The Acer Guy

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1. Morris Lee wrote, on December 9th, 2008:

   

   Hello there, this is a test post, also like to say that I like the new site

2. Attila wrote, on December 22nd, 2008:

   

   I just bought a geforce 9600m gt videocard with acer bios inside to upgrade my Acer 5920g. I could’nt get it work at all, the screen is doesn’t boot. Please tell me. Whats the problem, and what to do???

3. Morris Lee wrote, on December 22nd, 2008:

   

   remove the card, and put your old one back, go to acer’s website and download latest BIOS for your laptop, once BIOS updated, then try the 9600m GT again.

4. Attila wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   I have the newest BIOS (v1.3813), but the problem is still exist.

5. Morris Lee wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   does your old card work with the machine?

6. Morris Lee wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   oh btw, I do know for a fact that Aspire 5930 model comes with 9600m GT’s, but I don’t think it will be compatible to a 5920. Which card did you upgrade from?

7. Attila wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   From 8600m GT to 9600m GT. It’s both of MXM II with Acer Vbios. My old card does work well, but sometime cannot recognize the supported nvidia driver. I need to install it manually.
   -I think the same as you… This notebook never will be compatible with geforce 9600m GT untill they don’t make a much better BIOS.
   It’s has too many trouble.
   Thanks for your help. All the best.

8. Morris Lee wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   if you can, hold on to the card a little longer, I am contacting someone who has the resources to both a Acer 9600m GT and an aspire 5920.(he might be able to test the compatibility for you)

   However, I must tell you, I upgraded to an ATi Mobility HD3650

9. Attila wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

   

   That’s would be very great! I’ll wait for your response. He might be able to resolve this compatibility . I believe you could done it, because I just found a site about MXM upgrades: http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Table.html

   Many Thanks & Merry Xmas!

10. Morris Lee wrote, on December 23rd, 2008:

    

    Just got his email, no it does not work. must be a bios problem he says.

    Merry Christmas to you too!

11. Attila wrote, on December 24th, 2008:

    

    It’s was pretty fast… Thanks for your time.

    I must tell you I am soo disapointed in this machine, and I’ll never buy again Acer products.
    I’m sure. Acer are only interested in selling new notebooks without taking care of current owners. Forexample why they made ACER 5930 with only small differences and why they did’nt change only BIOS in ACER 5920???
    I don’t recommend ACER notebooks to nobody.

12. Morris Lee wrote, on December 24th, 2008:

    

    @Attila,

    It is not just Acer that is very limited, MXM modules are at a very early stage at a consumer level. ALL brands has trouble in compatibility.(Macs are worse)

    Don’t get your hopes down for Acer, it is because MXM are not standardized yet.

13. Attila wrote, on December 25th, 2008:

    

    I having problem also with memmory… this machine can’t recognize 4gb memmory. 1giga missing always, and the cooling sistem is very poor. When I play game I need to take off the back side:D

14. Attila wrote, on December 25th, 2008:

    

    do you think your Ati card is faster than geforce 8600m gt?

15. Morris Lee wrote, on December 26th, 2008:

    

    you need to take off the back cover? you mean the bottom cover?? shouldn’t be that hot. the 3650 needs some video bios tweaking, like down volting the core, cause the card is too hot for the heatsink provided for the 8600 and slightly faster then the 8600m GT.

    As for the memory, you need to have Windows 64 Bit to use ALL 4 GB of memory, if you have 32bit, you can only use about 3.3GB of the memory.

16. Zach wrote, on December 27th, 2008:

    

    my acer aspire 5920 came with a graphics media accelerator x3100. ive been told it cant be replaced. is this true? if not can you recommend a suitable GPU?

17. Morris Lee wrote, on December 27th, 2008:

    

    I am sorry, no you can’t, you don’t have a MXM slot

18. Zach wrote, on December 28th, 2008:

    

    darn. payed up £500 too.

19. danny wrote, on December 30th, 2008:

    

    Hi , is there any shops you can buy the laptop graphics cards from, ive had a search but cant find any.

    I have a 5920g with ati 3450 installed, but wanted a 8600gt or ati 3650 preferably.

    thanks

    danny

20. Ronald wrote, on December 30th, 2008:

    

    I have heard the 5920 has a Nvidia G86 GPU, which has heating problem. Was it true?

    I just purchased a new one a few days ago…Please advise.

21. Morris Lee wrote, on December 30th, 2008:

    

    @danny,

    I have some cards available for sale, 8600m gt(I fixed this one) 8600m gs(report to have possible same problem, but no one has any problems with it, neither is the 8400, they are both G86)

    only problem in 8600m GT is downclocking, but I fixed this one up in the BIOS

    I can also order HD3650, but they get way too hot in 5920

    @Ronald,

    Relax, your G86 is fine, no user has report problems from what I have know of, only G84 has “downclocking” from drivers, that is it. but can be fixed by modding the video card BIOS

22. micter softy wrote, on January 4th, 2009:

    

    - morris lee -

    sorry, this is off topic, but you really seam to know your stuff.

    i have an aspire 5920 ( with the geforce 8600m gs )

    it doesnt matter what i try, just cant get it to tell me when power is low. the machine just shuts down when battery is done with no warning. the only thing i can do is press the empower button occasionally to manually check the battery level. have contacted acer but they are not exactly helpful asking me to return machine to factory settings. it’s only 2 weeks old and nothing has been done to it ?

    thanks in advance

    softy

23. Morris Lee wrote, on January 4th, 2009:

    

    @micter softy,

    Sounds like your battery has worn out already, must be a defective battery. My old battery does that, but it is like 1.5 years old now. however, you can check the powersettings in windows, make the warning a little earlier, that way you don’t have to keep on checking.

24. mister softy wrote, on January 5th, 2009:

    

    cheers mate,

    the battery actually lasts 1.5 to 2 hours depending. the real problem is i just don’t know how to set up warnings when it’s nearly done ?

25. Ronald wrote, on January 5th, 2009:

    

    I assume my 8600GS is a G86.

    Are you suggesting the GPU over-heat problem is only limited to certain batch of G84 and G86? And Acer happens to use the good batch?

    So my 8600GS is fine bone stock without tweaking? That’s great!

    Ronald

26. Morris Lee wrote, on January 5th, 2009:

    

    not necessary “overheating” but the material itself can’t with stand the heat created during processing, what you could do, use the NEWEST driver from laptopvideo2go.com and download 3dmark06, run the SAME scene over at least 60 times, check if the frame rate drops significantly, if it does, means it downclocked, the it is “defective” contact acer for the video card replacement.

27. 5920G! wrote, on January 12th, 2009:

    

    my acer aspire 5920g came with an ATI HD3470 Mobility radeon 256mb(upto 1535mb hypermemory) first of all i dont know how to use the 1535 mb hypermemory it only shows 256 mb in all games. and second can i upgrade to 8800M GTX or 9800M GTX ? or is 8600M GT the final upgrade?.
    PS. i dont want to replace my laptop as i purchased this laptop just a month back

28. Morris Lee wrote, on January 12th, 2009:

    

    @5920G!

    8600m GT is the max you can get

29. djrh wrote, on January 19th, 2009:

    

    I have few questions regarding the upgrade.

    1. What kind of issues have you had with your 8600 GT? I am asking because mine gets extremely hot even if I am not playing games or the laptop is idling so I am considering a replacement. Mine is a stock 512mb 8600 GT.

    2. I assume that I could upgrade to a 3650. How about 4850 or 4870? Would they fit in a 5920g?

    3. How do you know if the video card has ACER bios?

    Thanks.

30. Morris Lee wrote, on January 19th, 2009:

    

    @djrh,

    What driver are you using? you can upgrade to 3650, not 4850 or 4870(both MXM type 3 for sure) 8600m gt downclocks in games, that was the problem.

    what do you mean by extremely hot? outside the case? you should clean your fans.

    please use ntunes to check your temperatures, and report back.

    you can only know if the seller specified that it has Acer BIOS or it comes straight from Acer

31. jonathan wrote, on January 21st, 2009:

    

    hey acer guy….

    i need to reset my bios to default status…i am attempting to take out the cmos battery and let stand for a short time …need more assistance please.

    jonathan

32. Morris Lee wrote, on January 21st, 2009:

    

    @jonathan,

    I don’t think there is a CMOS battery when i opened my 5920 last time, even taking it out probably won’t remove the password. what you can try is to put it in the freezer, that seems to work for SOME people, make sure you put it in a Zipplock bag or some sort – i can’t guarantee this method.

33. Steve wrote, on February 12th, 2009:

    

    @Morris Lee:

    Hello, im looking for a Geforce 8600M GT / G84-600-A2 (G84M) 256MB with Lg-Bios for a
    Lg s 900.

    Do you have any Ideas – where i can get one? ( the Cards with Acer- Bios dont work )

    Regards Steve

34. Morris Lee wrote, on February 13th, 2009:

    

    @Steve,

    look here http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?page=1&architecture=&manufacturer=&model=8600M+GT&interface=&memSize=0
    even though no LG, but try nvidia one?

35. enver wrote, on February 28th, 2009:

    

    Hello,

    I have a quistion. I have a acer aspire 5920G t7500, 8600GT, 2 gb ram. I want to upgrade my ram to 4 gb and upgrade my processor to a p version. I remember when i bought this laptob i saw by the specifications max 2 gb ram. Are the parts that i want to upgrade possible? Thanx.

36. Morris Lee wrote, on March 1st, 2009:

    

    @enver,

    I am not sure the top CPU you can upgrade to, but I know you can upgrade to ATi Mobility HD3650(slightly faster then 8600) if you want an HD3650, let me know, I will hook you up with the right guy with the right card that will fit the laptop.

    The ram will work to full 4 GB at 667MHz, best if you get a pair for dual channel effect along with a 64 Bit OS to take full advantage of 4GB.

37. enver wrote, on March 1st, 2009:

    

    Thanks for youre answer, im not planning on upgrading my videocard but maybe in the future. I want to buy the folowing ram parts http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/219300/kingston-kta-mb800k2-4g.html#tab:prices
    are the parts compitable with my notebooke? and if i replace the ram must i change something to the bios?

38. Morris Lee wrote, on March 1st, 2009:

    

    @enver,

    it looks like DDR2 800MHz models, it will only work at 667MHz in 5920. but it will work.

    you don’t have to change anything in BIOS, but for windows to take full advantage of all 4GB and up, you need 64bit

39. enver wrote, on March 2nd, 2009:

    

    Thanks for youre answer. http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/170697/kingston-kta-mb667k2-4g.html this is the one with 667 mhz. It says (SODIMM), 5 and by the 800 mhz its says 4.5. Is 5 suitable for my notebook. And also if i want to open my notebook i screw al the 9 screws open but i cant get it open some places go open but i must force it and i am scared that i wil break it can you give me some quide. Thanks.

40. Morris Lee wrote, on March 3rd, 2009:

    

    @Enver,

    you open it from the little nail hole that is between the 2 most centered screws at the bottom of the laptop.

    As for the 5, I am not sure, I am not very familiar with the cache timings etc.

41. Kancer wrote, on March 3rd, 2009:

    

    well i have decided to replace the stock thermal paste on my 5920g, however, i was suprised to see that acer used [B]therma pads[/B] intead of thermal paste

    im even more suprised to see that there are thermal pads all over my gpu and cpu

    heres a rough picture of how it looks like

    http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9881/5920g.jpg

    silver color denotes where thermal pads where installed

    the weird thing is that the copper plate of the heat sink only touches the parts of the picture with the orange circle

    should i put AC MX-2 on the areas where i found thermal pads or just on the areas where the copper plates of the heat sink touches the core

42. jacob wrote, on March 11th, 2009:

    

    Hi ive just bought an AS5920g with dedicated 256mb from an ati 3470. I know there are loads of differences between this model and the one in the guide, so I was just wondering if there was anyway to upgrade it to a 3650 or if there was any point upgrading to an 8600. Any reply would be greatly appreciated,thanks.

