Advice on upgrading Clevo M570RU...

So my dad got a new Sager and decided to pass on his older model clevo. The video card is outdated and I am thinking on upgrading. What are my options? I don't honestly know too terribly much about computer upgrading. I am trying to learn as much as I can though. Someone suggested I change to the 285M GTX. Is there a proper bios for that though? These are the current specs on the laptop:

Clevo m570ru
Intel Core Duo CPU T7700@ 2.4GHZ
Original Clock 2400 MHZ
Original System Clock 200
2X Apacer Technology 2.048 DDR2 RAM Speed at 333 MHZ
Geforce 8700M GT

Thank you for any and all help!

 

For your model: best CPU I think it's the X9000, best video card is the 280M GTX and you should also add 4 GB of RAM. If you make all these upgrades you may end up paying as much as 1000 USD but you will get a pretty good machine.

 

If it takes the GTX 280M, then I suppose that this 280M is a really great deal.

 

That is a good deal.

 

It's not a good deal.

Thats a good deal. same one listed on ebay, but $100.00 cheaper.

 

But they didn't mention if their card is an HE connector or not. Because if it's not, you will waste your M570RU capability (which comes with an HE motherboard), you will not get the maximum power that your motherboard could get from a FX3700M.

EDIT : One more thing, open your laptop and see what space available for the video card. if you have 100mm length, then you can only put III cards (100mm) you can't put a IV card (117mm). But if you have 117m space length available in your motherboard, then you can use the III or IV cards. So be careful for the dimension of the card you will buy !

 

No gamer should buy a Quadro.

 

why not?

You can use geforce drivers with a quadro.

 

The link you quoted on eBay is a Quadro. Read the listing one more time. Here is the description:

" Not a GTX 280m. The card is NB9E with GTX 280m speeds and specs.

The warranty and return period is 30 days Ebay Paypal protection policy to fit description and function 100%. "

Here is the link to the same card that is $100.00 cheaper

Notebookparts.com: HP Compaq 8730w FX3700M 1GB NB9E-GLM3 Video Memory Card - 460734-001

 

Hello,

be careful, the official Clevo Bios only supports the following cards: 7950GTX/ 8700m GT/ 8800m GTX/ 9800m GT(S). The 9800m GTX/ GTX 260m+280m are not supported, though they physically fit.
We had a great discussion on the thread "5793 Screen is black", and eventually you will get the GTX 280m and the other cards to work, but the vBIOS has to be modified. Plus, you get 30 seconds of Beeping at every start up. I don´t know if there are any other methods, I asked for any information, but didn´t hear anything.

 

And even the 8800M GTX it's not supported by all the M570RU versions. in general rule, the one that didn't come with an original 8800GTX from factory, it will not support it.

 

Yeah, pkhetan ist right; As far as my personal experience is (had my hands on about 6 M570RU´s): if it supports 8700m GT the 8800m GTX will be running as long as you do a Bios upgrade; if the original card was 7950GTX, the screen stays black even if you do a Bios upgrade (I know some guys got it to work). It has to do with the Mobo revision. Since sometimes the seller could configure the M570RU by themselves, there will be some configurations that will not fit in that scheme at the first look.

 

EDIT: delete

 

Sell the laptop, (kijijii or eBay) and upgrade to refurbished Asus G71($500-$550), G72($550-$600) or G73 ($600-$650) laptop or a desktop rather than doing those expensive and risky (no warranty) upgrades (x9000 cpu, GTX 280M).

The chipset is limited to a 800Mhz cpu, new games will require 3, 4 or more cores and 1333mhz cpu's... a year after that, even more power and infinity. The X9000 will bottleneck the 280M in new games it's simply not worth upgrading the cpu and gpu.

I'm not kidding, or creating arguments for your dad, it's not worth it.

 

niffcreature and mmarchid,

Your posts have been deleted as they do not concern this thread. Take it to pms. Also, try contacting the Lead moderator again(he is busy and might have overlooked the emails). If you can not get a hold of him, contact an administrator(like Kevin O'brien) or me, so that I can forward a message.

 

Just FYI, I have a 5793 and it will take a total of 8GB of ram even though the chipset is not supposed to go over 4GB. Intel modified the specs after the chipset specs were published.

As for the X9000, while I obtained an engineering sample from Ebay, a production version is almost, if not impossible, to find, I believe.

All the best.

Mike

P.S. It might be a good idea to flash to the latest bios (.13 but the latest on Sager's website is .12) and kbc/ec too.

 

Where can I get the .13 BIOS? In the Clevo BIOS thread here the latest listed is .12.

 

I have a M570RU-U and the FX3700M linked previously in this thread was a drop-in replacement for the 8700 GT I had in the MXM slot. The system recognized it and didn't give me any error messages, beeping, etc... with the stock vBIOS. The system BIOS correctly recognizes the card and its vBIOS version. I installed the stock drivers from nvidia.com for the fx3700m (Win 7 64) with no trouble.

