Sager 8800 Update

Personally I am just waiting and then make up my mind on the upgrade.

 

200$ ? Try more like 500...

 

Same here. I have enough power as it is with 2x7950GTX. I want to see if this MoB upgrade is truly necessary or not. Even though it's been explained I still can't see why a replacement is the only option.

 

I am happy with my system for now and if I have to replace the motherboard I would like to get something more than just a video upgrade when there are new chips just around the corner as well. If I have to send it in to have this done I would like to minimize the travel and the hassle of mailing it all over.

 

A new twist?

I called RJTech today, About my SLI problem, and he was going to e-mail me a Bios update for the 8700m Video cards to fix my problem. (he sent the instruction E-mail, But no file attached....LOL)

On his websight, he only offers the D901C with ONE 8800M GTX Not SLI.

So i asked him if the rev. 5 Motherboards would work with only one 8800M GTX. He said yes.

So maybe i confused him with the question out of the blue like that and he is incorrect. Or it's true?

Maybe we will find out on the 6th.

The bios question is a intresting one. I can find NO PLACE to download a bios for the Clevo D901C.

I think we have our buddy Bill Gates to thank for that.

It seems the Bios files can be altered to make OEM copys of vista work on any computer, so the makers keep them close to the vest so to speak.

So following that line of thought, We will NEVER see a Bios upgrade, Just replaceing the motherboard to keep Billys profits rolling in.

it sucks, but i see no way out of it.

 

RJTech regarding the motherboard issue:

"We had received this information, but it is not final yet, and we will post it on our website as soon as it is confirmed. Including the upgrade options."

Regarding the individual card:

"We can sell you the card itself in Jan., the price should be about $790, but not confirmed."

 

The bios update has nothing to do with Bill Gates.

That has to be the funniest thing I ever heard.


It has do with Clevo.....

Joe

 

http://keznews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=54000

Request modded bios to run Vista for free.

At the bottom of this page there is responces with files modded.

but you need a Downloaded bios to start with.

You think it's funny....thats Ok...i doubt MS thinks so.....

 

The BIOS is not taboo DJDave, there is no BIOS conspiracy. It's just that if you screw up your BIOS then your laptop is toast.

D901C Version 1.00.08

I have the links to the older BIOS's as well I'll look them up for you. (I might just add them to the owners thread for convienance. fyi)

 

Well i did not look in canada....

Thank You

all the desktop bios versions can have the same problem, Screw up your computer so it can't boot. Thats why motherboards like the asus striker have poor sales because of users killing them.

Well OK...It sells very well to users like us. (Enthusiasts)

There are laptops with overclocking ablitys, But The King of laptops is nurtured by the Bios.

Seems strange to me.

BIOS conspiracy, LOL i was not trying to imply that, Tho reading it again i can see why you would think that. MS is fighting the bios modders hard right now.

yes a D901C bios list with reasons/fixes listed would be great.

Actualy a link to the fully unlocked Factory test bios would be better yet.....

("It's just that if you screw up your BIOS then your laptop is toast.")


So the Bios in the D901c is not in a socket, it's soldered in?

 

This was sent to me from a person in the industry. "45nm Penryn CPUs are not available yet, so there won't be Penryn M/B coming till April/May 2008". With this info I will wait before upgrading.

 

I would probably wait even longer for the new intel Nehalem processors..
The quad cores will feature the quickpath where all cores will be able to talk to eachother without going over the FSB...

I really don't think the Penryn CPUs justify the cost..

There performance is killer with overclocking.. But that doesn't do us any good, because the bios is so limiting.....

My 2cents...

Joe

 

The point really is that according to MXM spec we should have not need to upgrade the motherboard in order to upgrade the video card compliant with the same spec. At most ... is a software problem.

Dear resellers and Clevo I do understand that currently flashing the SBIOS may not be currently possible without an EPROM programming device , but is it impossible to develop a MSDOS program that does the trick the same way as we do with the BIOS and Video Card Firmware upgrade? Yes, NVIDIA wants to start supplying the motherboard chips, but this move should at most have an impact on future series of video cards not the current as people already "invested" in it. I would understand that business move over the 9000 series though (new architecture ... new life).