43. Morris Lee wrote, on March 11th, 2009:

    

    @jacob,

    it really is entirely up to how much you want to spend on gaming, I believe you have MXM aswell, you can upgrade to HD3650 too. 8600m GT version is screwy, 8600m GS is more stable. but I prefer ATi now

44. jacob wrote, on March 12th, 2009:

    

    cool, thanks for the reply, if I do upgrade i think ill get a 3650 but I wasnt sure if there would be enough power, the 3470 needs 12w and the 3650 30w i think. also i just wondered what id have to do about the thermal stuff to. thank you

45. jacob wrote, on March 12th, 2009:

    

    sorry, just another question, would there be any point upgrading to a 3650 with 256 ram and would it be possible to get it for less that £160?

    thanks

46. Morris Lee wrote, on March 13th, 2009:

    

    @jacob,

    For thermal, make sure you have all 4 stock thermal pads for the RAM chip, these SHOULD be able to handle it. As for the core, it gets pretty hot, I had to down volt mine slightly, and i didn’t have the stock thermal pads, so I had to downclock the memory to 700Mhz (original 750Mhz), the one I got is kind of overclocked (680/750mhz core/mem vs normal 600/700Mhz)

    HD3650 uses 35w

    I got mine for about $200 CAD, just did a quick calc, is about £110~ish, I know the guy, he’s stuff is directly from acer, and his HD3650’s is confirmed to work in my 5920G, so it is safe to buy it from him. if you want, I can hook you up so you don’t have to go through his ebay store.

47. Morris Lee wrote, on March 13th, 2009:

    

    oh and yeah, the price is just an estimation, you have to contact him for the new price, if he still has it in stock….

48. Skid wrote, on March 13th, 2009:

    

    @Enver, did you get any joy dropping the CAS latency with the 800MHz RAM?

    and

    @Morris With the Vista 32 limit on RAM addressing, what happens with HyperMemory?

    I’ve got an 8600GS with 256MB & upto 1GB taken from the system. If I get 4GB RAM is the Hypermemory taken from the 3GB that Vista can use?

49. Morris Lee wrote, on March 14th, 2009:

    

    @Skid,

    I really don’t know what happens, but I have heard of this similar inquiries on the same topic, but my assumption is that it will take the RAM from the RAM available to Vista since i believe it is software controlled by Windows.

50. jacob wrote, on March 14th, 2009:

    

    Thanks for the reply, it was very helpful.

    The cheapest I could find on ebay was for £150, but Im not planning on buying this just now so if you could just tell me his ebay name it would be great. Also what shop can you get the pads from?
    Thanks

51. Morris Lee wrote, on March 15th, 2009:

    

    @jacob,

    he acutally has 2 left, but somehow it says 6 available on ebay, it is listed here

    http://cgi.ebay.com/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650-MXM-Graphics-Card_W0QQitemZ170279943375QQihZ007QQcategoryZ74957QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

    but with shipping, I think it is just little over your budget, but I can say it is a safe buy since it worked in my 5920. you never know if the other ones on ebay has a BIOS that is not compatible to your machine.

52. jacob wrote, on March 15th, 2009:

    

    Great thanks

53. Morris Lee wrote, on March 15th, 2009:

    

    @jacob,

    let him know I referred him to you.

54. Sander wrote, on March 24th, 2009:

    

    hey Morris,

    First of all, thanks for this page and your help.

    I own an Acer 5720G with an ATI HD 2300 installed (MXM II). I don’t know, but I am guessing that the laptop model is somewhat similar to a 5920G. I was hoping you could answer some questions:

    - Should it be possible to replace this card with a HD 3650 (MXM II)? I see you mentioned some heat problems (although you also mentioned you are using a HD3650 in yours), are these problems known to apply to 5720G laptops?

    - I may have access to a HD 3650 that was taken from a HP 8530w laptop – so probably no Acer bios on it. Could you refer me to a website that clarifies this “blind bios flashing”?

    - Since the HD3650 uses HyperMemory in its original HP laptop, should it be able to do so in mine?

    Thanks in advance.

55. Morris Lee wrote, on March 24th, 2009:

    

    @Sander,

    It probably will work if you get the acer BIOS version. Blind flash is very risky, there is a possibility that it will not even work to the point where you can use a blind flash method.

    Couple posts above i have a link to a HD3650 that will work with 5920, it should with 5720 too, that is if your laptop BIOS is updated.

    good luck!

56. Mitsumassa wrote, on April 28th, 2009:

    

    Hi, i want to know if I can do an upgrade on Aspire 5920? Not the Aspire 5920G. I want to put in a 8600mGT.

    Thanks

57. Morris Lee wrote, on April 28th, 2009:

    

    @Mitsumassa,

    If you have intel X3100, then you are out of luck. if it has a HD3470 or HD3650, then you can switch to 8600m gt.

58. Jacob wrote, on May 21st, 2009:

    

    Hello again

    Sorry to bother you again. The price of cards on ebay seem to have come down so I might well choose to upgrade soon, here are a few and your thoughts on them would be very much appreciated.

    This is very cheap but there is no info
    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170332430420&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX_Stores&refitem=170279943375&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&refwidgettype=osi_widget&_trksid=p284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%252BP%252BS%252BIA%26itu%3DFICS%252BUA%252BUCI%252BIA%26otn%3D4%26ps%3D10

    This is cheap too, but it looks different, there is little info, and he says it came from an hp:

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400050788378&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX_Stores&refitem=170279943375&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&refwidgettype=osi_widget&_trksid=p284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%252BP%252BS%252BIA%26itu%3DFICS%252BUA%252BUCI%252BIA%26otn%3D4%26ps%3D10

    This one is more expensive and the rating is 100% but like the previous 2 doesn’t say much about cooling:

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250419589045&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX_Stores&refitem=170279943375&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&refwidgettype=osi_widget&_trksid=p284.m263&_trkparms=algo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%252BP%252BS%252BIA%26itu%3DFICS%252BUA%252BUCI%252BIA%26otn%3D4%26ps%3D10

    I’m drawn to this one because there is no currency conversion and it states that a heat think is included:

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATI-HD3650-HD-3650-DDR3-256MB-M86-MXM-II-Vedio-VGA-Card_W0QQitemZ120413857170QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW?hash=item120413857170&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72:1683|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

    All the 8600s on ebay are about the same price so I’m guessing its better to get a 3650, I’m still not so sure about how I would sort out the heating stuff so could you tell me any more about that?
    Also the earlier link shows a price of $499 has he got anything cheaper left?
    Thank you very very much

59. Morris Lee wrote, on May 22nd, 2009:

    

    @Jacob,

    uhm, the links are dead links….. anyways, I suppose he upped the prices to 499, cooling is only necessary if you get the ones with core clock at 680Mhz and memory at 750MHz, lowering the voltage and the ram to 700MHz will fix the problem of heat.

60. nobb1x wrote, on May 22nd, 2009:

    

    Hello, i have a TravelMate 5720G (not Aspire) it has mxm2 slot and an ATI HD2400XT (defective,random pixels and stripes) i want to change it,i’ve wroted to Acer and they told me “no support for these things”, not fair!! i’ve got a spare 8600mGT acer bios and tried to replace but my laptop beeps and no video, i’ve tried the card on a Aspire 5920G and it works flawlessy, so it is not defective. I need a new card!!! what kind i can buy for my laptop??? thank you

61. Morris Lee wrote, on May 22nd, 2009:

    

    @nobb1x,

    you may need a BIOS update on the laptop’s motherboard, go to acer’s support site (euro site) and download the latest one, but read the info very carefully.

62. nobb1x wrote, on May 22nd, 2009:

    

    thanks for the answer, i have the latest, 1.35 bios already,i’ve tried many,including old releases, but none seem support the card i got. i’ve returned it back now.
    Maybe this model(TM 57920G) only support ATI cards, but what models, other than the hd2400, i don’t know.Before to get another card i like to know if possible

63. nosey wrote, on May 30th, 2009:

    

    When I bought my Acer Aspire 5920 I was told that it had an nvidia graphics card. I was surprised when I realised that it actually had a rubbish that won’t play my HD videos that I’ve recorded well at all.

    Can I replace the intel one with a half decent nvidia one?

64. Morris Lee wrote, on May 30th, 2009:

    

    @nosey,

    Sorry, the intel editions does NOT come with a MXM slot, upgrade is almost impossible

65. Lisa wrote, on June 8th, 2009:

    

    Hi Morris
    I have an Acer 5920g with the Nvidia 8600GT (256mb). I bought the sims3 to try but it keeps randomly crashing and I have to shutdown the notebook each time.
    I’ve tried upgrading the directx, and installed the latest nvidia driver for that card but it’s still doing it. I have the basic 32bit system with 2gb ram, thinking of upgrading to 4gb.
    Can you suggest anything or is the card just not up to it?

    Thankies,
    Lisa

66. Peter wrote, on June 9th, 2009:

    

    Well upgrading to 3 GB of ram would help. 4 GB would be a waste as a 32-bit operating system can’t use it all. Make sure you’re getting your drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com for best gaming performance. I own the 5920G-6313 and Sims 3 is playing just peachy with it.

67. Lisa wrote, on June 9th, 2009:

    

    Thanks Pete

    Which nvidia driver do you use? I upgraded to the 8.15.0011.8585 and its still crashing…

68. Morris Lee wrote, on June 10th, 2009:

    

    @Lisa,

    Please use driver sweeper to clean out all the nvidia drivers, reboot the laptop then install one of the driver from this page

    http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=84

69. Trace wrote, on June 24th, 2009:

    

    Hey, I have an Acer Aspire 5920 with a Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family as my GPU. Can I upgrade this? If so, what card do you recommend(I’d like it to be capable of running Oblivion and Crysis) Please Reply

70. Morris Lee wrote, on June 24th, 2009:

    

    @Trace,

    No, you can not upgrade it, you don’t have the MXM slot for it

71. emman wrote, on June 27th, 2009:

    

    hey morris,

    First of all, thanks for this page and your help.

    I own an acer aspire 5720G with an ati mobility radeon hd 2300 vista driver 366 MB but i can’t find the ATI video card software for the driver.

    Can you please tell where to download the correct ATI driver program because currently the driver installed is only its vista driver but the ATI software wherein you can adjust furthermore the screen resolution is not there.

    Before it was there but the moment i reformat the system using acer e-recovery command the ATI logo in the desktop anymore.

    I hope u understand what i meant.. coz i’m not really an IT expert guy…

    Thanks again for the help… many many thanks.

72. Morris Lee wrote, on June 28th, 2009:

    

    @emman

    bookmark this http://www.donotargue.com/ XD

73. Undertaxxx wrote, on July 4th, 2009:

    

    Hi Morris Lee.

    First of all, great site and guides/reviews.
    Secondly, nice to see someone actually posting pictures of what he/she is doing.

    I have a 5920G myself:
    -T7500 @ 2.2~
    -GeForce 9500m GS

    I bought some I.C. diamond (thermal paste) and will be applying it soon.
    Today i opened up my 5920G only to find myself struggling to remove the heatsink and gpu (card). I’m not quite sure why I’m not able to do so. Maybe I’m missing some screws? Or maybe I’m beeing too gentle?
    Also when I’m applying thermal paste, do you reckon it’s safe to do so? And will it be alot better then the default thermal pad?

    Kind regards,
    - David

74. Morris Lee wrote, on July 4th, 2009:

    

    @Undertaxxx,

    yes, applying thermal paste should be better than the thermal pads, but for the core, you have ot make sure you apply plenty to fill the entire gap

75. nev wrote, on July 21st, 2009:

    

    hey there Morris,

    thanks for sharing your knowledge – this small
    site is one of the rare good ressources for
    every aspire 5920 owner

    so *thumbs up*

    now to my question – im aleady looking arround
    for better termal solutions since a few month

    the aspire gets very hot after some time of
    needed performance and even im idle. if a unix
    system is used the fan is already at full
    performance when running a terminal session
    without x (yes also with installed termal
    management software, maybe a problem with
    monitoring the gpu temperature correctly)

    but im away from my point: i simply wanted
    to ask if you already figured out a solution
    to optimize the temperature without downvolt
    the gpu. maybe a “fan pad” to put below the
    aspire? but they look very crappy and test
    results arent that good. or maybe theres
    a more silent fan available which gets better
    temperature handling if gpu and cpu is used
    with termal paste and not pads?

    alrealdy looking foreward to your reply

    br
    nev

76. Morris Lee wrote, on July 21st, 2009:

    

    @nev,

    Well, what I did was I removed some of the plastic covering that is taped to some of the ventilation area such as the ones just over the RAM location, I also removed the extra filtering layer tapped to the vent right where the fan is. hope this helps

77. nev wrote, on July 23rd, 2009:

    

    mmh – i already did this simple improvements.
    Im still looking for the big deal of cooling
    maybe with a hardware change and was hoping
    for a hint in that direction.

    But thanks for your reply!

    There are simply not enough people modding
    the Aspire ;P

78. ACerManiAC wrote, on July 29th, 2009:

    

    Hello, i have an Acer Aspire 5738, can i do this mod to my notebook?

