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GeForce 9600M GT in Alienware m5500i-R3


pizzathehut893

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Hi,

I am now thinking of buying a nVidia GeForce 9600M GT 512MB DDR3 MXM II card for my Alienware m5500i-R3 laptop from ebay.

I'm sure that my computer has a MXM II slot so I think it will fit. I just have a few questions-

1) What games will I be able to play with this card?

2) Will I have any heating problems and if I do what can I do about them?

3) Will I need to do any BIOS changes and if so how do I do that?

If anyone knows any of these answers please help. I'm just a beginner at this so use as many details as possibe.

Thanks.

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the card will fit but it has a 30SEC boot-up issue and the card stays on 3D Throttled clocks. and it will play the recent games at medium to high details.

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Will I need to do anything concerning BIOS?

BTW this is the card I am looking to buy- Here

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Will I need to do anything concerning BIOS?

BTW this is the card I am looking to buy- Here

I got a 9600M GT on my amilo pi1536 (same Hardware as your m5550)...

the alienware 1.19 and 2.07 will not work! so you will not be able to put more than 2g ram in your machine. the 30 sec boot delay could be solved with a little vbios mod - only 1 sec delay and no beep will remain and of course that the card could only operate in thrtl-mode at 3d...

you will have to modify your heatsink and put a copper shim or some high grade thermal compound between heatsink and gpu - i took the "high grade thermal material" from mxm-upgrade.com and i never got more than 90 degrees core temp! you asked for playing games... for example you could play crysis very smooth but only in medium settings - however very cool :)

so good luck for your replacement!

greetings from "good old germany", hope you understand my bad english :)

btw... the card you are looking for does not have the "screw nuts" to fix the heatsink! you will have to take these from your old card (they are soldered) or perhaps you could find some elsewhere

Edited by amiloware
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Hi fellow German user. I can only advise you to use copper and thermal paste instead of thermal pads.

The drop in temperature is significant. My 770M Quadro (also overclocked and undervolted to 0.89V with Nibitor) never goes over 80°C.

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Hi fellow German user. I can only advise you to use copper and thermal paste instead of thermal pads.

The drop in temperature is significant. My 770M Quadro (also overclocked and undervolted to 0.89V with Nibitor) never goes over 80°C.

I run a 3Dmark06 today and i got maximum 86 degrees, overclocked but not undervolted. i don't mind about the 6 degrees :) the thermal pads from mxm-upgrade are realy very good!

but of course you're right and in addition the copper isn't as expensive than the pads...

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I got a 9600M GT on my amilo pi1536 (same Hardware as your m5550)...

the alienware 1.19 and 2.07 will not work! so you will not be able to put more than 2g ram in your machine. the 30 sec boot delay could be solved with a little vbios mod - only 1 sec delay and no beep will remain and of course that the card could only operate in thrtl-mode at 3d...

you will have to modify your heatsink and put a copper shim or some high grade thermal compound between heatsink and gpu - i took the "high grade thermal material" from mxm-upgrade.com and i never got more than 90 degrees core temp! you asked for playing games... for example you could play crysis very smooth but only in medium settings - however very cool :P

so good luck for your replacement!

greetings from "good old germany", hope you understand my bad english :)

btw... the card you are looking for does not have the "screw nuts" to fix the heatsink! you will have to take these from your old card (they are soldered) or perhaps you could find some elsewhere

i'm also busy upgrading my amilo-pi 1536 and i'm also upgrading it with an 9600m gt but

you can't use v1.19 and 2.07!? and i just bought 4gb's of ram!! :)

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i'm also busy upgrading my amilo-pi 1536 and i'm also upgrading it with an 9600m gt but

you can't use v1.19 and 2.07!? and i just bought 4gb's of ram!! :)

hmm you can use it - but you will only get 4 bit colour depth :)

Edited by amiloware
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Thanks for your input guys! :)

I have 2 gb of RAM so thats good and I do have the screws with the card I have now.

I also think I know a place to buy thermal pads, but I do not know how to find out what version of BIOS I have.

Can someone explain to me how to do it?

Thanks again guys!

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Thanks for your input guys! :)

I have 2 gb of RAM so thats good and I do have the screws with the card I have now.

I also think I know a place to buy thermal pads, but I do not know how to find out what version of BIOS I have.

Can someone explain to me how to do it?

Thanks again guys!

you could press "esc" at the startup screen (your alienware logo) and you will see the version for a short time or you enter the bios by pressing the "f2" key (also at startup) and you see the version at the info page

...and of course you could use tools like "everest" in windows to check out the bios version

Edited by amiloware
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is there an fix for using 4gb ram with 9600m GT with either the v.1.19w and v2.07w???

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I have BIOS version 2.06! YEAH!!!!! :)

So does that mean that the card will work?

Will I be able to put the card in and start playing?

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the card will work on v2.06w but with v1.19w and 2.07w i got that 4 bit vga bullsh*t

could some make a fix for that??? :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alright so I finally got the card.

I applied thermal paste correctly on it, but every time I turn on the computer, it beeps and the screen remains black. :)

What do I do. I have 2.06 BIOS. PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!

Thanks

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The screen will turn on and the laptop will start to boot after 30 secs, you just

have to wait. To get rid of this delay and fix the clockrates you need to flash the card's bios

with a modified bios, of which there can be found plenty in this thread:

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No it's more than 30 sec. I've left it on for 20 min with a black screen. I've never gotten it to display anything.

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Then return the card. It's obviously not remotely compatible with your Alienware.

I've never heard of any trouble putting in an Acer card, and my 770M is even an HP spare part.

Most of the cards only differ marginally or only the Bios does.

Since your card doesn't even turn on, there's no way of putting another Bios on it.

Get a refund and try it with a different card.

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Guest Wangofrog

Then return the card. It's obviously not remotely compatible with your Alienware.

I've never heard of any trouble putting in an Acer card, and my 770M is even an HP spare part.

Most of the cards only differ marginally or only the Bios does.

Since your card doesn't even turn on, there's no way of putting another Bios on it.

Get a refund and try it with a different card.

Hi, new to this forum, if the fans spin up and nothing else then it sounds like your graphics card is not touching the heat sink, like there is a gap even a hairs width would make it not boot to the screen, or the paste is not of good quality or the shim is not thick enough to close the gap very tightly.

Don't use the pads they are no good for this job it has to be shim-n-paste

The beeps could be graphics card codes like Hp Dv2000,6000 and some others are 1 beep then 2 beeps and yours will have an code also.

I am about to be the proud owner of the same laptop but bare bones for me.

If you think I'm wrong then that's OK but don't abuse me baby
Me after i got the house in the divorce,don't you just love a good attourney.
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Thanks wangofrog for your info. That could very well be the reason it's not working, cause my fan does start to spin.

When I use copper shims, do I apply thermal paste, then a copper shim, then thermal paste again?

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  • 1 year later...

I got amilo pi 1536 and i had the classic problem with the gpu ati x1400.I bought x1600 but it isnt recognized from the system .What bios i have to put in my laptop so the amilo pi will recognize x1600. I would be really grateful for your help, i am completely desperate.

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