That would steam upgrades with immediate effects rather the later. Otherwise you have to understand that the best for customer is to wait for the Penryn support. But then again communication is so bad that we don't even know if Clevo will support those CPU's in the current model.

Stay Cool,

Trance

 

Point taken, but I think you've put it a little too black/white. The point of a standard such as MXM in a rapidly developing field like computer hardware should be to provide a well-defined frame-work for a reasonable period of time (Lord knows, we don't want another replay of Y2K) that provides sufficient standardization that a well-known upgrade path exists, with a well-defined starting point and a well-defined exit point. The standard (or the standard-giver, at least) should also provide a well-defined exit point that is discoverable sufficiently far in advance that people making purchase decisions can make a reasonably educated guess as to how much of the upgrade path still remains on the machine they're about to buy.

In particular, the MXM "standard" (or, as is more likely in this case, the standard-giver) should have given sufficient warning, at least to Clevo and the resellers, that significant issues existed regarding whether the D901C/NP9261 would, in fact, be able to accomodate the 8800M so that Clevo/Sager?et al, acting in good faith, could have been a little more restrained in marketing the 9261 as "user upgradeable." Certainly, when the system was introduced, it was, in fact, upgradeable because it started out with the 7950 - a prior generation card - and does, in fact, support the 8700M - a next generation card.

Unfortunately, without adequate, information-based, warnings that there might be serious doubts about the ability to support the 8800M, many purchasers made the (somewhat unwarranted, but still not entirely unreasonable) assumption that "user upgradeable" necessarily implied that the 9261, introduced with the highest card available from the prior generation of cards, would also support the high-end card of the next generation.

In this case, the primary fault appears to lie with Nvidia's unilateral decision to make the basic modules itself and to only support EDID (notwithstanding that Nvidia's own "standard" makes EDID and non-EDID options the vendor can choose to support, or not), and, to all appearances, to have not warned the ODMs far enough ahead to give them a shot at fixing the motherboard before the 9261 went out.

But, even putting Nvidia's naughty behaviour aside, the standard itself should have been drafted so that anyone who applied it in good faith would have known that there would be problems with the 8800M unless the board supported EDID.

For example, instead of making EDID and LVDS equally valid alternatives to be supported, or not, at the option of the ODM, when Nvidia released version 2.0 or even 2.1 of the MXM standard (2.1 was released in Sept. 2007), it should have revised the standard to make EDID support on the system board mandatory, and, if it wanted to throw a bone to ODMs who were loath to switch over, left LVDS as an option, but with the caveat that a non-EDID system board might not be able to support any further upgrades.

In that way, the standard itself would have given some realistic advance warning that would have told careful ODMs to make the switch to EDID earlier rather than later if they wanted to continue touting their systems as "user upgradeable."

Going that way, MXM, for all its other faults, would have established a time-delimited set of interoperable video cards (at least 7950 up to 8700) with an established upgrade path, and a well-defined exit-point (non-EDID systems can go no further) that was discernible far enough in advance that careful ODMs would have been able to decide if they wanted to continue to keep the upgrade path open, and if so, what they had to do in order to keep it open.

That's entirely possible (probable, even); however, I wouldn't put all of my eggs in that one basket. M$ didn't get rid of 16-bit legacy support until Vista.

The bottom line is, I think, as DFTrance has so persistently stated, is that, like Muzak, a standard shouldn't strive to satisfy everyone - it ends unsatisfying everyone instead - it should either give a well-defined upgrade path with well-defined exit points, or it shouldn't be set out in the first place.

 

This is sooooo true..

 

Understood, the whole thing is subjective though based on how long the time period should be for something to be considered 'upgradeable'.

NVidia lacks either foresight, communication, business sense, or all of the above. I agree.

In the end, I would expect that any card that is leagues above the previous generation, would in fact need an adjustment to something other than the video card itself.

the 8800M GTX is supposedly twice better than the 7950 GTX, which is the last of it's generation.

I think that this league of performance increase is both the reason for the required change in motherboard and also the reason for the uproar of unhappy customers.