79. nobb1x wrote, on July 31st, 2009:

    

    referring to a my old post here, i got finally a card working on the Travelmate 5720G with bios 3.50
    the card is a ATI Radeon HD3650 512Mb ddr2 and it has worked OTB.
    Some infos:
    PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9591&SUBSYS_011F1025
    http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/z6eyb/

    It has Acer vbios.

    it outperform my old hd2400xt with a score 5.5/5.1 on Vista (gpu/mem)

    i hope this is useful for someone.

80. Anonymous wrote, on August 7th, 2009:

    [...] [...]

81. Paulus wrote, on August 26th, 2009:

    

    Hi Morris, interresting guide. Very appreciate if you upload the image again, coz I cab’t see the photo. Thanks

82. Morris Lee wrote, on August 26th, 2009:

    

    @Everyone,

    I reuploaded the pictures, cheers!

83. Paulus setyo wrote, on August 27th, 2009:

    

    Thank Morris for the pictures.
    My laptop VGA is dead, probably by overheat. I use 8600 GT before. I planning to replace with radeon 4650.
    I read on Internet, someone had sucessfully replaced 8600GT with Radeon 4650.
    I have a question, what if the new VGA do not have acer preloaded bios? what do you mean by blind flash and how to do it, Thanks

84. Matt V. wrote, on September 5th, 2009:

    

    Hi. I’ve had my acer aspire 5920g for almost 2 years now… about a month ago i had its fan cleaned and air blasted and windows reinstalled… everything works perfectly for the most part, but a few weeks back the graphics (8600m gt) card started heating up…
    now while playing a game like prototype it lasts for a while and then the computer freezes, due to overheating…
    i’ve vent through several nvidia drivers and the rpoblem still persists, only with the current one the onset of the problem is delayed for about 45 min, 10-15 give or take, after starting the game…

    any advice would be much appretiated…
    also, someone mentioned taking of the bottom cover? will that help, or is that even safe?

85. Dave wrote, on September 11th, 2009:

    

    Hi
    I have an Acer Aspire 7720g with a mxm gforce 9300g in it and would like to upgrade to an ATI 3650m could you link me to to someone who sells them with Acer bios pre installed thanks

86. Max wrote, on September 22nd, 2009:

    

    Hi acerguy,

    I have got acer 5920 a year ago, It is extremely slow when I play computer game. My computer is shown as below:
    -Intel Core2Duo processor T5450
    (1.66GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
    -Up to 358MB Mobile intel Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
    -2GB DDR2
    What can I upgrade to get the best performance?
    And can I buy the GPU from you?

87. Morris Lee wrote, on September 22nd, 2009:

    

    @Max,

    No, I am sorry, you do not have the MXM slot for the X3100 model, that is probably the best you can get out of your laptop.

    you can only upgrade to 4GB and a better CPU, but that is not going to help much about the games.

88. awaiting mw2 wrote, on September 30th, 2009:

    

    Hi Morris,
    Fantastic page, I’m awaiting the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and was wondering, do you think the HD 3650 will be enough to run MW2 as my HD 3470 just about runs MW1.
    The specs of my 5920g are:
    -T5750 duel core processor
    -4GB Ram
    -250 GB HDD
    -Blu ray drive
    -ATI HD 3470 Graphics card.

    Think its the top spec 5920g AFAIK

    Thanks

89. Morris Lee wrote, on September 30th, 2009:

    

    Call of Duty MW2 should be about the same performance as the original one. Since it is a cross plateform game, if MW runs on the xbox and your laptop runs MW just fine, then MW2 will work just about the same.

    There aren’t many graphics improvements I know of, only more changes in game play

    Upgrading to the HD3650 will not benefit you much in games performance, plus, you risk compatibility issues too.

90. Johnny wrote, on October 2nd, 2009:

    

    Hi,

    I also own 5920G for about 2 years. Just recently my GPU died due to overheat (most likely). I own gforce 8600GT with 256 MB RAM. On ebay I saw a bunch of same cards but with twice as much memory as my dead one. Could this be problematic if i install a 512 MB version?
    But since many are reporting various problems with Nvidia cards I might also buy ATi card, still haven’t decided yet.

    What about repairing current graphic card? Anyone tried it? I also own XboX360 and got RROD (Red ring of death, VGA card broke down). I fixed it by using a “cooking” method, meaning that i wrapped it in a bunch of towels and left it on for about an hour or so until it shut itself down due to overheat. It started to work after the hot treatment . Could sonthing like this work on my dead geforce?

    Regards,
    Johnny

91. Morris Lee wrote, on October 3rd, 2009:

    

    @Johnny,

    I would NOT recommend another 8600, they are all having problems like that, you can however, try a HD3650.

92. Dan wrote, on October 7th, 2009:

    

    Hi,

    Could someone please help. I have a 5920G with fried motherboard. I have attained a used motherboard from an Acer 5920 (not 5920G) on eBay. The 5920 apparently has onboard graphic and has no MXM slot so when I replaced my motherboard I could not use my NVidia 8600 graphics card. When I have installed the replacement motherboard and hooked everything up the laptop appears to boot fine (all lights on, no beeping noises etc.). However the screen is totally black – it does not come on at all – not even during boot. I imagine it is a graphics problem but not sure what. Can someone please help?

    Thanks

    maidans42

    p.s. on my replacement motherboard, where the MXM board would be on a 5920G, there is a spot where it looks like the MXM slot could be attached. From the indentations on the protective plastics that you have on the motherboard it looks like some component was fitted in that position. Is there any possibility that I am missing a connector or motherboard add-on piece?

    pps. I have the service manual for the Acer 5920g (dedicated graphics card) but am not able to find the service manual for the Acer 5920 (on board graphics). Can anyone help with this issue either?

93. Dan wrote, on October 7th, 2009:

    

    p.s. I have uploaded some photos to illustrate what I am talking about –

    http://www.snapdrive.net/files/601388/acer_motherboard_graphics1.JPG

    http://www.snapdrive.net/files/601388/acer_motherboard_graphics2.JPG

94. Morris Lee wrote, on October 7th, 2009:

    

    @Dan,

    you sure you plugged everything in correctly? the only “difference” between 5920 and the 5920G is that the 5920G’s “G” identifying it as “Glossy” for the lid. so technically, the board should work with each other.

    As for the MXM, some models of the 5920G does not have the slot either, where they were equipped with Intel X3100 instead, the MXM and the MXM required components are not soldered on for the intel version. so technically, you are not missing any part to make it work, but now you have an 8600 sitting on the side and have to stick with X3100.

    Only few things I can think of that maybe problematic if you didn’t install them correctly are the following:

    CPU/CPU socket(make sure you use the flat head screw driver to tighten it.

    Memory (just use one stick at a time, to check if one of them is broken or not.)

    Last check, make sure the fan is plugged in

95. Dan wrote, on October 8th, 2009:

    

    Hi Morris, thanks for your reply.

    Yes I have seen documentation that suggests both 5920 board types should be compatible.

    Hopefully, as you suggest, it is simply a connection problem so I will recheck that. The only thing is that I would expect the laptop to beep or something if there was a loose connection.

    I uploaded some photos and explained the concern that I had about the place where the MXM slot would be on the following blog. Maybe u could check it out quickly please – it illustrates very clearly my concern.

    The link is:

    http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=6257053&posted=1#post6257053

    And the last 3 posts by Danny99 are mine.

    I would very much appreciate your opinion.

    Thanks again & I’ll let you know how I get on.

    Dan

96. Morris Lee wrote, on October 8th, 2009:

    

    @Dan,

    That is perfectly normal, it is just that the board you bought is equipped with the intel graphics, that is why the MXM is not available.

    If I recall correctly, quite a few people with 5920G with intel X3100 were questioning this specific problem since they have a horrible graphics performance and want to upgrade.

    But I think it is more important to get your laptop running first, you sure the board you about is fully working and not defective?

97. amidose wrote, on October 19th, 2009:

    

    Hi
    Can 5920g use radeon hd 4650 card?

98. Maichel wrote, on October 19th, 2009:

    

    Hi!

    I have acer aspire 7720G, with 8600m gt 512mb. Can you tell me where i can find 9600m gt card instead? I’ve been lookin allover, but seems that i cant find one And is there even big differences with those cards on my 7720g?

    Thanks already!!

    -Maichel

99. Morris Lee wrote, on October 19th, 2009:

    

    @amidose,

    It has been reported working with the real hardware, so yes, but you never know if the video card firmware might be incompatible and a blind flash maybe required

    @Maichel,

    places like ebay http://cgi.ebay.ca/New-Nvidia-MXM-II-Graphics-Card-GeForce-9600M-GT-512MB_W0QQitemZ290351516134QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item439a4c89e6

    only place I know where I can find it.

100. Younes wrote, on October 24th, 2009:

     

     Hi Morris ,
     First thank you , for your web site , it’s more instructive than the official one.

     I have a prob, my 8600m GT 512Mb died on my 5920g t7500 2gb/250gb…

     I found on ebay an Ati 3650hd which more performant than gf and more reliable(not sure). But it’s flashed with an Ati original bios , will it work on my computer or not?
     thx for reply…

101. Morris Lee wrote, on October 25th, 2009:

     

     @Younes,

     if it is ATI BIOS, it should work just fine, but depending on the clock speed, you may have to change the clock speed in the firmware of the video card or replace the thermalpad with a piece of copper like I have done, which allowed me to do some overclocking too.

102. Younes wrote, on October 25th, 2009:

     

     Morris you are the man of the situation…
     thx a lot for your quick response…

103. Tberg wrote, on October 27th, 2009:

     

     Hi Morris! Great Site.

     I am looking for a new gfxcard. Got a 5920g with 6800m GS now, Intel 965 Chipset T5550 1.83 GHz. pretty sure i have the MXMII model.

     Do you still have your connection to whom you could buy cards from?

     Currently i found that these cards are aviliable for upgrade in the 5920g (non GMA)

     8600M GT
     9500M GS
     HD 3650
     HD 4650
     HD 4670

     Which is better? (i could imagine that both 4650/4670 is so new that it would have compabillity problems with my system)

     Best Regards
     Tberg

104. Morris Lee wrote, on October 27th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     You meant 8600m GS? and yes, you would have MXM type II slot. HD4650 was reported to work with 5920, but I am not sure if the BIOS could be a problem, so far, all ATi cards I have seen tested have worked with 5920(the nvidia 9XXX series may not work, since 9600m GT did not, but 9500m GS is really a 8600m GT).

     I will have to contact him maybe later today, his time zone is GMT + 8 hours.

105. Tberg wrote, on October 27th, 2009:

     

     @ Morris

     Yes! Thats the card i meant

     Ahh glad to hear you still have a connection. i will await your response.

     Thank you

106. Morris Lee wrote, on October 27th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     Can I just ask what your location is? he may need it for the shipping cost

107. Tberg wrote, on October 27th, 2009:

     

     Europe – The state of DENMARK

     ;D

108. Michael Walsh wrote, on October 28th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg – very cool place to live.

109. Tberg wrote, on October 28th, 2009:

     

     @ Walsh

     Thanks. i assume you know people from DK?

110. Michael Walsh wrote, on October 28th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg Had a few of my “life’s great moments” with Danes, yes.

111. Morris Lee wrote, on October 30th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     This is the price he emailed me,

     8600M GT $219.99 + 15.99 shipping cost
     9500M GS $224.99 + 15.99 shipping cost
     HD 3650 $169.99 + 15.99 shipping cost

     no word on the 4650 or 4670 yet. Yes, more expansive, but I believe he includes new thermalpads with purchase and he is got a few machines to test compatibility with, and yes, he has a 5920G to test with.

     Cheers!

112. Peter wrote, on October 30th, 2009:

     

     hmm… if a 4650 or 4670 will work in a 5920G it’d be worth it to get, with a CPU upgrade.. well I might be pushing the thermals a bit then.

     Might be worth a shot though.

113. Morris Lee wrote, on October 31st, 2009:

     

     @Peter,

     yes, you are correct, it it is hard to find HD4650 or the 70. They only seem to appear on some non North American sites, or even Asian sites for that matter.

     I did push my HD3650 to 725Mhz core 700Mhz mem, the core has the thermalpad replaced with copper plat so the OC on the core was possible, the copper for the memory are about to come(my friend has an old broken acer with more copper heatsink to salvage from) XD

     I got 4888 on 3Dmark06, that is only with a t5550 1.83GHz C2D.

     So, Tberg, any thoughts on which card you want to purchase?

114. Tberg wrote, on October 31st, 2009:

     

     @Morris

     Ouch, well i guess i could have told myself that, it woundn’t be cheap But currently, i aint got that much sparecash for such modification.

     Anyways. Thanks alot for you effort! Be sure to thank your friend for his time too. i might return, or might not. relies heavily on cash hehe.

     But perhaps there would be others who would be interested.