Now I just have to try and convince the card and/or the drivers that it's actually a 280m...

 

Hello Paralel,

wow, that´s great news, I think. Congratulations on your upgrading to FX3700m. I think it´s funny that it works without problems, although the card seems especially for HP...
Of course we don´t know if all M570RU´s accept this card without problems, but for now this seem to be really great!
If you want to "convince" the card to be a GTX 280m you have to flash the vBios with one from a GTX 280m. Again, this can be very risky, in the worst case you will not have a screen and have to do a blindflash.
Before doing that, I would test the card with some games/ Benches. Maybe you don´t have to do nothing because it´s already doing a good job...

 

OP, I would upgrade to 4Gb RAM (less than $100), update the BIOS, kbc/ec (as previous post suggests), and VBIOS, OC the CPU with SetFSB, and be done. Then just enjoy.

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to leave well enough alone. When I flashed the 280m vBIOS to it I get the well documented "MXM Structure Error" where it beeps for 30 second on every POST. I don't want to have to deal with that every time I turn on my system. It flashed back to the stock vBIOS with no problem and the error disappeared.

I was able to OC the FX3700m to 583/1450/900 with no stability issues of any kind, maxed out at 71°C (full load). I could probably push it higher, but i'm unsure it's wise, there's only so much power to go around and I want to be able to OC my processor at the same time. I was able to OC my T9300 to 2.85 Ghz without any trouble. With both the CPU and the graphics card OC'ed running flat out I didn't get any errors so it appears stable. I'm fairly happy with the benchmark, scored 11220 3dMark06 (1280x1024), compared to 9110 (1280x1024) with everything at stock values.

 

You can just mod the drivers to install as if it was a 280M, and call it such in windows, just change the line in the inf that is relevant to your your 3700 to reflect the install parameters of the 280M line.

 

Did you get the new one from here:
Notebookparts.com: HP Compaq 8730w FX3700M 1GB NB9E-GLM3 Video Memory Card - 460734-001

Or from ebay?

 

That's the one. Paired with this barebones system:

http://www.svc.com/hypersr7-w78.html

Now I just have to sell the 8700 GT I pulled from it.

 

The .13 bios I got when I returned my 5793 to Sager for warranty repairs after the monitor went dark. They repaired it and updated the bios at the same time.

 

Thanks for the info!

Can you please tell us the KB/EC revision? It's next to the SBIOS revision, during POST.

Can anyone that has an Sager NP579X could please send an e-mail with the S/N to Sager asking for BIOS updates, so we Clevo unbranded could update ours M57XRUs to that .13 rev?

Thanks again!

 

Can you check to see if they updated your EC/KBC firmware as well? The latest known version of that is .11Sa

If someone can't get Sager to send them the .13 revision of the BIOS could you save a copy of it from your system and upload it here? It would really benefit all the other M570RU users here.

 

Paralel and moral hazard where did you guys get your fx3700?

 

I got mine on ebay, it was listed as an 8730w fx3700m.

Paralel got his here:
Notebookparts.com: HP Compaq 8730w FX3700M 1GB NB9E-GLM3 Video Memory Card - 460734-001

 

100% correct.

 

Isn't that an MXM III card, seing as 8730w, which the card was pulled from, is an MXM III machine?

I may be wrong though.

 

MXM 2.1 type III.
http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Tech_13.html

Not MXM III (AKA MXM 3.0).
http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Tech_30.html

 

Ah I see. That clears it up. Thanks.

 

Is the stock heatsink/fan in a M570RU-U enough to keep a X9000 OC'ed to 3.2 Ghz at a decent temp at 100% usage or does it require the installation of a modified thermal system?

 

Allen Zhang, a very prompt customer service representative from Sager got back to me on the 14th of September saying he didn't have BIOS revision .13, but he would get back to me. I'm yet to hear back from him.

 

The RU-U (extreme edition) heatsink is fine for this. If I prime95 mine at 3.6GHz, it doesn't break 70C, but that's with CoolLaboratory liquid ultra and a zalman NC2000

 

Where would be a good place to get a third fan to install in the M570RU-U?

As far as the space, my measurements indicate its 45mm in width and length. I ordered a fan with those measurements from FrozenCPU since I couldn't find anyone else that sold anything comparable elsewhere. I'll let you all know if it fits once it gets here.

 

Found THIS discussion on adding a third fan - it seems possible.

If you get it to work, please do provide a tutorial!

EDIT: Looks like this is from a discussion on our very own NBR: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/223268-m570ru-u-np5793-third-fan.html

 

Well, a 45mm fan is too big. Looks like it will take a 40mm. Also, the 3 pin 5V plug was way too big, the plug must be some kind of laptop non-standard mini 3-pin plug. This is going to take some further investigating.

