card. You would have to tell them that you have an Acer notebook. I have made some bad experience with their support, but maybe I was just unlucky.

It could also be that the cooling system of the IFL90 is not strong enough for the HD 4650, but I think it will be possible. I'm planning on buying a HD 4650 with DDR3 or a HD 4670 for my IFL90 once I can find one, which proves to be quite difficult. If I succeed I will not need my HD 3650 anymore and could sell it to you. Maybe someone else could also offer you his card.

 

Those are not shader units, those are just part of the overall GPU chip connectors. The shader's are exclusively in the die, the shinny thing in the middle . As for the foil, that is just an EMI (Electromagnetic interface) shielding foil, which is not needed as I have recently learned, but some manufacturer's like to put it for extra protection.

 

Thanks for the information, it would have been very weird indeed if those were the shader units, as they would get hot as hell like that Good to know that we don't need that foil. Then I don't need to bother about that if I exchange the card the next time.

 

Its cool to see more coming here who have the IFL90 and trying to squeeze performance out of it. As much as I would like to upgrade I'll most likely be keeping mine for at least another year.

Interesting info on the plastic/foil shroud around the GPU chip, now that understand what DH was talking about I can say that I did not move the one on the 8600 to 3650.

 

DH what driver are you using? I am reading in some older threads that drivers after 8.10 caused issues with overclocking. I am using the latest cat's via mobility modder and wonder if that is what is causing some of my quirks.

 

I installed the new 9.9 Drivers from ATI. Although my device manager says that driver version is 8.650.0.0 and DXDiag says driver version is 8.14.0010.697. In any case my driver version is above 8.10. Before using GPUTool I tried some other oc program, which did not work due to that driver issue, but with GPUTool, everything is fine.

 

I updated to 9.11 last night after messing up my 9.10 driver pretty good playing ati tray tools. I ran my game and had the gpu at 675 and 800 using gpu tool...no crashes but I did not play very long. I'm trying to find a happy medium between my game settings and clock speeds. I get pretty consistent shutdowns if I try to run the core at 680.

I really want to use anti aliasing in game but that puts a huge load on the gpu and causes stutters in game when in cities. I may try bumping the voltage and see what the temps do.

Its weird I can't set clocks with amd gpu tool, but I can with the regular GPU Tool. GPU Tool won't reflect realtime clocks but the amd program will. So I have to use the combination to verify clock speeds.

 

I never use AA, it just takes away too much performance for little increase in looks as most games bring along similar effects.

I'm sure GPUTool shows the right clock rates... tried multiplying the clocks shown next to "current clocks:" times two?

 

When you game generally what resolution to do you run max? My display does a max of 1440x900, I know there are others that do better.

I really wish there was a way to control the primary fan. I am undervolting with CPU Genie and my CPU temps are so low that my fan rarely comes on or at very low RPM. The temps are awesome at the CPU, but if I could control that fan and turn it up having two exhausts for heat could only improve overclocking.

 

I game at 1280x800 and use 1680x1050 under windows. The card is not strong enough to run new games at high details and better resolution. I prefer higher details over resolution. In most games you dont really see the pixels anymore, even without AA.

I have exactly the same problem with my fan. I think, the fan speed is only controlled by the CPU temp. Now that I undervolted the CPU and it never goes over 70°C, the fan never runs at maximum. Actually I really like that because the laptop is quite silent now (my external harddrive is actually louder!). However, like you said, it would help keeping the GPU cool if we could adjust the fan speed. Anyway, I don't think thats possible, because one would have to mod the bios which doesnt work...

 

Does the 4650 have temperature sensors? I know some ATI cards don't have temp. sensors.

 

The fan will go to max when the GPU hits 90C. Or 95C, I'm not sure anymore.

 

I don't think the GPU triggers the fan by itself. In my recent overclocking tests I have 90c even 100c and the main fan does not turn on because my CPU runs very cool from undervolting.

In other news I think I have found a happy medium for settings in Aion that allow me to run 2x AA with ok FPS. I lowered most settings to medium and ran the gpu at 680/850 last night with no crashes. I can't bring myself to drop the res to 1280x800 it just makes the game to blurry/soft. I want to try and reach the 700. Core mark but I'm not sure that will happen. I am almost confident enough to set the core to 675 via bios flash.

Ayle I think said he is at 700. My temps are low to mid 80's at 675-680 and that is with a fan pulling hot air directly off the gpu. I'm trying to hold off tearing it down again to see if a little more thermal compound will help.

 

If you want to test stability, the best tool to use is CCTP GPU test. That's how you will find your best stable clocks. But be careful, CCTP will heat up your video card like no other video test out there.