     Thx so much again.

115. Morris Lee wrote, on October 31st, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     No problem! 8600m GS is pretty fast card, only replace it if you really have a problem with it.

116. Johnny wrote, on November 7th, 2009:

     

     Hi,

     looks like I managed to fix my dead GF 8600 GT. I came across a certain page where people were using baking method to revive their dead GPUs. Here is what I did:

     1. remove thermal grease, any plastic foils and glue (my bro has 8600 GS version and it’s covered in some alu foil)
     2. heat the oven to 200 C +- 5, more can be dangerous, less would have no effect.
     3. make 4 balls using kitchen alu foil and put em on steel grid which you put into the oven when heat is high enough
     4. put your GPU on those 4 balls
     5. if the temperature is ready put the grid into the oven
     6. wait 5-8 minutes (i did 6min 30s)
     7. take out GPU, wait till it cools down and test the result

     However this method is unreliable, but if your card is already dead you have probably nothing to loose anyway. I used the same method on my dead XboX 360 and it worked both times. I thought I’d share my experience here because it seems alto of you are experiencing the same problem as I did.

     This fix is not permanent, card will most likely break sooner or later again so buy yourself a spare one.

     Regards,
     Johnny

117. Defender Sweden wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     Hi there..

     Well i guess i have a fried geforce 8600M gt aswell…Would be glad if someone posted the symptoms of it aswell so people could get more sure about it!
     Well i have done almost everything besides the oven thingy..
     My problem is that i cant get a picture from either the lcd on my 5920g or from the vga output or the dvi out..
     The comupter boots all fine, gets into windows..But no picture!
     I have opened up the lcd panel, checked the connectors and inverter but everything seems fine there…its not the backlight either i guess since i have used a lamp against it and nothing shows!
     But a funy thing is that over night when i have woken up sometimes there is no battery in the machine….as if it where uncharged or something…happened 2 times…last time was the morning i didnt get picture from it, and yes the power cable was connected..But it seems now that it doesnt charge the battery anymore…
     But with cable it still boots fine from what i can hear (login windows sound)
     I have tried the rams, loosen the processor and put it back no result..But does this seem like a gpu error? i have read about people with the same problem but with no directly clear answer if it is the gpu! I myself will order from u guys if i just knew it was the gpu…and i will for sure go with an ati card since apple computers have been reporting in BAD nvidia gpus especialy the mobile geforce 8xxx series! Pleas reply as fast as u can plz! This is driving me nuts!

118. Morris Lee wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Defender Sweden,

     you can try enabling Remote Desktop(without the screen, you need to do it by using keyboard shortcuts) after enabling it, press “PrtSc SysRq” key and press Winkey + R(which opens up the command prompt, type mspaint, enter, wait 2 seconds, and press Ctrl + V to paste the screenshot.

     When the screeshot is pasted, use another computer to access the laptop and check the screenshot, if the screenshot is all garbled, then it is indeed graphics card problem, if everything looks fine, then it should be internal connection issues.

119. Defender Sweden wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Morris Lee…Haha u wont believe this…

     Realy…i got soooo pissed at my damn laptop…
     I read about the oven trick, and omfg u wont believe me when i say ot worked…my girlfriend thought i was crazy…..hahahaha it did freaking work..I read another guy with the exact same laptop and with the exact same problems did this and got his to work…375F in 8 minutes did the trick, allthough i did a fast cooldown…buti could hear it crack when i it cooled down…But il be damned it freaking worked But now i know for sure it was the gpu so if it says bye bye i can order a new one…totaly sure it was the gpu guess if im happy! Ty for the tip though i will save it! hahaha….omg

120. Defender Sweden wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Morris Lee

     The one thing i do regret was not to film it so i could post it here..but i guess noone wouldof believed me anyway..realy dont care main matter is that it worked!

121. Morris Lee wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Defender Sweden,

     Not that i don’t believe you or anything. I do have to give you a congratulation! so you don’t end up spending $$ to repair it

122. Defender Sweden wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Morris Lee….

     Well i have read up about this problem and there are MANY and when i say MANY i mean almost all errors with some of the chips on the 8xxx series can get ging with the oven trick….Im still typing on the same faulty machine/gpu and it has worked out greate!
     But i know where the error is now so it will be easy to see the error now…Allthough i still have battery/cable pluged in error…it wont recognice the battery…so it might be a a board for the recharger thats blown in the laptop…but right now i dont realy care…everything works just fine!..But im going to look at it some day if the GPU still lives on…i mean to ship a new motherboard to this 5920G will cost about 800 dollars so i wont go that way!….damn expencive….if the motherboard fail i will do the same oven trick…well i guess it shortens the life of the computer…but ive downclocked it after it worked…i cleaned the coolingsystem and took some arctic silver paste on it….and i must say its cooler then ever…even if i do some hard hard 3d games on it! well im glad as u can see

123. Defender Sweden wrote, on November 25th, 2009:

     

     @Morris Lee

     Its like when u put a hand on body heated places like under your arms..its so so so muh cooled now! and the gpu fan doesnt even speed up when i play games like the sims 3 or counterstrike 1.6…I did not underclock the gpu…its just stock speed!…and i must say…its amazing how cooled down it is under load!

124. adm15 wrote, on November 27th, 2009:

     

     @Morris Lee

     Thanks for pointing this out. Exactly what i needed! Thinking of getting a 3650. I’m pretty sure i can update the drivers, but what about the bios?

125. Morris Lee wrote, on November 27th, 2009:

     

     @adm15,

     The bios shouldn’t be a problem(or firmware), ATi ones tend to be very generic.

126. adm15 wrote, on November 28th, 2009:

     

     Great! Any other optimization tricks i should know?

127. Morris Lee wrote, on November 28th, 2009:

     

     @adm15,

     you can try and get some copper plate, which is best if you do anyways, some hd3650 comes with 680Mhz core which is too hot for the current heatsink, the copper to replace the thermalpad will reduce up to 30 degrees Celsius, you can even do overclocking, but if you don’t, you need to extract the BIOS, down volt the card or downclock it to work properly.

     if it is GDDR3, then you need to make sure you have thermalpads(or copper plate) for all 4 piece of RAM.

128. adm15 wrote, on November 29th, 2009:

     

     Ok! Ill try to get my hands on that copper plate. The other options sound complicated. Thanks!

129. Tberg wrote, on December 1st, 2009:

     

     Hello Again Morris. I Finaly suceeded in finding a ATI Mobility HD 3650 512mb card with Acer Preload (for a reasonable price)

     Now i need to do some prep. work before i install it. I Need to messure the current heat of my components and record em, and compare them to the new results with the new card How do i messure that best?

     And get that copper plate thingie (hence the technology is smaller than the 8600 GS card, so i have read) I Am just a little unsure about where to put in thermal Paste, between the GPU and copperplate? or between the Heatsink and the copperplate, so the the copperplate is laying loose under the GPU?

     Thank You.

130. Morris Lee wrote, on December 1st, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     you can use “AMD GPU Clock tool” to log the temperature while you run a 3D stress test.

     as for the thermalpaste, you put it between the copper and heatsink and between the coppeer and the core, so both sides of the copper

131. Tberg wrote, on December 1st, 2009:

     

     OH!

     I also Run with a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 bit OS

     Which driver do i need to download? (a direkt Link would be nice)

     Been browsing ATI’s site and found 3 different drivers which seems like the one i need, i am new to AMD/ATI site.

     Thanks Again:)

132. Morris Lee wrote, on December 1st, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     here http://www.acer.com/worldwide/support/download.htm

     is the farthest I can get you, you have to browse other machines for Windows 7 64 driver for Ati, the newest version may not be right under 5920, you may need to look up other machines for the driver.

133. Amigaman wrote, on December 2nd, 2009:

     

     You can use ATI HD 4650 1gb DDR2 card with 5920G. I tried it at world first time. Yeah it works very well. Vista sp1 on 3d mark 2006= 5100 score like 9600GT 512 mb DDR3. Thanks and regards.

134. Morris Lee wrote, on December 2nd, 2009:

     

     @Amigaman,

     May I ask where you have sourced the HD4650?

135. Amigaman wrote, on December 2nd, 2009:

     

     Acer 6930G I am an Acer Tecnician.

136. Michael Walsh wrote, on December 2nd, 2009:

     

     @Amigaman …then why don’t you introduce yourself (to me, via mail, or the /Contact page)? Or do we know each other already? In any case I’m glad your here.

137. Morris Lee wrote, on December 3rd, 2009:

     

     @Amigaman,

     Since you are an Acer tech. possible for you to check if an Acer 9600m GT works on a 5920G? the world out there would like to find out if it is simply a BIOS limitation or mechanically impossible.

138. Amigaman wrote, on December 3rd, 2009:

     

     9600m GT doesnt work on 5920G. 9600m GT MXM II uses but no display on 5920G. I heard some guys modes to 9600gt bios for 5920g but too risky and %50 chance for work. Anyway 4650 better than 9600GT at 5920G That informations enough for you. Regards.

139. Morris Lee wrote, on December 4th, 2009:

     

     @Amigaman,

     however, 9600m GT still stands in feature wise as in PhysX support, until supporter for ati writes a CUDA extension for Radeon cards, we won’t see PhysX on 5920G unless we go back to 8XXX series.

140. Emmanuel wrote, on December 4th, 2009:

     

     i have an acer aspire 5920G how do i know if it has the MXM slot?

141. Morris Lee wrote, on December 4th, 2009:

     

     @Emmanuel,

     2 ways, open it up to check, or check if you have Intel GMA X3100, if you do, then you ain’t got the slot, if you got HD3400 or Nvidia 8600m series, you do infact have MXM.

142. Guest wrote, on December 4th, 2009:

     

     Morris, there are third party hacks/patches to enable cuda tech on ATI cards. Real easy to do and it works great!

143. Morris Lee wrote, on December 4th, 2009:

     

     @Guest,

     Really!!! would you like to tell us where you can find such patch? write up a How-To maybe? I am sure Michael(owner of the site) would be happy to post something this cool!

144. Vincent wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     There is no picture at all not even during boot but you could tell that the system is up running with all those logon sound. Besides, nothing appear even when I connect via the ‘blue port’ with an external monitor. One more thing is that, the system would restart itself a minute after logon when turned on normally, but it doesn’t restart in safe mood.

     I believe my Nvidia 8600M GT got crashed but I’m not sure how to confirm it. Is there a way to tell whether it is either GPU failure or LCD?

     Besides, I’m interest with ATi HD3650, but I’m not sure how is the cooper looks like. So, could you post some picture for me? Thanks in advance for everything.

145. Morris Lee wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Vincent,

     I think it IS your GPU, since it will reboot on a normal bootup(where video card driver is loaded to run the video card) but when in safemode, it does not(video card driver does not load in safemode)

     the “blue port” is known as VGA port, and no it will not work if it the video card is not working.

     copper plate is simply a piece of copper with 1.5×1.5x~0.1cm dimension, I can’t provide you with any pictures, since I have it installed inside already

     Morris Lee

146. Vincent wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     Thank god it is the card not the screen. At least I could perform an upgrade with the money spend.

     I plan on replacing it with HD4650 and still finding a reliable source. In case I could not find it, maybe I will go on with HD3650 like you suggested. So, do you still have your source for HD3650?

     Btw, will DDR3 cause any incompatibility?

147. Morris Lee wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Vincent,

     Yes, I still have the source for HD3650, it ain’t cheap though I tell you.

     Last time he answered me was

     HD 3650 $169.99 + 15.99 shipping cost

     I believe it is in USD.

     If you are interested in that price, let me know.

148. Vincent wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     It sure is expensive. Anyway, I will let you know when I need it, thanks!

     By the way, one thing to clear off my mind regarding the copper, did you apply the same concept using copper on all four GPU RAMs or just the core (the big one at the center)?

149. Morris Lee wrote, on December 6th, 2009:

     

     @Vincent,

     you would need to use copper for the core if you don’t want to screw with the firmware of the video card. copper is unnecessary for the RAMS, but the RAMS HAVE to have thermalpads if they are GDDR3

     Morris Lee

150. Vincent wrote, on December 7th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     Thanks again for the quick help. Once I get my hand on it, I will try to ask more on the firmware. Since I decided to replace the GPU myself, it is good to learn all those technical thinggy too.

151. Tberg wrote, on December 7th, 2009:

     

     Major Heat Problem!

     I Finaly got installed the HD 3650 512mb. With the right drivers i believe.

     I cant seem to be able to play games, at some point it just goes black screen and starts “flickering” with bluish and white lines and boxes.