What do you guys think would be a better use for this 3rd fan, pulling warm air out, or pulling cool air in? I'm thinking cool air in since the other two fans are meant mostly to pull warm air out.

 

Are you sure they're meant to push warm air out? That negates the purpose of having a cooler underneath then doesn't it?

 

Looks like I'm more or less out of luck when it comes to a 3rd fan. Apparently the only way to buy an internal laptop fan is to know exactly what manufacturer/part number/etc... you need, it's not really something you can do by specification such as size/connector/etc...

Since no fan was implemented by Clevo in that space there is no part number nor manufacturer to look up in order to find a part that will fit in that space. Unless I randomly happen up on a 40x40x10mm square frame fan with a mini 3-pin connector I'm basically s**t out of luck.

It now makes sense why other people haven't pursued this angle for additional cooling, it's basically unreasonable to attempt.

 

And unnecessary, mines perfectly cool with just 2 fans.

OK, so I have drilled extra vent holes over the HDD and chipset, and most of the time it sits on an NC2000, but still...

My idle temps are mid-high 30's across the board, now that i've got powermizer working(ish) with dualscreen

Oh, I might've undervolted my processor too...

 

Hello.
Yesterday the 8700M GT of my M570RU passed away, everytime i try to run a 3d aplication, artifacts are shown, the pc freezes and i have to turn it off.
I've tried flashing the vbios and upgrading the bios to the lastest version (.13) but still crashing.
The first question i would like to ask is if someone has any idea to fix it.
The second question is about buying a new card. Paralel, i've read in this topic that you bought this card Notebookparts.com: HP Compaq 8730w FX3700M 1GB NB9E-GLM3 Video Memory Card - 460734-001 and successfully installed it. I would like to know if you think it will be compatible with my M570RU (i have it flashed with the lastest bios) and if it took too much work to you to attach the heatpipe of the 8700 to it and connecting all to the board since i've read in the "np5793 screen is black " thread that the guy has some probs with his 260m.
Thanks

 

That's the same exact part I used.

It was about a 95% fit for the copper heatsink that the 8700 used. The vRAM chips are slightly off from the cutouts in the 8700 heatsink but not by much and with the replacement thermal pads it runs nice and cool so I'm not concerned.

I replaced the thermal pads that were present with FujiPoly pads from FrozenCPU since the ones that were present were not only crap but also did not sit correctly on the vRAM chips. If you are going to replace the thermal pads with the FP from FrozenCPU go with the 1.5mm pads, the 1.0mm pads I have work but they are thinner than the original default thermal pads.

The default Clevo BIOS as well as the Sager .12aSL and .13aSL BIOS I updated to all recognized the card right away with no modification necessary to either the vBIOS nor the system BIOS. No driver mods are needed, I downloaded the stock driver directly from nvidia.com and it recognized the card and worked without any trouble.

 

Thank you very much, i will think about it

 

Woah how did you get that overclock? is it stable?

Everyone whose buying these, don't count on being able to OC that high.

Paralel, does yours have the "...10" bios sticker?

 

Yep, it's perfectly stable. My idle temp is 42°C and my max temp at full load is 74°C.

Nope, it has the .05 BIOS sticker.

 

You got really lucky. As did I, but not nearly as much considering I had 4 of them.

Crazy question - whats your um subsys ID on that card? Mine is actually different from the others which I find very odd. Cant remember what my current one is or if its actually the subsys ID but normally its 103C.0539
I only see it while flashing.
If you are still trying to flash it to a gtx 280m, I bet you can...
I looked at my old thread... you got the "mxm structure invalid" message?
try this http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...structure-not-found-invalid-post-message.html
you can probably do it on a gtx 280m bios to make it work...

 

Unfortunately that solution only takes care of the beeping and the message, it doesn't solve the problem of the 3D modes all being locked out. What I would need is a hack that would completely bypass the MXM structure check or for someone to replace the MXM structure code in the 280M vBIOS with the one from the FX3700M.

Both of those things go way beyond my understanding of vBIOS hacking.

I'll look up my subsys ID, but I know NVFLASH gives me a warning about a subsys ID mismatch when I flash it with the FX3700M vBIOS.

 

That´s great if someone has solved the beeping problem!
The guys at mxm-upgrade.com are great, they once unlocked my 9800m GTX 3D mode, so I could run the card in the M570RU. But they didn´t fix that beeping...
Paralel, maybe you write them and ask if they can help you. You have to send them the vBios you use and they unlock it. Then you could use the method of that "fix for the error..:" and you would have a card that has unlocked 3D mode and no beeping.
If anyone needs a 9800m GTX Bios that IS unlocked I can send it per mail.