just now recieved a email from a freind in china about the arima

he now has running the 8800gtx cards in his machine and said they are working fine he said a few minor issues with sli though he has to manually turn it on and off when he wants it not sure what he means yet bu that. i dont have any more details yet but he said it was a pretty simply plug them in and boot. he said he was not expecting that but they booted right up. now i dont know what brand or bios he is using yet just figured id throw it out there and as i learn more about his endevor ill update this. i believe someone here also confirmed the 9750 nividia cards already worked as well..

 

Interesting! keep us updated.

Edit: and I was the one who tested the 7950 GTX on the Whitebook (from an Alienware M9750) and it worked.

 

oh and he did make a cable to connect the two cards but at this time im not sure if this normally would be ness..

 

two cards?

 

umm.. the only issue here is the GTXs are not going to work in SLI as the slots internally aren't compatible. I posted some pics on one of these OCZ threads showing the 2 slots are different. The Master slot is MXM 4 vs MXM 3 for slave..and GTXs are MXM4 as far as I know. :/

 

That's what I'm thinking. But then again, that extra tab on the MXM-IV cards is just for extra power. Anyways, I'd like to hear more of this. Very interesting and would open a lot of doors if what is being suggested turns out to be true. After all, I did get two ATi cards to run crossfire on a supposedly SLi based platform...

 

yeah i do not know any more i can post right now ive sent him a long email back asking a lot of questions to see why he said both cards. he did say he was running 2 of them though. he works for a manufacturing plant so i have no idea if anything has been modded yet

 

e he said he made a custom cable?? now who knows at this point maybe he made a custom cable soldered one cards extra pins to the other on the master slot again i dont know yet he said he did make it work and i was so thinking dual 9800gtx's mmmmmmmmm i was like wow..

 

custom SLI cable? possible.. cause I don't know of a custom MXM3 -> MXM4 cable. That's like a IDE/SATA cable..yeah, for a laptop it can be done but it's a pain in the arse. Now, the MOBO connections would also have to be there for the cable to work if used for MXM purposes.

 

no what i mean is the extra pins. they are for power only from what he told me. now i am not sure if mabe he is taking power for those pins from the first card or not otherwise from what i thought the cards would fit in the same slots except for the extra small connector

 

hmm...interesting. Get him to send some pics

 

this is a "experiment" as he calls it he may or may not be willing to show what he is doing.. ill ask for sure though. i sent him a email this morning asking more questions

 

omg please ask him for pics and details! that's great news!

 

i sent him a email also asking for more info on what exactly he did. how he resells these over there so im not sure how much he is going to share yet since he may want to be the only reseller offering this right now. but i have known him for a long time. ill post whatever he tells me i can.. i did ask for pics though

 

Yes I would be interested in hearing how he managed that since the computer does not have BIOS support for SLI. So I find it hard to believe that its actually working without issues.

I would like to see a 3Dmark06 or 3DMark Vantage or any benchmark showing the 2 cards enabled and running on the machine if at all possible.

 

oh im not sure there are no issues he just said its working.. again this is all hearsay till i get more info. i just thought it interesting to let you guys know there is someone working on it. he also is in china and works for a LARGE company and im sure has almost anything at his disposal like bios and or manufacturing support..im also translating from chinese.. i have emailed him and as i said a few times im awaiting any more info he is willing to share at this point..

 

any updates on your friend's project?

 

no he said he is having issues as you guys mentioned with the second card, he said windows shows the card is there and says the drivers are okay but it will not run in sli mode and his 3dmark scores also show he is not running sli.. he is now waiting for a bios he said from arima (or flex) that will be unlocked so he can modify it to fix the issue. he can swap cards around and one always works fine. he said he is going to try a different sli cable to see if that is the issue. that was the last i heard, ill shoot him a email now and see if there was any progress.

 

did he specify if the nVidia cards are MXM 3 or MXM 4? Because after viewing the diagram of the W840 internals, the GPU fan would be blocking the MXM-IV power tab on the 2nd (daughter) slot.

 

no he did not. ill ask him about that also.

 

I can't wait to see if this works. SLI in the whitebook would be quite fantastic

 

agreed ^^^^ would open up a lot of options. right now he just replied one or the other works. but not both. since he is Chinese i do the best i can communicating with him. im currently learning Chinese so i can communicate better

 

You know, 9800 GTXs in SLI sounds nice, but they are power hogs and anything Nvidia is expensive (like $700-900 to upgrade to dual cards and SLI compared to $279 for ATI). They will generate a lot of heat too, which is one reason Asus only put a 9800 GT in their top-of-the-line $3k notebook.

While mobile GPUs don't use as much power as desktop ones (where you need 600-1000 watt PSUs these days), you get the drift.

If you look at the Alienware 9800 SLI notebook, a $5-6k machine, one review said battery life was 45'. I think that's optimistic.