     I used GPU-Z with 3Dmark06. 1.5 – 3.0 minutes in the test. THe same thing happens, The GPU-z in the background recorded up to 124C Degrease, no wonder why it goes black screenie

     I only used Thermal Paste between GPU and HEatsink, i did not use any copper or thermalpads on the RAM.

     Any Suggestions?

152. Morris Lee wrote, on December 7th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     you will need to downclock the video card by extracting the firmware, modifying the clock speed and voltage to something lower, then put it back in.

     Or, you can do a copper mod! if you ain’t got copper, use a penny(1 cent coin) use a vice and compress it , or use sand paper to make sure it is flat and smooth, cut it to the correct size and use it as the copper/thermalpads, I never tested this, but it was a method someone suggested from the web I saw a while ago, and it works ok. Do make sure your clock speed of the RAM is at 700 if you are using thermalpads for it(this is for GDDR3)

     Morris Lee

153. Tberg wrote, on December 7th, 2009:

     

     Think i’ll try the copper mod, and also add thermal pads to the RAM aswell even thouh mine is not Gddr3 Memory.

     I am not sure about the clockspeeds at all. its no where Near 700 mhz thats for sure.

     info taken from GPU-z

154. Morris Lee wrote, on December 8th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     I suppose you have DDR2 only, thermalpads or copper plates are not required for the RAMS, after copper modding your Core, you should be good to go!

155. Vincent wrote, on December 8th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     What is the different between DDR2 and GDDR3?
     Besides, how am I going to update my bios when my GPU is broken? IS there a way doing it without have to watch over it? Like self update?

     Looking forward to upgrade into HD3650 since I could not afford HD4650. Found one item in ebay selling at $78 USD.

156. Vincent wrote, on December 8th, 2009:

     

     @Morris

     Referring to my question above, where I need to update my bios without knowing what is the current version i’m using, I found this thread(#8) and wonder will this be mine solution? Could you double check for me please, thanks in advance!

     http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=251906

157. Morris Lee wrote, on December 8th, 2009:

     

     @Vincent,

     to make sure the BIOS compatibility problem is not in the way, extract the CURRENT one from the card you PURCHASED, then modify it to user lower settings with out overheating.

     GDDR3 is faster then DDR2, but it also generates more heat(but it is also depended on the clock speed it is running at)

158. Vincent wrote, on December 12th, 2009:

     

     @Morris,

     okay, now that I’m one step away from purchasing a new HD3650 from eBay. There are two units that caught my attention, HD3650 with 1GB DDR2 and 512MB DDR2. Somehow, I read about something that 5920G could not support 1GB RAM for GPU. Is there something like this? Just to confirm so that I would not regret buying it.

     Thanks!

159. Morris Lee wrote, on December 12th, 2009:

     

     @Vincent,

     I don’t think it is a good idea to go for 1GB, I recall that desktop version of hd3650 with 1GB actually became slower, since it is not designed to handle that much RAM, I would only recommend something with 512 or anything GDDR3 rather than DDR2

     I don’t think there is such limitation to the RAM size anyways.

160. ReMiX wrote, on December 19th, 2009:

     

     whats up morris nice blog dude …

     any way i have an old amilo 3438G and got a used ATI hd 4650 1gb DDR3 but from Toshiba laptop….

     by the looks its an mxm II for sure and it did really fit nicely on laptop but when i power on

     there is deep darkness with no response at all

     i don’t know where to start

     any ideas?

161. Morris Lee wrote, on December 19th, 2009:

     

     @ReMix,

     Sorry, I am not to familiar with the amilo lines, you can consult with more experienced users with amilo on this site

     http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

     Hopefully, that will get you somewhere!

162. adrian wrote, on December 19th, 2009:

     

     hey acer dude i have a proplem my acer 5920 came with a chipset 965 i see the spot where the graphics crad is suppose to be but i do not know if i can buy a graphics card and instal pleasehelp

163. Niko wrote, on December 27th, 2009:

     

     Hi, Morris!

     My GeForce 8600M GT is dead after 2 years of good gaming experience and now I am looking for ATI HD3650, but everything what i can find on eBay looks too suspicious(very cheap and without warranty) to be good. If you still is in contact with guy who is selling graphic cards, maybe you could give me his coordinates. I would appreciate that!

     P.S. You have very good topic here. I was looking all over the internet to get information, but here everything is in place.

164. Morris Lee wrote, on December 27th, 2009:

     

     @Niko,

     Yes, I still have the contact, I will see if he still got stock for HD3650, maybe he is got the 4650 or 70, hehe, I will check it with him, and let you know

     Morris Lee

165. Boonie wrote, on December 28th, 2009:

     

     Hi Morris, Firstly, I like this page a lot, just because I have learnt a lot from here. I have a Question:

     I am planning to upgrade the current dvdrw rom to a blu-ray rom/writer in order to get HD display on my laptop. So, which graphic will be the best choice?

     my laptop spec:
     Acer 5920g: T9300, 2*2GB ddr667, 256MB 8600M GT

166. naz wrote, on December 28th, 2009:

     

     hi pal!

     just wanna ask u a question.

     is my nvidia gf 8600m gs upgradeable?is yes,what is the best graphic card available?

     how about the processor?what is the best processor that can fit into my 5920g acer?

     boo me.silly questions =P

167. Morris Lee wrote, on December 28th, 2009:

     

     @Boonie,

     if you want Bluray, get a new laptop, price for the drive+graphics is almost enough for a new laptop, trust me!

     @naz,

     you have 5920 as well right? HD4670 should be the max for now, GF9600m GT WILL NOT WORK

168. Tberg wrote, on December 28th, 2009:

     

     Hi Morris. I seek your expertise once again

     After very dissapointing attempts with coppermodding the HD3650 512 ddr2 i give up. it continues to produce too much heat (123-124C and the screen goes black, you know the story.

     Id like to try to undervolt it. However i have no idear of how to do it. reading through this thread is not enough for me, can you help me out?

     Thanks alot,
     Tberg.

169. Morris Lee wrote, on December 29th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     no problem, download atiflash, DOS version, you need to create a USB bootable disk using unetbootin, select FreeDOS and your USB drive letter.

     after that is done, don’t reboot when it asks, put atiflash files in the flash drive too.

     Boot from the USB using F12 key when you see the acer logo, if you don’t have boot menu enabled, press F2 and change find the enable F12 option.

     when FreeDOS is enabled, run atiflash /? to get all the commands on how to backup the BIOS/firmware(should be -b or something like that), back it up to a file on the flash drive

     once backed up, reboot back to windows, download “Radeon BIOS editor” from techpowerup.com, use that to open and edit the BIOS, change the voltage for GPU clock higher than 550MHz, example would be a 600MHz need to be set to voltage @ 1.150MHz or 1.050MHz, you will have to estimate which one in the drop downlist to use(when I had my 680MHz core, I had it on 1.150v) you can downclock to 600 and have it maybe @ 1.050, just to be sure it is cooler

     save the BIOS once all the clock profiles that requires editing has been edited. save it to the USB drive again.

     boot from USB drive, and use atiflash /? and see what command is it to flash the BIOS in to your card, with the correct new BIOS name you used for the edited version(command should be -p)

     once it says completed, use AMD GPU clock tool to log all temperatures and see if it is still above 120c. should be around 110 if you have 680 @ 1.150v.

     if your RAM is above 450MHz, you probably want to lower it to 450 too.

     Good luck!
     Morris Lee

170. Tberg wrote, on December 29th, 2009:

     

     @Morris.

     Thanks alot for the quick answer. I have not yet done it. However i have downloaded the needed programs and prepared the USB flashdrive.

     There are two things which bugs me atm.

     1. The AMD GPU clock tool wont work. it says something with “Wont load kernel bugger/driver”

     I guess i can use GPU-Z or HHW Monitor instead from cpuid.

     and 2. I managed to get a 3DMark06 score on 37xxish and i remember to have read, that you got a score on 4840-ish is that still a fact??

     Thanks again.

171. Morris Lee wrote, on December 29th, 2009:

     

     @Tberg,

     4840 is correct, but remember, I am on GDDR3, it does make a difference.

172. Tberg wrote, on January 2nd, 2010:

     

     Happy New Year!

     awesome score i think, considering that we “almost” have the same hardware inside. still its a 1000 points hehe.

     Well. I can’t seem to get the undervolting to work. Actually i cannot even get a backup of the bios, because the ATIflash program wont start up.

     I did the following.

     1. prepared the usb flash device with unetbooting using the freeDOS option.

     2. extracted the files and put em onto the flashdrive.

     3. restarted and choose usb for the booting.

     Now. i get a menu window, i can either choose default, or TAB to edit options. i just do the same really. i get stuck up with this line at the buttom om the dos window:

     Interrupt divided by zero, stacks:

     xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

     now those x’s was really numbers and letters.

     and theres a flashing _ also.

     I waited for 10 minutes and nothing happend. any idear with what i am doing wrong?

173. Morris Lee wrote, on January 2nd, 2010:

     

     @Tberg,

     interesting, do you have an USB based floppy drive and 2 floppy disk lying around? if you do, use XP or find a way to make one of them boot disk, and load the atiflash software.

     boot from the USB floppy with the boot floppy disk, and replace it with the one loaded with atiflash software after DOS is loaded.

     do the same from there, use atiflash -b .rom etc…

174. Tberg wrote, on January 4th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Hehe, thats very interesting. Too bad, but i dont own sich hardware, never even knew that exsisted.

     My thoughts about is was more like, that there was something wrong with unetbootin, or my USB device. maybe i could use another software to prepare it?

     BTW i actually made a successful modification the other day, it works, so far id say:) but it still gets pretty hot.

175. Morris Lee wrote, on January 4th, 2010:

     

     @Tberg,

     you could try different USB flash drive, unetbootin is pretty generic, the MORE generic the USB drive the better.

176. adm15 wrote, on January 9th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,

     got a 3650 ddr2 512 mb, had it installed. Guy said he put in copper thing and thermal pads for the gpu. But the card still gets too hot for games.

     Questions:
     1)are having thermal pads better than none?
     2) do drivers affect the heat?

     Thanks. I’m not sure if I should take out the thermal pads or not. If nothing else will help, ill probably follow your instructions for downvolting.

177. Morris Lee wrote, on January 9th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     driver has very little to do with heat, it has to do with clock speed and the voltage, try downvolting it is the best solutioni I can offer.

     Don’t remove the thermalpads, and yes, thermalpads are better than none

178. adm15 wrote, on January 9th, 2010:

     

     temp maxes out 110. That’s really bad no? i guess i should check the work the guy did.

     then downvolt if ever.

179. adm15 wrote, on January 9th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     also, you mean i should leave both the copper and thermal pads?

180. Morris Lee wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Use copper for the core, thermalpads for the memory chips.

     What do you mean leave both the coppper and thermalpads?

181. adm15 wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     yeah, that’s what i though too. the guy who put the copper i think put in something a piece that’s too thin. too make up for it he also put some sort of putty with chewing gum consistency.
     i though that putty was the thermal pad until i noticed other pads at the sides.

     so took that piece of copper out, replaced it with something thicker, applied as5 like you said.

     im checking the temps now using amd cpu clock, and got a minimum of 44 deg C. I increased the engine and mem to 594 MHz and 495 MHz respectively. Temp increased to 74 deg C max after about 12 mins, but still slowly steadily increasing increasing.

     So now i ask you, is that okay? Am i check the temp correctly? I’m now curious with overclock and downvolting since the copper mod seems successful (compared to my 110 deg before replacing the thin copper)

     Thanks very much. this little project took about a month and a half, and your help was invaluable.

182. adm15 wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     oh wait. it seemed to have maxed out at 74.

183. Morris Lee wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Yes, 74 is perfectly safe, actually, it is cooler than the original 8600m GT if I recall correctly, and congrats! it should work flawless now

     have a look at
     http://morrisoft.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/ati-custom-resolution-tool/

184. adm15 wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     actually, after a while it went up to 75 deg. But hey, i guess that’s still pretty good.

     what’s that custom resolution tool? Sorry, i’m really not so knowledgeable with these things.

     My next project will be reformatting and installing win7.

185. Morris Lee wrote, on January 10th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     the Custom Resolution tool can add resolutions that is not supported to your monitor, but within your monitor’s max resolution. you can have a really wide resolution for ultra wide screen gaming

186. adm15 wrote, on January 11th, 2010:

     

     thanks! will look into that when i’ve installed win7

187. Thomas wrote, on January 11th, 2010:

     

     Hey,

     My acer 5920G died today, not totally though. It starts, you can hear the windows sounds, but the screen stays black all the time. I think that the GFU is broken, it is a 8600m GS 256Mb. What GFU should i get?

