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Replacement for ATI X1900 (Amilo Xi 1554) needed soon !


GabSoftware

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Hello everyone,

I am the not-so-happy owner of a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi 1554 and I think my graphic card (an ATI Mobility Radeon X1900) is failing. In text and VGA mode I start getting some display corruption since few months : some random colored pixel and some characters get replaced by some random others.

The X1900 produces a lot of heat even when the system is idle. I already tried to use NHC to slow down the card and my CPU but I still get display corruption and the notebook is hot as hell. The fan seems to be too much lazy.

I am considering to replace the card by another one, I plan to buy one at mxm-upgrade.com. I already contacted the website for some information but if someone knows the answers I'll be happy to hear from them :)

So here are my questions :

- Does anybody know if the Amilo 1554 is compatible with the 8600GT ? The 8600GT is less performing than the X1900 but not so less and I don't really care, after all.

- Does anybody have a brand new x1900, in case it isn't compatible with the 8600GT ?

- Is the 8600 GT cooler than the X1900 (if yes and compatible then bye bye x1900, hello 8600GT !)

Thank you for any answer !

Edit : I am sorry, actually I would like to post this topic in "Official MXM-Upgrade.com Support & Discussion Forum". Could an administrator move it please ? :)

Edited by GabSoftware
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Hi,

I'm in the same situation.

At least for me this happened because my fan died.

Another stupid thing is that the second hdd is just beside the mxm board. I removed it for the moment but still I get a corrupted screen even at post. It seems that it's fried for good.

Also one of the memory modules of the mxm board was not entirely covered by the heatsink.

I was looking to get a new x1900/x1800 from mxm-upgrade.com.

Hope you solve your problem.

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Hello,

I am sorry that you have the same problem as me,

I ordered a HD3650 from mxm-upgrade.com, after some kind support from their staff (Kris). I am now waiting to receive the card, and will post some feedback here.

If possible you can underclock your card by activating PowerPlay in ATI Catalyst Control Center and moving all the sliders to the left (of course not so good for gaming like that but that's better for heat). Also use NHC to underclock your CPU.

I just changed my 2 hard drives because the one near the graphic card failed me and I want RAID0. Now bought 2x Seagate 7200.3 320GB + Gshock (ST9320421ASG) and reinstalled Windows at light speed.

I give you the ACPI scripts to control the fan speed in NHC in attachments (in case your fan is not entirely dead). Extract and replace the previous files, restart NHC (the service also if an error is displayed). Disable the Auto Fan config and activate the Manual fan config. Set the speed to 3 (max). Your fan should begin to work if it's working.

Good luck,

Gabriel H.

Fujitsu.rar

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I mounted the card and here my first impressions :

- The card belongs to scenario II on MXM-upgrade website ! This means you have to use a Dremel. I do NOT have a dremel, and Kris from MXM-upgrade certified me it is scenario I. A beautiful lie to sell me the card ?

- After I used a big drill to shape the heatsink and closed the laptop again, the computer booted as normally, detected the card and i was prompted to install the drivers. But also something happened to the sound card because I was also prompted to install drivers for an unknown device on HD Audio bus 65536 ! I couldn't find the driver for that. However the sound still work so I don't so care.

- After I installed the newest ATI drivers modded with Mobility Modder (which make the official ATI drivers compatible with mobility chipsets), I rebooted, the card is recognized, but IMPOSSIBLE to start Catalyst Control Center ! This is a must-do, because of powerplay !

- NHC now think I have a Amilo Xi 1526 ! WTF ? So I modified the Fujitsu_Siemens.xml file to make the 1526 use the 1554 class and my fan was back.

- The HD3650 appears to be as hot as the X1900 was, maybe more. I checked that the HD3650 core die touch the heatsink, that was perfect. So don't believe someone who tell you that the HD 3650 is cooler than a X1900 !

I an now trying to install Windows to check if I can get successful drivers installations with a fresh start. Right now that's a little strange because the display is corrupted as if the frequency of the memory and GPU was not properly specified... To be continued.

EDIT : When rebooted, Windows does not have the corrupted problem anymore. I continue...

EDIT 2 : The Catalyst control center is OK now ! And I see I get the 512 MB card, thank you Kris ! I now try to install the sound...

EDIT 3 : The sound is OK, the new HD Audio PCI Device is actually a new HD audio controller on the ATI card ! So you have to install the ATI HDMI driver in order to make this unknown device disappear.

EDIT 4 : After installing Everest, the card have a temperature sensor ! it runs at 43 right now which is okay by me. However NHC is NOT able to control ATI powerplay !

Edited by GabSoftware
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i have an 3650 gddr3 on amilo 1546 evrything goes perfectly, my card never go up to 76°C(monitoring by hwmonitor 1.13) from 2h gaming with gta 4 :)

remenber you have to modify the heat sink in the position of the gray big thing, otherwise your card will be very hot...

the new audio hd device is an controller of realtek , that is integarted on the video card i have diabled it ... and dont'appera any more at start-up of windows,

this card is a beatiful :) , cos this is fast and has a lot of calculation power but has a 31w tdp , that is a lot for an mxm II and this is a reason for the heat that the card generate... the nvidia 8/9xxxM Gt have only 21/23W tdp.

