4850 in a m5750!

[protivakid]

I just wanted to drop by to say Yippee ki yay, Mr. Falcon! I got a 4850m to work on the internal display in my older m5750!

Now lets see if it stays cool enough w/ the stock cooler designed to run an x1800.

Updates to come over the week!

Update 1
Running at stock clocks will most likely NOT be an option for this laptop because of its original cooling design. The card seems to idle at 50C which is not terrible. Right now I brought the GPU down to 375 and the Memory down to 630 (~25% decrease from stock) and the temp seems much more stable. I am going to work my way up from here and see where I can get this thing

Update 2
Still working on this. I ran into some issues with the heatsink, mainly me accidentally bending it and making it into a nice paperweight. I have the new one now so hoping to have time over the next week to continue this.

Update 3
Heatsink has been modified to fit the "cityscape" of the new card. Applied some AS5 and doing the 200hour burn in before really pushing it. Still have the clocks on the card down 25% for now. I modified the fan to run at the 5V 100% power all the time to keep things cool. The card seems to be idling around 50C. Pic below of the card in the notebook before the heatsink went on.

Update 4
Burn in almost done. Noticed the DC coils on the card are getting very hot so I ordered some small heatsinks that I plan to slap on top of them. Will do some real testing after the burn in.

Update 5
So I am still running the unit at a 25% underclock but have finally tried some games. I ran one shooter called "singularity" and got a 10fps increase at the start of the first level compared to my previous mxm Type II 4650 1GB DDR2. I also ran 3DMark Vantage and got a score of P4074 which was double my original score of P2121. I am still working on increasing the clocks / monitoring temps. Also these scores are with a T7400 and 2GB of ram. I have a new 4gb kit but since I originally tested the 4650 with 2gb, I wanted to keep it the same for comparisons.

Update 6
Added a second fan blowing directly on the graphics card (pics soon) and bumped the clocks back up to 100% (stock). Ran 3DMark Vantage and got a score of P5112.

Update 7
And.... brick wall :/. So I was noticing that some of the games seem to stutter for a moment and drop down in frames but then go back up. Knowing on a desktop this usually means you need a bigger power supply I decided to put a meter on mine. Its rated for 120W and sure enough was putting out 123W, 3W over its rating. Please see post #5

Update 8
Lenovo 20V 230 watt adapter on the way! Lets see how this goes. Either it should fix my stuttering problem or I will fry my m5750 . Added new pics of the 2nd fan I added and the modified bottom panel I made.

Update 9
Lenovo adapter is in. The laptop will draw ~135 watts at full load which the 230 watt adapter handles fine. I had a chance to use the laptop in an old fashion LAN party and it did well. Temps through the night stayed under 80C. The laptop was hot to the touch but it did this even with the old card. Most games ran well but Skyrim & DeusEx:HR still stutter some. From reading this seems like a common problem w/ AMD cards and these games. The frames will be at 60 but for 1/2 a second the drop down and then go back up. Most other games such as StarCraft 2, Tribes:Ascend, Serious Sam HD, Unreal Tournament 3 all ran fine. For the first time ever my processor is now my bottleneck.

I have an i7 desktop I normally use for gaming and an iPad for browsing the internet on the couch so this laptop had been collecting dust for 2 years since I graduated college. It's nice that this thing can serve a purpose for a few more years. As a daily use laptop I don't know if I can recommend cramming in a card that runs this hot and is this power hungry. I am sure battery life is terrible, the thing heats up easily, the primary fan / 2nd one I added run at 100% all the time making a lot of noise, and it requires a power adapter I had to splice. Though, as a quick computer to grab and bring over a friends house vs lugging the large desktop it is AWESOME!

[infowarrior]

Very nice keep the thread updated with progress! Good luck with modding!

[protivakid]

Been a month and I have done a handful of updates so... bump

[Mr. Fox]

Looking good...

[protivakid]

It looks like the new 4850 draws A LOT more power than any of my previous mxm cards. Well I am now on the hunt for a bigger power adapter that will work for my laptop. I know the volts have to be the same (20V) but that the amps can be higher giving me more watts to run the card. There is a lenovo adapter out there that has plenty of power with 20V & 230 watts. The problem is that the tip has the dimensions of 6mm by 3.5mm where as my alienware tip is 5mm by 2.5mm.

Any thoughts on if the Lenovo tip would fit snug enough? I don't really want to splice cables together.

[Mr. Fox]

Do you know if the pre-Dell Alienware systems have the proprietary AC adapter that communicates with the motherboard EC? If it does, that might prevent the Lenovo adapter from working properly.

[protivakid]

The adapter seems pretty generic. Its a regular DC plug not the special "4 pin" adapter found on the 7700 or the M17 laptops. I was looking at using a m9750 but the voltage is 19V not 20V so that option was out.

[katalin_2003]

Do you know if the pre-Dell Alienware systems have the proprietary AC adapter that communicates with the motherboard EC? If it does, that might prevent the Lenovo adapter from working properly.

The pre-Dell models didn't

[protivakid]

Lenovo adapter is in! Ran out of electrical tape lol. Picking some up and hopefully completing this today!

[makatec]

From what laptop this card came from? It is really nice you get it work.