188. Morris Lee wrote, on January 11th, 2010:

     

     @Thomas,

     I would recommend AMD ATi Radeon HD4650 if you can find one, I think it is not as hot as HD3650, but if you can’t find one, go for HD3650, since 9600m GT or higher won’t work in 5920G and the 8XXX are bad.

     Morris Lee

189. Liam wrote, on January 12th, 2010:

     

     I’m looking for a graphics card that will play games like left 4 dead 2 and star trek online, in better quality than the hd 3470 card my 5920G came with.

     Have you got any advice on which would be the best card to upgrade my 5920G with?

     Cheers

190. Morris Lee wrote, on January 12th, 2010:

     

     @Liam,

     my HD3650 runs Left 4 Dead and L4D 2 on max, no AA like cupcake! but if you can get HD4650 or 70, they are even better!

191. Liam wrote, on January 12th, 2010:

     

     Cheers any nvidia cards u can suggest?

192. Morris Lee wrote, on January 12th, 2010:

     

     @Laim,

     a lot of nvidia movile card suffer the problem that 8600m GT does, I do not recommend any nvidia cards at all.

     Morris Lee

193. Stefan wrote, on January 13th, 2010:

     

     Hello everybody! If there is someone left, which I suppose after all reading of this site I have done right now.

     I own an Acer Aspire T7500, 8600GT, 4 gig RAM, since 2 and a half year back. I did a huge mistake for like 10 months back. I was going to change HDD to a WD Scorpio 10k rpm 320 gig, but eventually I crashed into an green PCB with my screwdriver (yes I know it was kinda newbie thing to do, but I slipped) and a little bit of something went off a green card.

     Anyway, after trying to start the computer it was just a black screen, gott im himmel, I thought, it was then I realized that it was the graphic card I had broken. I desperately look after a DVI adapter to HDMI, cause I knew I have a HDMI input at the computer.

     I found it and plugged in… SUCCESS! I had picture at the screen (mine 22″ SAMSUNG 2ms, stationary computer screen), so I plugged the Acer to a 19″ screen, which had became a leftover after the newer screen.

     After this little story I shall came to the point. =)

     Yesterday, 2010-01-11, I just surfed and looked to a new laptop for gaming, but a friend told me that I had MXM at mine so I should look it up before I went to go and buy a new one for kind 1 500£ or Euro or 2000$.

     Yes, I find the http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/ site and this http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=396320 and of course this fabulous site.
     (bookmarked) Like I even had to mentioned that?

     My comp. was compatibility with HD4670, HD4650, HD3650. So after typing kinda stuff in google bar, “mxm where to buy” phrases didn´t hit so many hits. So why not Ebay? Looked around there and found many HD3650 brand new for saleprice 70$ not incl. shipping worldwide, many Chinese dudes sitting on computer components. How weird? (ironic)

     My question to you my friend @Morris Lee can you get HD4650 or 70 for a comparison price from your friend incl. shipping price or the price at HD3650 has been gone down. He maybe have sale out for those cards? =D

     I live in Sweden, the country we have -25C degrees right now and walking polar bears at the street like the Americans think. (No offense to the USA, just some of the ppl).

     Best Regards
     Stefan

194. Morris Lee wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @Stefan,

     I am don’t think he has any HD4XXX series, only HD3650, 8600m GT

     Morris Lee

195. Stefan wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @Morris Lee
     BTW why does we do an @ in the beginning of the name? I did it just because everyone else did it ^^

     Okay what does it cost you think? With shipping also, living in Sweden like I told ya before

     “BRAND NEW” on ebay for 70 dollars, but don´t know the shipping cost lands on. Have your friend a similiar price? Or cheaper? =))

     BR
     Stefan

196. Thomas wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     Hey morris, i can buy a hd 4650. But what do i need to do to get the heat down, so it wont get to hot?

     And will it work in my 5920g without any drivers? I cant get into windows as my 8600M GS died.

197. Stefan wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @Thomas
     pls, where can I buy a HD4650 to mine 5920G.. plss tell me!!

198. Thomas wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @ Stefan,

     U can buy it here:
     http://www.notebook-doctor.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=hd4650

     They are pretty expensive.

199. Morris Lee wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @Stefan,

     ahah, I did it just because everyone does it too , not sure about the real reason…

     My contact can test the cards sometimes, he has machines to test for the buyers, but it cost arounf $200 USD right now. Not cheaper

     Other then the place Thomas mentioned, I don’t know anywhere else.

     @Thomas,

     You will need drivers, you can find them on Acer website. And yes, the website you showed everone is the only source I found, and it looks sketchy~~

     Morris Lee

200. Stefan wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     okay spanks @Thomas!

     yes maybe little over my budget, perhaps I shall be pretty pleased with a HD3650 GFU, enough to play L4D and CS:S.
     I guess it will work better than mine 8600GT did

     Maybe you have some test or reviews with Aspire 5920G HD3650 @Morris ?

     BTW what does your contact take for price for HD3650 and shipping? The 200$ price you wrote before was for the HD46xx I guess?

     And I think I figured out why people use @ in front of the name, if you write @ before the name at facebook than you are tagging(linking) someone and go directly to the person, maybe that´s why ppl does an @?

     BR
     Stefan

201. Morris Lee wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     @Stefan,

     $200 is everything, including shipping, it is a 512MB card DDR2

     I think the @ is just who you are addressing to, like I am addressing to you right now.

     The only test I did on the HD3650, I got a score of 4888 in 3d mark 06, after overclocking though, and I use copper plate

202. Stefan wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     aha okay, sorry I don´t know if its just me or something, maybe be slow in the head or something when you are writing 200$ include all thing, are we still talking about the HD3650 card or HD4650 or HD4670? Thx for answering so fast mate ;D

203. Stefan wrote, on January 14th, 2010:

     

     Hi again! I couldn´t hold me, so I bought a HD3650 Card at ebay right now, so now am I looking forward to screw my computer again and hope it will be better this time, if it will work functionally I will buy a SDD so the comp. will fly awaaaay!! By the way, I bought the card for 71($)dollar inclusive shipping.. kinda cheap, instead of buying one here it should cost at least three times more here at home, just for the damn card.
     BR
     Stefan

204. Morris Lee wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @Stefan,

     Yes, I look forward to your success too!

     Morris Lee

205. adm15 wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     Hey morris, tried checking the temp of the gpu again, now im getting a minimum of 60 and a max of 87. It increased from a min of 44 and max of 75 when the copper mod was newly applied.

     any idea of what caused this? should i reapply the mode thing again?

206. Morris Lee wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     did you clean the surface of the copper? did you use Arctic Silver 5 on both sides?

207. adm15 wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     yep. as5 both sides and cleaned the copper. checked the temps again and now the min is back to mid 40s. i don’t get the fluctuation at all.

     btw, any link to nice overclocking guides?

208. Morris Lee wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     I am not sure about the overclocking guide, cause i just do it by myself. I do it through BIOS though, not software.

209. adm15 wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     Ah, my current figures are 595, 494. Will it be worth it to overclock those?

     I just need to follow the steps you gave to tberg before?

210. Morris Lee wrote, on January 15th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     you can probably push the core to 650MHz, RAM to 550Mhz, 50Mhz more for each pretty much, but watch your temperature

     Morris Lee

211. adm15 wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     Okay. Ill try the bios method. after my exams. haha i feel intimidated with the flashing the bios thing.

212. adm15 wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     o btw, what driver do you use? sorry for being such a bugger

213. Morris Lee wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/25948-atiamd-86821-acer/

     enjoy!

214. adm15 wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     @ morris

     thanks! I really appreciate this site. so much help for acer users all around the world hehe

215. Vincent wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     @Stefan,

     Hi, I bought myself a HD 3650 off from eBay at your mentioned price as well few days ago. It would takes around a week or two to get here. So, hopefully we could share our modding experiences later on when we get our hands dirty. Cheer!

     @adm15 and @Morris

     Hi, first I’m happy for you adm15 for your success in swapping your GPU and Morris, you are awesome always.

     While waiting, I would like to place my order on those Thermal Pad (3M) which I find available in my local e-Garage. To do so, I need the exact size of RAM. The vendor would cut it accordingly and of course I would purchase the size with some offset around the actual RAM size. Do you still have the value in mind?

     Copper modding seems to be very effective in this case. Could you provide me the size too or maybe just thickness itself would be perfect? Thanks in advance for everything.

     BR,
     Vincent

216. Morris Lee wrote, on January 16th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     the copper is .8-.9mm thick, roughly 1cmx1cm, same as for the thermalpads for the RAM.

217. adm15 wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @vincent good luck! Morris made it easy.

     @morris i downloaded the zip from the link you gave, and run the setup, but when i check device manager, driver version stays the same. any tip for this? thanks

218. Morris Lee wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     interesting, does it say 8.682.1? what is the date of the driver in device manager that it says?

219. adm15 wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     it says 8.513, 7/8/2008.

220. Morris Lee wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     I suggest uninstalling the driver, after rebooting, use Driver Sweeper or Driver cleaner clean out all ATi drivers, reboot again, then install the one I linked you

221. adm15 wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @morris,

     nope. didn’t work. uninstalled, rebooted, ran driver sweeper, and rebooted again. after running the setup file, i checked device manager and i’m now running the standard vga. tried having the device manager look for the driver in the folder from the link, and got no hits. Ill run may display with what i get from windows update in the meantime.

222. Morris Lee wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     are you on XP? which ever case, you can try here http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/ search for Mobility HD3650

223. adm15 wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @morris,

     cool. since im using 32-vista, ill use x86 right? amd64 for 64 bit?

224. Morris Lee wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @admin15,

     Yes! you are correct, but remember, not only AMD has 64bit

     Morris Lee

225. adm15 wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     No luck. after uninstalling the display driver from windows update (which is 3.850, january 2009) and cleaning up, the standard vga driver installs. I try to update the driver by having the device manager look the 3.86 up in the folder where i downloaded it from windows catalog. Device manager says my display driver is up to date (the vga standard). Im probably doing it wrong.

     is there a big diff between the two drivers anyway? the 3.8621 (June 2009) and the 3.850 (january 2009)?

226. Morris Lee wrote, on January 17th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     if you don’t play the latest games, you will be fine witht he january one.

     but I am not sure why it is not installing for you, what is your device ID?

227. adm15 wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     @morris,

     well, i did all of this hard work to play dragon age. that’s pretty much it so let’s push forward!

     according to gpu-z, my device id is 1002-9591.

228. Morris Lee wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     can I have the full string of it? like mine is
     PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9591&SUBSYS_01211025&REV_00

229. adm15 wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     Is this it? PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9591&SUBSYS_01211025&REV_00\4&176ACB4A&0&0008

     btw, i might try replacing the copper plate I put. I might put something a bit bigger because the one I have now doesn’t feel the whole gap. I also would try to apply as5 as cleanly as possible. right now, my temps starts at 42 degrees at startup, launches up to mid 90s while playing codmw2, then decreases to about 50 degrees and won’t go lower than that after. Just wanna try what happens

230. adm15 wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     oh wait. i think this is the correct one:
     pci\ven_1002&dev_9591&subsys_01211025

     that’s the matching device id from device manager/display driver/ properties/ details

231. Morris Lee wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     hum… driver I linked you should install fine, at least it works in windows 7, but it does have XP, Vista, and 7 all packaged in one.

     maybe try windows 7?

     Morris Lee

232. adm15 wrote, on January 18th, 2010:

     

     ill install windows 7 after my exam on wednesday. im trying out stuff (like overclocking/undervolting) in this laptop before doing a clean install. thanks dude! ill update when i get to do something brilliant. hehe

233. Mike F wrote, on January 21st, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,
     Thank you very much for this incredibly informative site!

     I’m considering buying a 3650 to put in my 5920g – just a little concerned about the initial bios loading on the card. If the card doesn’t have an Acer bios preloaded will i be completely unable to see anything on screen or will i be able to get in to the os and update?

     Thanks Man!

234. Morris Lee wrote, on January 21st, 2010:

     

     @Mike F,

     technically yes, if it is not compatible, you won’t see anything, but typically for the HD3650 with the 5920G I have seen so far is problem less, when you are on ebay, check the description, they say if it is for acer and HP, those should work fine.

     if there is no screen, you need to do a blind flash, but sometimes it does not work, since if the video card is not compatible, it won’t even load the BIOS, so don’t bet your money on that, just get something that is stated for acer and HP

     Morris Lee

235. Michal wrote, on January 21st, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,
     I changed the graphics card on my 5920G to ATI 3650 (from 8600M GT), which I bought on ebay (http://cgi.ebay.com.my/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650-MXM-II-Graphics-Card-512MB_W0QQitemZ250526607694QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3a548ca94e). What I read there, the card is able to work with this notebook, but no luck ;-( the boot is ok, I think, but got nothing on screen…

     have you please any idea what to do? The bios on notebook is the latest, so probably to flash the graphics card BIOS? Do you know how?

     thank for some advice, Michal

236. Mike F wrote, on January 22nd, 2010:

     

     Thanks Morris, much appreciated!!