 

I over volted last night to 1.2 and ran GPUTool to get an idea of max range for the core. Well it went as far as 740 or 50ish before the screen went blank I had to reboot! Never showed any errors/artifacts though. I set the clocks 700/850 and fired up Aion, with a nice noticeable difference. I lowered the mem speed to 800 to try and get the temps down and it only helped slightly plus I know the memory isn't cooled all that well. My temps temps are 100+ but averaging right around 100c. I probably played for closed to an hour if not more with no ill affect...tabbing out of game to check temps periodically and letting the card cool down. I'm running with the laptop keyboard removed but I don't know if its helping for sure or not. There is a chip right above the GPU, in the lower left area right under the keyboard that is taking alot of heat that I want to try and find a way to cool. I'm not sure what the chip is I need to take a closer look at the writing on it but its fairly large maybe the northbridge or southbridge? I'm thinking some sort of passive heatsink if I can find one that will fit on that chip. Its recessed a little and does not make contact with the keyboard. I know anything big will basically take away the mobility of the laptop but for home use I may try and go with it.

I will try running normal voltage and 700 core clock but before the laptop would shut down at 680 when under load. I'm assuming it wasn't getting enough power since the whole machine just went off.

 

Why do you make more holes in the case just over the card and stick a desktop fan powered by one of the usb port there?

 

Hey Ayle!

Not sure if you are joking or not LOL. I am trying not to make holes in the laptop or do anything permanent to it physically. The current GPU fan I have is attached by double sided tape so it can be removed. Even though I do not carry the machine around daily I don't plan to take away from its portability. The current fan is slim enough to not add any extra bulk and does not have to be removed to fit in my backpack or whatever I use to transport it in. I have thought about some case modding but I wouldn't do this until I got my hands on a spare set of parts...again I'm trying to keep it somewhat simple in case others stumble upon this topic as I did and can take ideas from it.

I do have some results from last night. My card simply will not do more than 680 on stock voltage. Anything higher than that and it is a guaranteed shutdown in little time while gaming. I am going to be happy at 680 though and will run it at that. I did find an old heat sink last night in my parts bin. I used double sided tape (no not proper thermal tape) and it made a big difference when I placed it on that chip under the keyboard I mentioned in my last post. The sink is aluminum off an older motherboard chipset and it really pulled the heat off that chip under the keyboard. I was still running close to 100 with stock voltage and 680 core but after the heatsink the GPU reading was down to low 80's! I know some laptops do or used to use the back of the keyboard to help dissipate heat so I have an idea in mind. I want to either use a thermal pad (real thermal pad not tape) or a shim and place it over this chip and put the keyboard back on. My hope is that it would maintain the mostly stock look/functionality but provide this chip with a medium to dissipate heat to (the back of the keyboard). Since while gaming I rarely use the laptop keyboard it won't affect my hands if it gets warmer than usual. I just need to find some materials to try out now.

 

No activity here in a few days but I have some updates on my rig. I think my laptop has a mind of its own! I've been running my 3650 core at 700 and mem at 850 for a few days and it runs perfectly stable now. Not one shutdown and temps are low to mid 80's sometimes even high 70's when gameing. This with 2x AA enabled in the game! I wasn't going to leave the heatsink on I mentioned above but it is making a huge difference in the temps. When using GPUTool to "find max" it had gone beyond 700 for core with no errors so I may let it run and see what the new max is and try that for gaming.

 

Cooling that chip sounds like a nice idea. I forgot to clean the fan for two month. I fixed that yesterday and also cut out the crossbars of the ventilation hole directly under the fan, as it does not really influence mobility. I played GTA IV and Settlers 6 for 2 hours (1 hour each) and the gpu only peaked at 83°C and that is without any additional cooling pad or anything. I still run it at 688/850 @ 1.0V. However, know I'm curious how far I could go with the stock clock... 800/900? ... maybe I should find it out.

 

The 8600GT in my IFL90 just died and I would like to replace it. Will the following cards work?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Mobility-Ra...CC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3efbaf7ccc&afsrc=1

or

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Mobility-Ra...emQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3a548ca93a

I know it's DDR2 and not DDR3 but I'm not really looking for a performance upgrade I just want a working computer again (without paying too much).

I've read through most of this thread but want to confirm a few things.
1) Will I need to flash the bios on the new card? And if so how do I do this?
2) Do I need anything other than a screwdriver (for disassembly), a tube of thermal compound (for reapplying to CPU, GPU, etc when replacing heatsinks), and possibly a Dremel/file (for shaving some of the heatsink off if it doesn't fit correctly)?
3) Anything else I should know about taking it apart, replacing the card, remounting the heatsinks, etc? I've only ever done this type of thing on desktops.