Think about it, if the 8800M GTX was 'a little bit better' than the 8700 / 7950, nobody would be complaining as it is not worth the trouble to upgrade. Clevo and everybody else would not be getting bashed as hard.

However, this is not so. This card, for now, is supposedly going to be the one card to rule them all and it's price 'may' be CLOSE to appropriate. And with power comes consequences. hah.

The problem was not so much the card or the lack of upgradability, it was the hype and the expectations of everything therein, followed by the fact that the card may live up to the hype, amazingly.

The inconvenience of the lack of upgradability is a stinker of course. This is the flow of technology.

 

And for about $100 more you will have the future option of SLi......

 

I agree with you; ultimately, the core problem is not the lack of upgradeability but the failure (by NVidia) to manage people's expectations.

I don't have the time to go searching for the article I vaguely recall reading about behavioural finance but, if I recall correctly, one of the observations found in that field is that people are generally less upset if you tell them at the outset that they cannot have something than they are if you wait until the very last minute to tell them they cannot have that same thing (the basic economic point being that the hypothesis of rational behaviour underlying most orthodox economic theory does not actually correspond to reality, since in either case the actor in question is denied something s/he wants and, if rational, would be equally upset in either case).

 

Such philosophical debates for a done deal...It`s pointless to rattle about the 8800M GTX, it`s already said that there is no older mobo that can support it fully,so a new one needs to be made.
Put it this way, how many companies out there will even GIVE YOU the change of upgrading an older notebook? tell me!
Sager is busting their arses on this one, make no mistake, new mobos mean more expenses for them also,whereas if the GPU would not need new mobos, a LOT MORE people would acquire it.
This is the most reasonable logic.

 

I don't think anyone's disagreeing with you on the "done deal" point and most of us have been at pains to give Sager/Clevo credit where credit is due because, as you point out, a company like D**l most likely wouldn't even give you the time of day, let alone an upgrade (or even tech specs to use in doing the upgrade yourself).

Beyond that, what's wrong with philosophical debates?

 

Sorry, but this is not true. There is no big difference between 8700 and 8800 cards as far as design or system interfaces are concerned, and as stated several times before, power consumption is less than 7950. The only reason 8800 is not working is nVidia's change of MXM standard without regard to backward compatibility. This is nothing to do with "flow of technology", and all to do with disregard for existing customers.

However, I am pretty certain that Clevo knew that 9261s are not going to work with 8800 in September. They would have gotten the updated spec from nVidia, and, in all likehood, some pre-production cards to test with.

 

Is anybody here a Clevo employee? I don`t think so, therefore the whole 8800M GTX issue is pure assumption.
I`d rather trust people like Justin or even Eurocom regarding this higly controversial GPU than just second guesses...
In all likelihood, the cheapest 8800M GTX upgrade will be 750 $ . Enough to buy a really good laptop (deals)
The best and the fastest are always EXPENSIVE...

 

I work in IT industry and we regulary get specs and components several months before they are released to the general public. It would be highly unusual if Clevo did not have early 8800 samples in September, and they certainly had the spec since nVidia released it to everyone in September.

 

hey dont blame anyone here.. what you see is what you get, what you order is what you get.

 

Clevo might have had them in September, but what difference would it have made? the mobos needed for supporting quad cores were already made and could not be fit to addapt to th 8800M GTX. So they sold them anyway,because people BOUGHT them.
Now a new mobo is needed and people will buy that one also.It`s just the way things are ... nVidia`s monopole is kicking us in the wallet and there`s nothing we can do .

 

atleast u dont have to replace your motherboard....as long as you dont care about sleep or hibernate of whate ever it was it messed up.

 

"The only reason 8800 is not working is nVidia's change of MXM standard without regard to backward compatibility. "

That is not true. The only thing that happened is that they added to the spec the MXMIV that Clevo as been touting about since the launch of bothe M570RU and d901c.

There were no changes in Function 0, Function 1 and Function 2 as far as I can tell (MXM INT 15H System BIOS Callbacks). (I have both the spec version of 2004 and the new one).

2004 Spec: http://freehardwarefoundation.org/documents/MXM_Software_Spec.pdf
2007 Spec: http://www.nvidia.com/page/mxm.html

If you can find any difference of relevance please tell us (where is wally?).