237. Morris Lee wrote, on January 22nd, 2010:

     

     @Michal,

     they simply pulled the list from mxm upgrade’s website, which displays a insufficient in this aspect. They never specifically said that THEIR version of HD3650 works with the acer aspire 5920. if you can, return it, flashing the bios will lose the warranty most likely.

     I never did blind flashing before, you should be able to find some on mxm-upgrade.

     @Mike F,

     no problem!

238. adm15 wrote, on January 22nd, 2010:

     

     @Michal,

     that happened to me when i tried installing the 3650 to my 5920g without the copper mod.

239. anil wrote, on January 22nd, 2010:

     

     hi morris. i have acer aspire 5520g with nvidia 8400m g. today i tried to upgrade it with 3650, everything went smooth while replacement except i didnt have a thermal paste so i couldnt applied it on the gpu surface. but there was some amount of thermal paste left on the heatsink and i used heat pads from 8400m g on the rams. i completed the installation and open vista after 1 or 2 mins. later, while i was clicking on setup.exe of ati driver screen got black. then i restarted the vista, this time when i click on the mozilla.exe again the black screen came out. my question is for you: what caused this situation? not applied thermal paste or is there a vbios problem. if you reply my question i’ll be glad…

240. Morris Lee wrote, on January 23rd, 2010:

     

     @anil,

     so you are saying you are using the original thermalpad for the core that is from the 8400m GS? cause that one should not be thick enough to contact the HD3650 core, you should try using the one from RAM and move it over.

241. Vincent wrote, on January 24th, 2010:

     

     @Michal

     No luck at all????
     I bought my card from that store in eBay too and it will be here tomorrow. Sigh, my feet are chilling out.

     @Morris

     Thanks for the dimensions.

242. anil wrote, on January 24th, 2010:

     

     thx for your reply. you are right.now, i ordered thermal grase, i am going to apply it on the core and use thermal pads on the rams. i think this is the right combination:D

243. Vincent wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Michal,

     I asked the vendor and he told me that the card is preloaded with acer vBios. So maybe you should try out what adm15 was doing back then, which was the copper mod.

     I just received my item and will get my hand on it tomorrow once I receive everything I ordered such as heat spreader and copper.

244. Vincent wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Guys,

     Oh yeah! My screen is back online, yieepiee!!

     One thing, I could not boot into DOS even though I did do the right setting. It manage to boot but end up stuck when it show FreeDos. So I did try to create another boot stick using dos.img file and somehow it stuck while showing MS Dos. Why is that happening?

     As for my copper mod, I use 0.1 mm thickness of copper sheet and since Morris you told me the size would be 0.9mm right, so I double the layer instead. Still, I’m not sure how was it until I can get myself flash!

     Vincent

245. Vincent wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     By the way, what is the program uses to grab the temperature reading of the GPU? Thanks for all the help up till now!

246. adm15 wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     Congratulations! Welcome to the club! I used amd gpu clock tool and gpu-z to get the temp readings. I had the same problem with freedos, so i never got to try to flash. Anyway, my temps range from 50-90, so overclocking is not an option. I’d love to undervolt though! Hope you get better temps!

     @morris,

     any chance you’ll put up an 5920 cpu upgrade/swap? haha, i only have a T5250 1.5 ghz in my 5920g hehe

247. Vincent wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Thanks! If you are not flashing then are you saying that you use GPU-Z to grab the bios directly in Window?

     By the way, I just downloaded the latest ATI driver by Morris.

248. Morris Lee wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     CPU upgrade, sigh… don’t have enough extra funding for even a T7300. Donations anyone? LOL

     @Vincent,

     You can try the ATIwinflash, not sure where to get it anymore, but you need 32bit OS to flash your video card firmware, works good, but you can’t extract current one I recall.

     Morris Lee

249. Vincent wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     I just formatted my PC with a clean 32-bits Vista Ultimate installation. Everything seem to work normally except the Ati driver. I installed the latest driver which is v8.635 but then when I checked in Device Manager, it shows other driver (I forget the name but its belongs to microsoft I guess). Even when I tried to update the driver by locating the search location to the 8.635, nothing changes.

     Any idea?

250. Morris Lee wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     which driver are you trying to install?

     Morris Lee

251. Michal wrote, on January 25th, 2010:

     

     Hi to all,
     thanks to replies, I tried one more think – I made an USB bootable stick with MSDOS and i put there the AtiTool. After the system start I run the prepared BAT file with Atitool inside with the parameters to write the info about the adapters in computer. The output was set to file and after this all -> “No adapters found”.

     So after this I spoke with the guy from ebay and I sent him the card back…But to China, so have to wait another 20 days or more ;-(

     Michal

252. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     The driver I used was the one from you link to Adm15. Weird, the version appears on the site is 8.6821.1 but when I downloaded it, it is 8.635.

     The link is
     http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/25948-atiamd-86821-acer/

     I will try downloading it again and also the one from the link you recommended on the top of your post.

253. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     Add-on: Should I need to use WinFlash? Or could I just simply use GPU-Z which I find it quite easy to use. Is there any different?

254. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     Updates: Okay, I have just installed Ati driver version 8.513 and it works perfectly. But then, since I’m quite font of playing games myself, getting a better driver would not be considered a waste of effort. So, please continue to guide me!

255. adm15 wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     I just use gpu-z to get temperature readings. nothing else. hehe and the my bios is 8.633. The link Morris gave did not show any driver compatible with 3650, for whatever reason, when i tried to look for the driver manually. I don’t know where i got 8.633 haha. I collected a lot of drivers when i was preparing to upgrade to win7. Best of luck to you!

256. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Thanks and congratz. If you are using GPU-Z just to get the temp reading, then what method did you use to backup and flash your bios? Could GPU-Z use to flash my card without having to go through those dos flashing thingy?

     Anyway, I just run 3DMark06 test and I got 3746 with my default bios setting which run at 600/500 (GPU/Ram) MHz with 1.1v. Averagely, my temp maintains in between 50-55C. Somehow, I manage to peek into the temp reading while benchmarking, it goes up to 68C. Anyway, I will try to install some games after this to check out the temp at 100% load.

     Btw, regarding Radeon Bios Editor (RBE), I’m having this pop-up showing stating that my card does not support overdrive. Does that mean my card is not able to overclock? And what is the maximum clock rate for both GPU and RAM of my HD3650 DDR2 512MB?

     Vincent

257. adm15 wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @vincent,

     i got new bios from acer, and i think it had winphlash or something. I have no idea how to flash using gpu-z. I never flashed my vbios, only the normal bios. I think there’s a way to overclock using software, not by flashing try looking for overclocking guides forum.notebookreview.com

     after running 3dmark while logging using gpu-z, try clicking the temp and looking for “max” just so you’ll see how high it actually goes.

     if it’s really 68 degrees, you’re lucky! I have no idea why mine reaches 90 degrees

258. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Never thought of that (reading the max value). I will post it here once I get the reading. I don’t believe it is 68 degrees though.

     By the way, what do you mean by Acer Bios? Is it you meant by the menu that used to select our boot drive sequence? or did they actually send you the bios for your ATI display card?

259. adm15 wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @vincent,

     boot drive sequence. i never flashed my ati card with a new bios. not yet at least. maybe soon …

260. Vincent wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Okay, I score 88 degrees (max) while running 3Dmark06. So, it is good or bad?? No idea at all. Besides, the temp hits 54 degrees during normal operation so I could say I have successfully swap my GPU personally
     *BUMP!! Lol

     Right now, I would love to get my hand on the latest driver available. I found 8.633 and it was designed MSI laptop driver. So, for now it is just a matter of compatibility. Does it match somehow?

     Vincent

261. adm15 wrote, on January 26th, 2010:

     

     I have no idea about the bios matching. I found the 8.633 in the acer website for 5920g, Win7(32bit). That’s what im using.

     88 degrees i think is normal for the 5920g, based on the comments in forums.notebookreview.com. The 5920g gets pretty hot and the cooling system is not that good. Other people post high 70s, mid80s in their laptops. Maybe time to clean your vents? There’s a cooling guide in the forums there too. hehe

     Congratulations on the swap! tell us about your flashing when get to do it.

262. Morris Lee wrote, on January 27th, 2010:

     

     @adm15, Vincent,

     Woooohh!! I missed TAG for few days, feels like I missed 100000 messages!!!

     @Vincent,

     Weird, the driver I linked should work with HD3650, at least for acer versions, maybe mine is exactly genuine Acer device ID, therefore it only works for me. You can look up http://www.cell-systems.net for 3rd party ATi Drivers.

     @adm15,

     I don’t think there is much differences, as long as it can run games fine(where the powerplay is working properly, sleep and shutdown also works) then you are in the green!

     Morris Lee

263. NekoBones wrote, on January 27th, 2010:

     

     Hey i have a Acer Extensa 7620G…

     it has a ATI mobility HD 2400 XT

     this card has done me well but its definatly time to upgrade….

     im wanting a HD 3650 as these are definatly brilliant value for money due to the perfomance….

     could you give me info on the guy who sells them as im wanting one that will definatly work in a acer laptop….

     another thing is are they DDR2 or GDDR3?

     really hope they are GDDR3 but i may have to settle with a DDR2 because i cant seem to find anyone selling them -_-

     anyway hope to hear back very soon as im doing a full upgrade of this laptop with a T9500, 4GB ram etc etc…

     NekoBones

264. adm15 wrote, on January 27th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     yeah i know, as long as it runs, why complain? i stopped playing games though, got focus on studies first. im waiting for a new harddrive. hehe, i made this 5920 my project. Planning to upgrade the processor, and maybe the wireless card. The ram too, when 2 gb becomes obsolete. Hopefully it’ll last me another 3-4 years )

265. Vincent wrote, on January 27th, 2010:

     

     @NekoBones,

     First, you have to check whether your laptop could upgrade to HD 3650 which is under category MXM Type 2. Actually, you could easily look for HD 3650 512MB DDR2 in ebay and my HD 3650 was bought from eBay too. Simply search “mxm HD 3650″ in ebay and a list will come at you. Besides, DDR3 was available too last time I checked, but I can’t guarantee it for now. Additional information would be the seller, it is “24hOpenShop” and the best thing about his products are that they come with acer preloaded vBios (which is what we need).

     @Morris,

     My card ID was unknown to GPU-Z, so I guess the vendor got lazy to key it in. Anyway, I have one major problem right now which is the POWER SUPPLY. SOmehow, I feel that with ATI, my lappy draws more current than previosly. Besides, I found out that ATI does consume more energy that 8600. Because of this, I burnt one of my adapters (luckily I have a spare). So, should I down-voltage my card from 1.1v to 1.0? Will down-volting my card actually reduce the current required?

     If needed, then there is another problem, which is HOW???? I tried create a copy of my bios using GPU-Z and edit it using RBE. But RBE mentioned that my card is not supported with overdrive. What does it mean by that? I really need a clear understanding on flashing my card since I have no idea at all.

     Thanks in advance!

     Vincent

266. NekoBones wrote, on January 27th, 2010:

     

     hehe yea i know all about mxm and how it works =]

     my HD 2400 XT is definatly a mxm II card as i have taken it out many times to reaply thermal paste etc….

     been looking on ebay for like a month now trying to hold off till a GDDR3 pops up but i may have to finally settle for a DDR2 as graphics card is my only factor left in my upgrade….

     also how much did your 5920 cost roughly as im looking to get one for little brother but he doesnt have a very high budget for being 10…… (he’s an exelent gamer though.. absoloutly amazing for his age)

     thanks for all the help and hope to hear back soon and will take another look on ebay and see if GDDR3 is there *prays*….

     NekoBones
     =^_^=

267. Hassan wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     hello AcerGuy,

     i have an “Acer 5920G” with “Ge-force 8600M GT” graphic card,
     i just do restart to my laptop but it did not boot , the power lights & the fan are running
     but there is no displayed image, i think the VGA is over heated , i sent it to Pc repairman , he fixed it but it the problem got back after a while.
     should i replace my graphic card or the thermal paste or something else ?!?

     thanks.
     Best regards Hassan.

268. Vincent wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @NekoBones,

     That’s great. Well, I bought my recently and it costs USD 70.xx from ebay. It is DDR2 though, and if not mistaken, GDDR3 costs more and it comes with 256MB only. Besides, it sure give superB performance but the side effect would be the heat produces. Morris should be able to tell more on GDDR3 since he is using it. Hope this would help!