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hello GabSoftware and Gigione,

What version of the HD3650 do you have ? 256 Mo or 512 Mo ?

can you install more than 2Gb of RAM with your card with appropriate BIOS ?

I have a AMILO PI1556 and if i wan't RAM > 2Go, i must use alienware 2.07 or 1.19w bios , but i have video problems with my 8600m GT with these bios, 4bit color and VGASAVE driver ( know problem for nvidia with > 256 mo video ram)

Edited by greg_o
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hi greg_o

the ati 3650 gddr3 is only with 256Mb, and theay are two colors, redone or green one, but are the same card.

the version with 512Mb is only ddr2 an is less powerful...

i have the original bios 1.25(beacause i have the mother board of an amilo 1536/1556 is different from XI 1554 or 1546 only for the raid chipset.)

I have only tried to put 4gb with the originl bios and nothing the computer ocly beep or black sreen at start up...

a guy said to me that for 4gb ram you have tu put the 1.19w bios when you use an ati 3650, but with a nvidia 8600m gs/gt that is an incompatibilty bios resources...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm pretty sure that I have 512MB of GDDR3, my card is red. Are you sure about what you say that the 512MB is GDDR2 ? I read on two different softwares that I have GDDR 3 and 512 MB.

By the way I never felt the need to have more than 2 GB of RAM (how can you need it today unless you work with many virtual machines ???) so I never tried it.

Edit : I checked the bios with Radeon Bios Editor and it told me that I have 256MB of GDDR3, as GPUz told me. I don't know what to think now. Could ATI Catalyst Control Center and Everest be wrong ? Or do I have a wrong bios ? That's pretty confusing, who to believe...

Edited by GabSoftware
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi GabSoftware,

I'm happy to hear that your upgrade went ok.

The fan wasn't dead; just that something went wrong with my mb and it would not correlate the needed speed with the actual temp. Now it?s directly on the 5v rail from the second hdd that, by the way, was removed so wouldn't get any additional heat from it.

With all of this I got 1 more month from my X1900. Now I wait from the 3650 to arrive :) .

One more question, have you changed the bios to the alienware one, if so, have you had any troubles regarding vista activation after that? I intend to move to 4GB soon :)

All the best,

Alex.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello,

Sorry for the delay,

I have the bios 1.25 from FS, not Alienware one since I'm not Alienware and do not plan to have 4GB of RAM :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just ordered HD3650 + 4GB RAM for my Xi1554... So will come back here with .... good news hopefully. I hope it's not too difficult to install NEW graphic card.

Also would like to ask... Is it worth it to upgrade main CPU? There is 2.0Ghz at the moment and I read on some other forum that it should be possible to change the CPU for 2.33 GHz and even overclock it to 2.66 GHz :-) Is anybody experienced with that?

Thanks for help in advance

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OK. 4GB ram arrived first... And it's working perfectly. So just waiting for graphic card now.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, my new graphic card arrived... Did my best to install it. Really the hard part was modification of heatsink. I'm using windows 7 64 bit and the temperature of GPU and CPU is kind of same... In windows, it's about 50Ëš. When I played crysis 3d game for about 10 minutes, the temperature of GPU went up to about 70-73Ëš celsius.

I'm using coolemaster notebook cooler too. I don't know if the temperatures are ok, or if they could be lower... I did my best. Place new silver paste on main CPU and new grey heatpad on ATI GPU.

One thing, the score in 3d mark 05 and 06 is really low. It's might be the windows 7 beta drivers or something else... who knows. But I would expect much better results from my machine. CPU 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and ATI HD 3650

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One thing, the score in 3d mark 05 and 06 is really low. It's might be the windows 7 beta drivers or something else... who knows. But I would expect much better results from my machine. CPU 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and ATI HD 3650

And your results are?

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i can't remember now... will run them again and post them. Also will install winxp on another partition with different drivers and will test that too.

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  • 2 years later...

So, my new graphic card arrived... Did my best to install it. Really the hard part was modification of heatsink. I'm using windows 7 64 bit and the temperature of GPU and CPU is kind of same... In windows, it's about 50?. When I played crysis 3d game for about 10 minutes, the temperature of GPU went up to about 70-73? celsius.

I'm using coolemaster notebook cooler too. I don't know if the temperatures are ok, or if they could be lower... I did my best. Place new silver paste on main CPU and new grey heatpad on ATI GPU.

One thing, the score in 3d mark 05 and 06 is really low. It's might be the windows 7 beta drivers or something else... who knows. But I would expect much better results from my machine. CPU 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM and ATI HD 3650

Hi mate am interested about your upgrade .. !

Can you tell me what BIOS did you use to run all this ??

It's really interesting !

How can I bodify the heat sink?

Thnx

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