I reiterate, the only reason the cards are not interchangeable amongst systems and brands is becouse laptop builders don't really want it. NVDIA proposed a standard and sells the chips/designs.
Currently in the case of "extreme" cards they really leave the drivers to be taken care of by laptop builders. Maybe this move from NVIDIA will give us more official up to date drivers, who knows (something I about complained before).

Your are "shouting" at the wrong Jockey there as far as I can see.

Trance

 

You may be right. However, that would mean that Sager and Clevo are deliberately misleading their customers, and I find that hard to believe. nVidia, on the other hand, has a track record of abrupt changes and poor support. They have no real competition right now, and can pretty much do whatever they want in the high-end graphic card segment.

My only beef with Clevo is that they likely knew about the incompatiblity in September/October and did not inform their customers. I guess I can understand it, since doing so would probably have killed 9261 sales, but it still does not make it right.

 

Speak for yourself buddy, that depends on what clevo you have ... though I would add ,I don't think the upgrade is all that unreasonable if your notebook is branded Sager.

 

Never mind this post.

-snip-

:ANGER:

Discount PRICE!!??


I bet you guys anything that, next year around this time, this is going to cost 20% less, I'll wait, my single 7950GTX works for me JUST fine.

 

The package pricing Sager have provided is at Sager's cost. You are right about the prices going down. As the newness of technology wears off (or newer technology is released) the price will certainly drop.

 

Before I get into the meat of my reply, let me first say that I'm still on the lower end of the learning curve myself as regards the guts of MXM and display types, so I will apologize now if I make any bone-headed mistakes (or have made them already) and would welcome assistance from those who know better. Also, if my responses seem a little too aggressive (particularly when they may be wrong), please don't take it personally; it's a bad habit that I've had for so long that, at this point, there's little hope for grinding off all of the rough edges.

Also, I don't have a 9261 available that I can actually poke around in, so I cannot actually go and look at the motherboard and the cards or poke around in the code to see if any of my suspicions are correct - it would be very useful if someone who does have a 9261 available would try to get into the guts of the system, look at the physical structures on the motherboard and card(s), and try to get a dump of the VBIOS, SBIOS, and/or EDID data, including specs on the display and any registry data. If/when I come up with a test that could be performed, I will try to ask someone else to run it (and I'll try to give enough detail to make that feasible).

With that, my thoughts:

First, you only list the software specs NVidia has released, not the physical specs (which are important in this case because the problem with the 9261 is not just software-based). NVidia released at least two mech. specs this year, version 2.1 (Sept. 07) and version 2.1A (Nov. 07). Second, you also don't list the 2.0 version of the software specs, which were released between the 1.9 version and the 2.1 version (current version, rel. Sept. 07).

Second, from what I can glean from Justin Nolte's posting regarding the problem, the root of the problem is that NVidia decided to only provide modules that supported displays with built-in EDID, and that do not support so-called EDID-less displays.

The effect of that is that the data regarding the display's characteristics must be retrieved from an EDID unit on the display, and can no longer be retrieved from the system BIOS or a separate ROM chip on the system board - in other words, an EDID-less display can no longer be used with an MXM-compliant videocard.

That is contrary to the published specifications, which explicitly contemplate the use of EDID-less displays; for example, on page 5 of the 2.1 version (rel. 9/07), the summary of required software support states "Func 2 is required if an EDID less internal flat panel is required." Obviously, that statement is now rendered moot if an EDID-less display cannot be used in any case for other, non-Func 2, reasons.

Second, with respect to the software specifications, the addition of MXM-IV does not appear to be relevant since there is not a single reference to MXM-I, II, III, or IV (nor to HE or non-HE) in the software specs.

I think, however, that I may have spotted the gist of the current Clevo problem on my last read-through of the current software specs (version 2.1, rel. 9/07). On page 17 of the current version, under the heading "Using a Serial ROM to Access the MXM v 2.1 Structure," the software spec states as follows: "In systems in which more than one MXM v 2.1 module may be supported, the serial ROM must not be used. Implementation of the INT 15h and ACPI methods is required in this case as this provides a means to directly distinguish the data for different modules."

