Sager 8662 graphics limitations

Hi all,
First off its been a while since I have posted on here but this forum has great information for references and research.

I'm stuck im a predicament with the release of Battlefield 3. Minimum specs for BF3 are dual core and 200 series nvidia series graphics card, plus 2GB of memory.

Ive had my Sager 8662 for 2.5-3 years. I bought it as soon as they stopped selling it on XOTICPC.

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.08GHz
4GB DDR3 1066
Nvidia 260m GTX 1GB
Patriot Torqix SSD 128GB
LCD 1920x1200

Now,
Given that I have updated the latest video drivers and have done everything in my power to optimize the Sager's performance. I'm struggling to run the game even on lowest settings with the nvidia control panel optimized for performance, forcing AA off and other performance eating effects. I can play the game at 1024x768 with lowest settings but it causes my performance in game to suck terribly. Note bad company 2 ran very well(30-40FPS) once shadows were turned down and effects were lowest settings.

So I'm in the process of discovering whether my laptop is finally outmatched or if the game is being a resource hog. So in this process I started thing about the possibility of upgrading the 260m GTX. So it brought me to searching on this forum for some answers. These are the closest answers I got to my question.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/366200-upgrade-8662-gpu.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/45667-upgrading-video-card-sager.html

So I know anything like a 280m GTX will cause overheating. So my question is whether or not future generations of the equivalent of a 260m will:
1. Improve my performance in game significantly?
2. Is it possible that future equivalent cards exist, ie: 360m, 460m, 560m GTX
3. Are the requirements of these satisfied by the Sager 8662 or are these cards of different MXM versions which the motherboard cannot handle?

I will be doing some more research on this but I thought I would post this to see if anyone has any input.

 

hi and welcome back
im running the 260gtx on my 3 year old m860tu and its running fine. ok might have the odd glitch here and there when there mass gunfight on screen but most of the time it plays good for me. thats in single,coop and multi.

minimum spec is 8xxx cards so im not sure whats going on with yours.

ill try ang get a screenshot of my ingame settings which i havnt changed at all most of course will be low

 

The issue is twofold:

1. Your 260M is exactly at the level of the minimum GPU requirement, the 8800 GT
2. You have a dual core.

As far as upgrades go:

1. GPU options are limited, The newer cards (400M and 500M) are incompatible. You're stuck with the 280M and FX3700M. You'd be better off with overclocking your 260M, because neither of those is a big upgrade.

2. Buying a cheap Core 2 Quad will do more for your framerates than a minor GPU upgrade. You can get a Q9000 for about $100.

 

I used to have a Q9000 2.0 GHz and GTX 260M. I could play Operation Metro in Beta with 1440x990 everything at low getting 35 (outdoor) -55 (indoor) fps.

Also, it was Windows 7 with 6GB RAM.

 

what about ati cards? could a 4870 or even a MR5870 be swapped in for a GPU boost? and then a q9000?

Jason

 

no, you have a MXM2.1 slot.


The best card you could get would be a ATI4850, FX3700, gtx260 or GTX280...

according to notebookcheck, the fx3700 is marginally faster(1-2%), the 4850 is the same speed, and the 280 is 10#ish(if you can find one)

I would go for a q9100/q9200 over the q9000, the extra $$$ is well worth it for 2x the cach and unlocked a multiplier(q9200)

 

Here is more discussion of this topic:
Essentially saying it might be possible given, the physical form, cooling and bios

560m GTX specs:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M - Notebookcheck.net Tech
Eurocom Makes MXM 3.0b NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M Available In Notebooks - HotHardware
based on this for power requirements.. Is is correct? Either way, MXM 3.0 is supposedly optimized to 75W, the same as 260m GTX,
MXM: 3.0b
Power: 50W

260m GTX specs:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - Notebookcheck.net Tech
The NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M GPU ? The best bang-for-the-buck gaming notebook GPU.
MXM 3.0b
Power: 75W

By inspecting my card I might be able to determine which type of MXM 3.0 the 8662 has, based on this article:
Note this site doesn't list the Sager 8662 in their tables and nvidia lists the 260m GTX as a MXM 3.0b

The biggest ambiguity for me right now is whether the 8662 motherboard bios will accept a 560m or other cards. Can this be clarified by anyone?
In one of the articles I posted, the person states that there is no particular bios to support the upgrade of the particular GPU on the ASUS laptop. However in the following article the guy is able to modify the bios to support the Alienware m15x. Anyone with some knowledge of this could they please address this for me? Thanks.

All powerful alienware m15x upgrades from 260m GTX to 470m


Continued conversation of the upgrade: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/523936-official-all-powerful-m15x-benchmark-thread-part-2-a-101.html

Process to upgrade an alienware m15x from 260m to 470m
This guy is hinting to me that there are ways to get vbios of graphics cards:

Now, like in the guide posted about upgrading the m15x, can we modify these vbios for one of the above mention cards? If so the only trouble may be caused by cooling and heat sink compatibility for the 260m to the new card.

Based on these guys:
The Rig That Can't run BF3 (Caspian Border) At playable FPS
the game is obviously optimized for # cores > 2. So even if it wasn't optimized for lower settings, I would still need a better GPU to handle the 3D effects of higher game settings.