 

Hi there.
My laptop's 8600M GT has probably dead.
As I told here. ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=449116)
The screen doesn't show anything. I mean, not even lights up. So I thought it would be a GPU problem since I connect it to an external screen (nor TV or a 19" Acer screen).
So I thought that trying to a HD3650 256Mb DDRIII (almost 110€ would solve the problem or a HD3650 1Gb DDRII (not confirmed if it works by anyone on this forum). Basically , before doing anything I want to be sure of what I'm going to buy.
Therefore, I should be sure that it's the GPU which is not working.

1. [could be motherboard's problem?]
2. (Can the 256mb DDRIII have the same or almost the same perfomance or better than the 1Gb DDRII one?)
3. And don't know how to know if the GPU is dead.
4. If I buy any of those cards, i will have to change the thermal sticker, but how to apply the thermal compund? (I'm still a student, and this was my first time disassembling my laptop. There are still some screws missing out there ]
5. Last question, vbios and a bios upgrade on my laptop.
I've taken my time and read all the 33 pages and there are still some process that I don't really understand.

Sorry if I'm bothering you a lot. I can't bear a day without my laptop.

 

1. Windows boot so motherboard problem is unlikely.
2. The hd3650 is a 128 bit bit card, it cannot take advantage of anything more than 512mb, so you you will be fine with only 256mb. DDR2 is also slower than ddr3.
3. If windows boot but you have no picture at all then it is your gpu that is defective.
4. You just put a grain of rice sized drop of thermal paste and spread in on the silver area of the gpu. And you put the thermal sheet/sticker on the memory chips and you are done.
5. Bios update is not necessary. Vbios shouldn't be necessary either.

 

Thank you very much again.
I think I will be going for the 256GDDR3 version. It seems to be better that the GDRR2 huh?

 

Hi everyone from Turkey,

I had VGA card problems "5 times on 2 and a half year" with my Compal FL90. These were:
- Have no display without any light on the background
- Have no display with some grey light on the background
- Have 9 or 6 parts of screen at windows start
- Have some interesting images at the games

My techical service changed my Nvidia GPU chipset every time, they never changed my VGA card completeley; but i am fed up with these problems. So for the last way, I bought a 512 MB DDR2 ATI HD 3650 from this seller:

http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...emQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3a548ca93a

He posted me the card same day, and i took it 10 days, so very fast shipping and a good working card. So you can see my experience with this card below:

1) I had no need to dremel heatsink, because it covered the card very well. Windows boot was normal and also i have no need to update bios or vbios.

2) The card is working good, i think. On windows and internet applications, it works at 51-55 C. On the games (i only tried at PES 2010 for 3 hours) it works at 72-78 C. I think this is cooler from Nvidia, because at the pes 2010 it was working at 80 - 84 C.

3) You can see my 3D Mark 06 points with nvidia and ati below. My system is Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 Ghz, 4 GB DDR2-800 Mhz Kingston ram and 120 GB 7200 rpm Seagate HDD.

With the Nvidia, I have:

3763 3D Marks:
S.M 2.0 1521
HDR S.M. 3.0 1421
CPU 1732 points.


And with the ATI, I have:

3766 3D Marks:
S.M 2.0 1275
HDR S.M. 3.0 1677
CPU 1705 points.

I dont know what is the S.M. 2.0 points, but ATI have too low points from nvidia at this stage. Another interesting thing is, lower CPU points with ATI. But, it was the same CPU, c'mon

4) I had some little artifacts on PES 2010 with ATI, but it could be very acceptable. I don't know but may be it will be better when i reinstall Windows and drivers on a clean HDD.

I also think that having 70 $ for DDR2 ATI 3650 is better than 140 $ for DDR3, because there will be a smaller increase at the performance and this cost is too much for it.
May be 4650 can be better. But it needs much power and i don't know if it have warming problem on Compal FL90 barebone.

 

The cpu score difference is not important enough to be relevant as just having tasks running in the background can change it.

 

Ok. What about the lower S.M 2.0 points? What does this point means?

 

Hi, I just bought HD3650 to my Compal IFL 90 but it isn't start (black screen).
Maybe the video card is the reason because the seller didin't gave me any guarantie that the HD3650 is working.
Could you tell me if when the video card is plugged I have to flash the bios and give me same advise. Thanks.

 

It should work just by putting the card in. You sure everything is connected correctly? Also try taking 1 (or both) RAM sticks out and back again, that worked for me when the laptop didnt want to start up one time.

 

Good one, but the video card is in and I tried booting with different RAM combinations. The common problem is that I haven't got any guarantie that the HD3650 is working.
Maybe the video card has a vbios from Acer, but I have no chance to check it.

 

My HD3650 is running with a VBios from Acer so that should not be the problem :-/ The laptop should boot even if the HD3650 is not working since it also boots with a broken 8600M GT.