That suggests to me that Clevo's old motherboards used the separate ROM method for providing the MXM display data to the videocards, and that for whatever reason the Int15h and ACPI system methods are not functional on those motherboards.

Another possible clue can be found on page 5, where the spec states that, because the VBIOS may need to be fully functional before OS or driver loading, and because the MXM card may have to act as a secondary display adapter, "Int15h methods alone are insufficient. Both the Int15h and ACPI interfaces are required to be supported when system methods are used for output and DDC selection."

Since, by hypothesis, the 9261 must use an EDID-less display (otherwise there wouldn't be a problem in the first place), the fact that a separate serial ROM cannot be used in multiple videocard setups (i.e., in SLi, which the 9261 is intended to support), when put together with this statement, implies that the root of the problem might lie with the inability of the current 9261 motherboard to provide both the Int15h and ACPI interfaces as required by the current spec.

Since the new version 3.0b of the ACPI spec adds the new support features for MXM (and not version 3.0a as referenced on page 24 of the 2.1 software spec, this suggests that the problem may lie with the inability of the 9261's motherboard to fully support the new ACPI specifications (i.e., the 3.0b version).

One way to test this might be to go looking for references to the GUID that is used under WMI to get user-space access to the new MXM info. On page 26 of version 2.1 of the MXM software specifications, the following GUID is listed for WMI MXMX methods: "{F6CB5C3C-9CAE-4EBD-B577-931EA32A2CC0}"

Thus, it might be useful if someone with a 9261 did a search in their Windows registry to see if that GUID is registered or not. If it doesn't show up, that might suggest that the root of the problem here lies with a lack of support for ACPI version 3.0b.

This, if true, may shift some of the blame from NVidia to Clevo, but only if it was already clear long before September 2007 (when the current software spec was released) that this sort of issue would crop up with systems using multiple MXM videocards. However, the facts that (a) none of this appears in the only other released version of the software specs (rel. in 2004) and (b) these problems don't crop up in systems with SLi'd 8700s or earlier cards, suggest that it very well may not have been clear prior to the time Clevo made the revisions to the current 9261 motherboard (which must have been finalized in September, or earlier, since that version was released at the very beginning of October) that they would also have to revise the degree of ACPI support on the motherboard in order to support the 8800Ms.

Also, this suggests, if true, that the current 9261 may, in fact, support a single 8800M card, because the requirement to use both Int15h and ACPI v.3.0b only applies to systems with multiple MXM cards (i.e., systems with SLi'd 8800Ms).

However, in that instance, the current 9261 motherboard may also suffer from the same wake-from-sleep problems the current 5791 is supposed to have with the 8800M. Since ACPI is integral to the various wake and sleep states, the fact that the 5791 cannot adequately support an 8800M without having sleep problems suggests that the basic issue of Clevo's incompatibility with the 8800M stems from a lack of support for the 3.0b version of the ACPI standards.

 

And this to me is the growing pains that we 9260 owners are suffering from now. Unfortunate but not terribly surprising.

How much of a benefit will it be upgrading to the 45nm chips?

 

I'm seriously considering upgrading but I'll have to save up a bit for it so it won't be till April or May and who knows what will happen between now and then!

 

If they're doing it at cost then that's pretty dang good IMHO. You can't really expect a company to do it below cost... that's just not realistic. Not to mention the fact that they're not charging labor(IIRC I read that in an earlier post.. if I'm wrong I'll just blame it on the eye... )

 

"One way to test this might be to go looking for references to the GUID that is used under WMI to get user-space access to the new MXM info. On page 26 of version 2.1 of the MXM software specifications, the following GUID is listed for WMI MXMX methods: "{F6CB5C3C-9CAE-4EBD-B577-931EA32A2CC0}""

Indeed it isn't there. I already had tracked down the problem to ACPI issues. Nevetherless your analysis really helped me out to understand the issue further.