Just for reference BF3 Specs: Battlefield 3 system requirements - Battlefield 3

So in Summary,

1. Can the motherboard BIOS be modified to accept the 560m?
2. Can the video card BIOS be modified to accept the motherboard?
3. Would a modified BIOS hinder performance of the system?
4. Can the performance gains be quantified versus the cost of the upgrades?

I would really like to know what some of the guys who actually did some of these upgrades would have to say about this stuff. As a side observation, if this type of upgrades can happen. It would be in the step of open source software and non-proprietary hardware. How often is this type of research documented and available to consumers? Haha


//Reponses//
@whitrzac, this states Sager 8662 supports MXM III (3.0)
@ganzonomy, I don't believe ATI chipset is supported.
@Kevin,
So how do you know my GPU options are limited? I do like your idea of upgrading the processor, Q9000 is the minimum, would the 8662 support all the core 2 quad processors? Based on this post.

We can see that high speed dual cores compared to low speed quad cores are trivial when the game is optimized for multiple core technology. Now to prove that it would be more efficient for the Sager 8662 we would need to know that bf3 is best optimized for performance at lowest graphical settings running at the native resolution of 1920x1200. The biggest problem I am having when playing the game is being able to see enemies at the playable settings for my current setup (low, 1024x768). Hence the 1920x1200 requirement. When playing at 1920x1200, moving diagonally and panning left and right with my mouse cause high stuttering, so it's nearly impossible to nearly target or identify enemies.

 

the m860etu/np8662 does NOT support mxm3.0, it is 2.1 only....


yes it came with a gtx260, it was one of the few cards that were made in a 2.1 and 3.0 style.

 

I keep reading stuff all around on people saying it's 2.1 but there is no documentation or anything to back it up... I know the 260m was one of the few to bridge the gap between 2.0 and 3.0 MXM but will I need to contact sager to get an official answer? I want to know where people are getting this information from.

This is the best I found to support that the np8662 is MXM 2.1, Laptop Configuration / Upgrade-ability Help - XOTICPC Forums
so yes, you are right seems to be 2.1

 

We have this laptop. We looked at it. Official answer, no its not MXM 3.0.

Roman numerals and letters are entirely different and correlate to form factor only.

There are 4870 available in 2.1 which will give a reasonable performance boost. If you were to find someone with good vBIOS modification skills and BGA reball facilities, you could build yourself a 4870 gddr5 card which would have it scoring close to a 6970m.

There are also nonstandard gts 360m gddr5 which could work, however the performance isn't any better, its simply a much cooler 50w card that you could overclock like crazy [if you got it to fit correctly].

 

Your 8662 is MXM 2.1. Like niff said, dozens of us here on NBR have opened up our 8660/8662s and seen the 2.1 slot. If you don't want to believe us, just open it up and look yourself. The 2.1 cards look way different from 3.0 cards.

As far as modifying your machine to accept a 3.0 card, anything is theoretically possible. I mean, after all, Clevo makes these things from scratch, right? The answer to the question you are asking is: no. You cannot easily put a MXM 3.0 slot onto your motherboard and then easily modify the BIOS to accept a MXM 3.0 card. It is certainly within the realm of possibility, but you'd better be an electrical engineer with some killer soldering skills and some even better programming skills. The easy way to get to MXM 3.0 is to sell your 8662 and pick up an 8690 or something.

 

Upgrading an old configuration is a waste of cash/money, time, nerves, hair pulling and more nerves.

Just sell that thing, providing you saved a lil'bit of cash, then get something on the line as MSI 683DTX or Asus G74SX or Clevo with 560M or above...

Personal advice - wait until the 7000 series AMD cards + Ivy Bridge comes out. Battlefield 3? Well, its gonna be like tetris - the new systems promise at least 50% overall performance increase.

OR....get a configuration like mine.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

I had a M570TU. As said 10 times already, it is mxm 2.1 no need to get the screwdriver out. Upgrades are generally not worth it, because you either pay a lot on ebay for something that may be on its last legs (and definitely old), or you pay a fortune for a new last-gen GPU from places like RJTech. So $500+ for something that takes you performance wise from -4 years to -2 years? Don't recommend it. Plus thermal paste, BIOS issues, CPU bottlenecks, incorrect heat sinks etc. Upgradeability will be a myth until Nvidia starts allowing sales of old mobile tech at lower prices.

 

The only upgrade worth pursuing is the option to add a quad core. I see a Q9100 on eBay for $149 shipped.

 

I was doing a little research and I'm not sure if the np8662 supports Q9100 or QX9300. As far as I saw, it can support only Q9000 which I'm still not sure I will see a huge improvement in performance from Battlefield 3. But I purchased a Q9000 for $85 so I will see if there really is any sort of improvement.

From Sager's driver's download (website), the latest BIOS update is V 2.17s/1.00.13 firmware, at checking my BIOS, I'm at:

BIOS revision: 1.02.175. LS1
KBC/EC Firmware: 1.00.13

So my intution tells me I have the latest BIOS.

Can the laptop support Core 2 Quad Q9100?

 

It supports all of the C2Q. I had an overclocked Q9200 in mine.

 

Ok so here's an update on this topic if anyone was still interested.

I did end up getting a Core 2 Quad, 2.0Ghz and installed after cleaning out all the dust and crap in my system and the performance increase was huge. As a reminder my previous processor was a core 2 duo at 3.06 GHz (T9900). For this paticular game (BF3) the cycle speed is negliable and the more cores the better !