 

I've just bought new 8600m GT for my IFL90 and it doesn't work. Blank screen on boot, notebook turns off after ~30 seconds. The card is this one: z. Anybody knows what to do ? Is it only vbios incomptatibility ? I've got standalone Flash/Eeprom programmer, but what should I "upload" to the chip ? I've even tried to remove the vbios chip from the card to see what if it works that way (vbios embedded in system bios) but it has the same effect. From what I see I should flash vbios in this card with vbios from Compal but where can I find it ?

Please help me out if it's possible.

Best regards from Poland.

 

I think your best chance is to try give it back and buying a HD 3650 or HD4650 instead OR of course the original Compal 8600M GT, but that would be a very bad choice and hard to find.

Like Ayle stated in another thread, the problem here is that the system bios detects that there is a NVidia card in the MXM slot and tries to run it with the integrated vbios which only works with the original Compal 8600M GT.

The best and I think only solution would be to delete this detection sequence from the systems bios so that the bios will not use the integrated vbios but the vbios on the card. This is the case with ATI cards as the bios does not detect a Nivida card. But the bios cannot be edited, at least here is nor working editor out there.

Of course, you could try to mod the vbios on the 8600M GT in such a way that it has all the values of a Nvidia Vbios it needs in order to work but presents itself to the bios as an ATI vbios... however, I have no clue how you could do that without preventing the vbios from working.

 

Ok, well... now I got it clear... I've ordered 3650 with ACER vbios, from what I see it should work for 100%. Even though, I will give this Nvidia 8600M GT last try with Acer vbios as somebody told me to do. Thanks for your advise.
Best regards.

 

Good luck.

 

Ive got an IFL90 and suddenly no more video on LCD / external. But i could still use the laptop through remote desktop (virtual graphic card driver). When i looked at hardware devices there werent any graphics cards (should be a GF 8600gt).

So i came to the conclusion the GPU was dead and orderd a HD3650. And today i had the time to install it. It was a perfect fit but unfortunatly no image on the lcd / external. And no HD3650 at hardware devices with remote desktop.

So i flashed the bios with version 1.18 but that enabled AHCI and now windows doesnt boot, so no more remote desktop

So what is the best thing to do from here?
- Flash custom bios with AHCI disabled by default so remote desktop works again and then try to get the card working?
- Flash vBios so card starts working?
- Fuzz around in bios to get AHCI disabled (blind, no screen)
- Something else?

 

Disable AHCI. All versions of the bios allow that. Which card did you buy? Do you have a link?

 

Yeah this is the one i bought.

Disabling AHCI is easier said then done, since i cannot see what im doing in the bios (or that im even in the bios).
Ive found the screens in this pdf, so i kinda know what menu i have to find.
F2 for bios and 1x left, 1x down, change, F10 save, enter, wait for reboot.
Will give it a couple tries.

When i manage to disable AHCI and get remote desktop working should i flash the ati bios?

 

Try dumping the vbios first before flashing it. So that we can see if there is anything screwy going on with it.

 

So far no luck in trying to get AHCI disabled in the bios with noting on the lcd to see.
It boots up and reboots in a loop. And when i press Enter i see the hdd led flashing and then a reboot so its doing something..

Im not sure if i able to get in the bios. When i press the power button and keep repeaditly pressing F2 it looks like its doing exactly the same as a "normal" reboot. The same thing with pressing Enter aswell, flashing and reboot.

Maybe i can disable AHCI with this tool?
Although i dont know if i can boot from cd/usb since i cant see anything.

 

Ive got remote desktop back up
(removed the HDD, made a bootable cd and put the AHCI disable tool on it, disabled AHCI and put the HDD back)

Also verified bios 1.18 is running with Sisoft sandra. Will try to backup the ATI video bios now.

 

Hi there.
Just put my ATI in my laptop and everything seems to run.
I'm going to install ATI drivers, I will update later.

THANKS TO ANYBODY WHO HAS HELPED ME...
I missed you soooo much my IFL90

 

Im trying to dump my video bios with atiflash but it doesnt create a backup.rom

I tried: atiflash -s -log 0 backup.rom

It does create a ATIFLASH.log but its empty and no backup.rom, how long does the dumping take?

 

Ok.
So here I am writing from my NB.
It has the new 3650 DDRII built in (I can get DDR3 one for you from 60€ without shipping costs (and from Spain there are expensive)).
It went all ok, no problems at booting, neither at drivers, having Catalyst 9.9.
I can't feel much gap between my old 8600, but it's sure that this is better.
Well, I've 1 question regarding it.
1. YES, IT MAY SOUND NOOB. How to OC it although I don't think I'm going to OC it atm. (i'm so pathethic, having disassembled the entire nb and I don't know how to OC IT) So, don't know if ATI Tool is recommended.
and an unexpected question, I STILL have my 1.07 bios version, should I upgrade to 1.16 or 1.18?
Thanks again.