"Another possible clue can be found on page 5, where the spec states that, because the VBIOS may need to be fully functional before OS or driver loading, and because the MXM card may have to act as a secondary display adapter"

Precisely. I remember that for the 8700GT issue was actually there with Vista. When my notebook came Vista couldn't simply recognize de second card (XP could). I had to upgrade the firmware of the second card so that both cards acted as primary display adapters and Vista could recognize them. Indeed the second card by default was a secondary display adapter before the firmware "upgrade". We were told that was an issue of the first cards coming out when the issue was actuallly in the motherboard. Anyway I don't know if it is related to the problem at hand at the moment but looks like it is.

So basically I suspect they already knew that even with the 8700GT they had something going out of spec, and they hacked it around to push the 8700GT out as soon as possible. I wonder if they could do the same with the new cards.

Anyway, I'm not stating that Clevo is deceiving customer as if according to some evil plan. Althought I suspect that the technical mess is actually on their ground. If our suspecions are correct (and that is an IF) the Clevo solution is not fully MXMIV compliant as stated, and customers are required to pay for a motherboard upgrade to be so.

Trance

 

I've never thought that you had said anything about Clevo being intentionally deceitful; at most you seem to be saying that Clevo knew there were going to be issues with their motherboards and the new 8-series cards, and instead of doing a proper update of the board at the beginning, they jury-rigged a fix for the 8700 cards that worked, and then made a very risky bet that the same fix would work for the 8800 - a bet that failed, apparently.

I will grant that Clevo should have been more on the ball in terms of bringing their motherboards up to snuff with the newest ACPI specs (if that is, in fact, where the trouble lies); however, I still think that NVidia bears at least half the blame since they appear to have made a last-minute decision to enforce strict compliance with the new MXM 2.1 specs, which weren't released until Sept. 07, and thus the full 3.0b ACPI specs, only with the introduction of the 8800M, even though they appear to have given the ODMs a pass on that compliance for the 8700s.

Perhaps the difference comes up because the 8700M is based on the G8 series of chips whereas the 8800M is based on the G9 series? Also, perhaps it's because of the NVidia powermizer tech; according to the NVidia "tech specs" (which aren't really that technical), the 8800M utilizes version 7 of the Powermizer tech, but the page for the 8700M doesn't say anything about which version of Powermizer it uses. It could be that the requirements going from G8 to G9, or from Powermizer 6 to Powermizer 7 were such that the software work-around that sufficed for the 8700M no longer works for the 8800M?

 

"I still think that NVidia bears at least half the blame since they appear to have made a last-minute decision to enforce strict compliance with the new MXM 2.1 specs, which weren't released until Sept. 07, and thus the full 3.0b ACPI specs, only with the introduction of the 8800M, even though they appear to have given the ODMs a pass on that compliance for the 8700s."

I agree with almost everything! I don't think they (NVIDIA) gave a pass on that compliance for the 8700GT but that Clevo found a solution to go around over the limitations of their implementation (lack of compliance). But the point is really that the Clevo solution was not really fully MXMIV compliant as stated in the machine specs since ever, and now we have to pay for a motherboard upgrade to be fully MXMIV compliant? (This is what I have been arguing and it does not seam legitimate request from Clevo to their customers irrespective of the technical justifications that we may or not point out).

Anyway, it seams to me that I'm one of the very few that are a wee bit finantially pissed with this so this is one of my lasts posts if not the last regarding this issue. Indeed we are talking about $400 (MB plus labor, almost the cost of an iPhone) just to get the MXMIV compliance that we were told that we had it already in the system (a lot of money in my world).

Trance

 

Well, I certainly do admire your self-control - me, I'm a little too pig-headed to let go of something until I've beaten it to death (or it me). I promise that I won't post every idle thought that comes around, but I would like to try and see if I can figure out exactly what the issue is (and why it was amenable to a software work-around for the 8700s but not the 8800s).

Of course, that may be a fools' errand since I don't actually have access to a 9261 I can try my theories out on; although I'm guessing that there will shortly be a glut of cheap used boards & cards available - perhaps I'll buy one and see what I can figure out (especially since I do plan on buying one as soon as I can scrounge enough pennies - not easy given it's Christmas-time).

In the meantime, I am interested in hearing any more specific information or details you (or anyone else) has managed to figure out; I really do appreciate the fact that Clevo and the resellers have been much more forthcoming than a company like Sony or HP would ever be, but sometimes a little information can be worse than none at all because it only whets the appetite.

 

Then another $300 for the GPU we are upgrading for, then another 200$ in labor!

in the end the hefty pricetag of over 1,000$ USD is too much, I mean, I can make the jump, but I don't think it's worth the massive pricetag.

If you measure it out in DOLLARS TO ENTERTAINMENT I could easily buy a game console or nice Linux Server for that much.

 

Unfortunately when new technology is released it is priced with a hefty price tag. This is dictated by the mfg of the video card. As this new technology's newness wears off or newer technology is released this price will certainly drop.

 

I just talked to Eurocom, and they mentioned something about the new CPUs working in their upgrade...

of course take it with a grain of salt. but for those of you who don't remember Eurocom was the company who was converting d900's to 901c with a 20 min upgrade (they didn't make you get a whole MOBO for the quad cores.) soldered in house. they actually work with clevo to do their own in-house stuff. unlike other retailers that just get the cookie cutter upgrades..

like I said.. grain of salt. but I think they are a cut above the rest.

but Keep all options open.

here is a paste from my email. :

Yup... we just got an update today. The good news is that we believe
the units with the new motherboard are due at the end of December and
should include not only the 8800 upgrade but also the Penryn CPU
upgrade.

Once I hear more I will let you know.

Thank You
|Retail Product Specialist | Eurocom Corporation |
1.877.EUROCOM | 1.613.224.6122 x238 | [email protected] |
www.eurocom.com

 

Thanks Dexgo! keep us updated!

 

I'll wait to check it out when there are 45nm Quad Cores on the market. If that is confirmed then a mb upgrade will be on the way

Trance

 

If we can get upgrades with just mods to the Mobo to get upgrades then I'm for it 110%. Thats the way it should be.

When the fuel injectors need an upgrade.... do we just put a whole engine in there????

full mobo upgrade to do upgrades when they probably could just do a few subtle mods to the mobo.... That's why eurocom did that for d900 for quads..

Practicality is that it's better and easier-cheaper to do a mod to the mobo to suit upgrade, rather than change the whole worx.

 

Justin confirmed in another thread that for the 570RU machines, the issue is S3 only (not S4). Which should mean that suspend-to-ram is broken with the 8800GTX, but suspend-to-disk is okay. (Myself, I've never used suspend to ram, couldn't care less. When I close the lid, I want it on disk so I can restore a day later.)

I've ordered my card .. skipping the mobo upgrade.

jeff

 

The following is a cut out from a MSN chat log with a Clevo Senior engineer last night (12/5/2007) the name is changed to prevent sharing of the Engineers MSN contact.

[17:39] Clevo_Senior Engineer: For D900C, S/W Allen has got the Wolfdale (E8200 & E8400 x1) CPU. But the test result is FAILED, it needs to modify the BIOS from Phoenix, there's no debug schedule from them so far.
[17:40] Sager: so bios issue
[17:40] Clevo_Senior Engineer: but it seems that it is a big problem

Please understand that the major differences between Sager and Others is that, Sager insists that anything announced to the public should be 100% confirmed to be working without major bugs or issues by both Clevo and Sager. As the above chat log demonstrates, no finalized motherboard has been shipped for verification at this time. Just because a motherboard is in testing does not mean it is or ever will be approved. There are too many uncertainties in the project that may never be finalized, and it could be killed off in the process of debugging.

 

thanks justin.

I just like Eurocom because they will find the root of the problem and then fix it themselves, like modifying the mobo. that would cost like 200 bux instead of re-placing the whole mobo.

any way you say it. If they offer an choice like that. it is better. and that is the bottom line.

 

It is a good choice, indeed, for the individual customer. There is no way anybody could provide this as a service to everybody who owns the system though, in a reasonable time. ( assumptions )

It is a wiser choice to create a new revision of the motherboard for the masses.

It is definitely nice to have at least one place you can go to for modifications though. Personally, I would be wary of solder changes to a motherboard, seeing as how finicky laptop motherboards can be and voltage regulations are so precise.

 

Justin, was that an "MSN" chat log, or an "MSDN" chat log?