     @Hassan,

     Okay, before jumping to conclusion, try this out. Connect your laptop to an external monitor using the dvi port. Reboot then, and check whether the screen is loaded or not. Make sure you let the system run till you hear the Window Login sound (just to be sure).

     Vincent!

269. Morris Lee wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @NekoBones,

     They are mostly GDDR2 only now, not sure what is with the shortage with GDDR3.

     my 5920 was about 700-800 CAD? I think it is discontinued though, look for Timeline, the 5810 is pretty nice, but little more pricey than 5920. I think 6920 and 8920 or the XX30 still exists.

     @adm15,

     I have upgraded pretty much everything, 4GB, 320GB 7200RPM, HD3650, soon to arrive Intel WiFi Link 5100(hopefully it works! and will post instructions for upgrade) possibly CPU when I get some income, get a cheap T7300, that is about it.

     @Vincent,

     Interesting, no ID what so ever? what does it say under device manager? what is the string for you? Overddrive is not supported on mine either, I suspect it is because it is laptop, and they don’t suppose OCing laptops are such a great idea for average users, it may lead to heating problems if you don’t do it correctly. However, it is still overclock it with the right driver if you want to do software overclocking using rivatuner or ati tools etc, but BIOS overclocking always works!

     Good thing about the BIOS one is that, I downclocked my powersaver profile, I can actually get more battery out of it if I just take notes in class!

     @Hassan,

     I don’t think it is overheating, but it is possible, check the fan, see if it is clean.
     Thermalpaste should not be such a big problem, but there is a possibility that it is the video card,(VGA is actually the name for the connection port from your video card to the monitor, usually blue color, and it is 15 pins) Maybe get it to that PC repairman to look at, ask him what was wrong, maybe the card is really bad, you never know.

     Talk to you guys again soon!
     Morris Lee

270. Vincent wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     My bad, there is an ID now saying “ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650″ but then it is unknown previously.

     So, software OC and Bios OC are two different methods is it? I suppose one overwrites the card’s bios from window and the other flash in DOS. Btw, what do you mean by ‘with the correct driver’? Is it some existing drivers prevent OC and some allow?

     Hope to hear from you soon.

     Vincent

271. Morris Lee wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     Yes, only some drivers allows overclocking/underclocking, you may want to try drivers from http://www.cell-systems.net, I think they work with overclocking.

     Morris Lee

272. adm15 wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @vincent,

     im excited for your clocking experiences. I hope you’re successful and i get to do the same hehe

     @morris,

     That’s basically what ill probably do. Upgrade to 3650 (or even 4650 in the future), 320 gb 7200 rpm hd, intel wifi link to 4965 or 5300 (someone in notebookreview did it i think), and p8600 processor, when i get to save up enough i guess. Ill be waiting for your wireless lan directions hehe

273. Morris Lee wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     I am still looking for 4650, 4670 more particular, where i can’t even find any source for.

     Careful on what CPU you are looking at, 5920’s chipset is not supporting bus speed over 800Mhz where P8600 is 1066 I think, that excludes the PXXXX for the 5920 users, we can go for some t8XXX or t9XXX, that is about it.

     5300 is redundant, it needs 3 wireless antennas 5920 only has 2 with the 3945 models, so you need to tear it apart to just install a 3rd antenna. 450Mbps is not that much different for the current laptop’s peak harddrive read write speed, it is just enough with 300Mbps using 2 antennas.

     Morris Lee

274. adm15 wrote, on January 28th, 2010:

     

     @morris,

     thanks for the tips. My mistake in the p8600. wrong research. The processor (and ram) will be the last thing ill upgrade anyway. interesting insight on the 5300. Can’t wait to see your upgrade guide haha. Ill get one of those 5100 when you give the go signal that they work fine.

     all of these are of course just plans for 2010. Hopefully, with the help of everyone here, everything will go just fine.

275. Morris Lee wrote, on January 29th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     wooohoo!! just got my card, it is right in front of me, just charging my camera now, then I will get it started!

     Wish me luck!
     Morris Lee

276. adm15 wrote, on January 29th, 2010:

     

     @morris,

     yeah great! It’ll be a snap for you! Good luck!

277. Morris Lee wrote, on January 29th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     Hooray!

     http://www.theacerguy.com/2010/01/upgrade-aspire-5920g-santa-rosa-wireless-to-n/

     300Mbps!!

278. adm15 wrote, on January 29th, 2010:

     

     Haha, ill try to order a 5100 in the near future CPU guide upgrade guide and we’re all set

279. Hassan wrote, on January 30th, 2010:

     

     @Vincent

     I have tried to connect my laptop to an external monitor using the dvi port & i do reboot but the screen didn’t load i let the system run and i hear the Window Login sound rather i don’t think that the system was running.

     @Morris Lee
     the fans is clean and running smoothly, but the sceem still black ……but when i removed the graphic card from its slot and turn on the laptop the sceen light were on !!!! … but without system booting or sounds
     any suggestions ?!!
     i think its that is the graphic card problem and i want to be sure !!!

     thanks again guys.

280. Morris Lee wrote, on January 30th, 2010:

     

     @Hassan,

     Does sound like a video card issue, if you go to Johnny’s post earlier this page http://www.theacerguy.com/2008/12/morris-aspire-5920-gpu-swapupgrade/#comment-6545

     he mentioned that if you put it in the oven method, if, you are willing to try it~~ but I don’t really recommend it in any way.

     Morris Lee

281. anil wrote, on January 30th, 2010:

     

     hi morris. me again:D. maybe you remember, i have mentioned a black screen problem to you last week. today i re-upgrade the vga card that is hd3650 from 8400m g. this time i applied thermal paste on the gpu and thermal pads on the rams. again, after opening the system screen goes black while system working. i thought that maybe it was a driver issue, so i opened in safe mod. again it goes black. after that while i was on the bios screen black screen came up again. anyway, i found out that when i look at the bios, my vga bios version is ” Vf R and (with symbols)some musical note, left arrow and down arrow. and video memory was 0 MB. is this a vbios problem or is there something wrong with the card. whay should i do? i know it is too long but i am desperate right now. i am waiting your help…

282. Morris Lee wrote, on January 30th, 2010:

     

     @anil,

     I think it is imply overheating, you need to use copper mod or you have to modify the video card BIOS’ voltage to lower values to reduce heat, the HD3650 will turn the computer off if it gets too hot.

     Morris Lee

283. anil wrote, on January 30th, 2010:

     

     Thx for your quick reply. Do you have any idea about 0 MB video memory shown in the bios? It doesnt make sense that it caused by overheating:D
     By the way the computer does not turn off system continues to work.

284. Morris Lee wrote, on January 31st, 2010:

     

     @anil,

     where do you see this 0 MB? in windows? where in windows? try GPU-Z, it will report a more accurate value

     Morris Lee

285. Vincent wrote, on January 31st, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     Thanks for the link. I will try it out when I have the time. Kind of busy with school lately.

     By the way, days ago I try to run Dragon Age to test out the temp. However, I have this Physx exception and as we all know Physx is for Nvidia. So, what is the replacement for ATI over Physx? Any idea?

     Vincent

286. anil wrote, on January 31st, 2010:

     

     @ morris
     it shows in the bios. as i write before:
     “i found out that when i look at the bios, my vga bios version is ” Vf R and (with symbols)some musical note, left arrow and down arrow. and video memory was 0 MB”.
     i dont have a chance to check with gpu-z or something else because of black screen. also, as i mentioned before it becomes black even in the bios:S.
     thanks for your helpssss.

287. Morris Lee wrote, on January 31st, 2010:

     

     @Vincent,

     at the moment, there is no Physx for ATi cards, if you have dual PCI-E motherboard(desktop) and have an ATi with Nvidia Physx capable card, the physx will be disabled due to ATi card “present”, annoying Nvidia

     @anil,

     Weird, what is the memory size that Windows reports? check it in Catalyst Control Center’s hardware tab.

288. adm15 wrote, on February 1st, 2010:

     

     @vincent

     were you able to undervolt your gpu?

289. anil wrote, on February 1st, 2010:

     

     @morris

     good news:D

     finally my hd 3650 is working without any problem. i dont know what i did but blacks screen problem seems to be gone. and i can use my laptop. but still it shows 0 video memory on BIOS. i don’t know the reason. but there is no problem when i check the video memory under windows or gpu-z.

     by the way, acc. to gpu-z clock rate is 594 and memory is 495.

     Temps:
     altough there are only 2 thermal pads out of 8 on rams, gpu temps are differs b/w 45-50 idle.
     i also check temps while i was playing pes 2010 about 30 min. with 1280×720 and high specs. temp was around 75. the max. temp was 78.

     thanks you for your helps and replies.

290. Vincent wrote, on February 5th, 2010:

     

     @adm15,

     No, not yet for now. Sorry, I have to delay it since I’m quite busy with school works. Kind of rushing my works. I will update it here once I get it done but it won’t be anytime sooner.

     Idle Temp: 50-55 degrees
     Loaded Temp: 93 degrees Max

291. Gerrald wrote, on February 8th, 2010:

     

     @morris

     Hey morris iam from the netherlands.
     I have a acer aspire 5920G with the geforce 8600m GT 512mb
     Now i have not realy problems but my fan is making noise all the time.
     What can i do?
     And i have something whill i playing games i get a terrible screen.
     Then i cannot read the letters anymore and it looks like my old nintendo 8 bit haha.
     It happens when i am playing.

292. Ale wrote, on February 15th, 2010:

     

     Hello Morris
     I would like some advice, I have a 5920 with 8600GT DDR2 256MB. Can I get better performance with a HD3650 DDR3 512MB? How much now? Can you give me a contact? The computer or the card need a BIOS upgrade?

293. Morris Lee wrote, on February 16th, 2010:

     

     @Ale,

     you can’t expect too much of a difference unless you go all the way to 4670, but no where to find it yet.

     My contact is not responding lately, not sure what is going on.

294. Steve Martin wrote, on February 23rd, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris. I’m in uk. Got my daughter an Acer a few years ago, but nothing but probs. Power socket broke, hinges siezed etc. By this time I had bought my son 5920g and his has been fine untill now (May be to do with him looking after his and my daughter abusing hers!) Anyway, he was playing something called Combat Arms online. He said whole computer froze, then restarted, but screen is grey with thick black line appearing down middle of screen as time passes, then it restarts again. Have tried plugging in another monitor and pressing f/f6 but no luck. Been searching internet for solution and came across your site. Graphics card is 8600mgs. Laptop 18 momths old, but he has been gaming etc most days. Is that how long a GPU lasts? Any other ideas what it could be? Screen is grey at start up, but lights working, but no way of doing anything with settings. Not a techy, so be gentle! Cheers.

295. Morris Lee wrote, on February 24th, 2010:

     

     @Steve Martin,

     I am sorry to show you the following linkes, but I had the problems just like yo described so I switched to ATi Graphics now.

     Here are some sources:

     http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

     http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-g84-g86-chips-overheating,6121.html

     You will have to look for rivatuner to “Force Constant Performance”, but it is tricky, or reverting back to driver 16x.xx ish should also remove the problem, but not good for new games.

     Both method are not recommended, as one will make sure it is always on maximum power, the other deceases stability on newer games and compatibility.

     Morris Lee

296. Steve Martin wrote, on February 24th, 2010:

     

     Thanks for that Morris. Not having much knowledge on this stuff, apart from changing hard drive, memory cards etc in my desktop, I wouldn’t know where to start with rivatuner. Have looked up the definition, but don’t really understand things like overclocking. Sorry. Can’t get anything up on screen, so wouldn’t be able to download/install anything anyway. Could I just replace the card as you have shown above, with something else or same model? Or am I missing something? If I can replace with same model to give me another year or two, can I leave thermal pad in or do I have to use paste? Thanks for your patience.

297. Morris Lee wrote, on February 25th, 2010:

     

     @Steve Martin,

     if you replace it with 8600m GS, 8600m GT, or 9500m GS, they all are in the risk of the same problem(I do not know any other card from nvidia that will work on the 5920G other than the above)

     Your best bet is to switch to HD3650, but you have to do some tweaking for the firmware and you also need to replace the thermalpad with copper plate, which I believe is a lot more work but it is better for the long run.

     Morris Lee

298. metys2000 wrote, on February 25th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris
     Currently two versions of HD3650 are easily available: one with 256MB DDR3 and one with 512MB DDr2. The one equipped with DDr3 should be faster..but is it real the best choice despite the lower amount of RAM?

299. Morris Lee wrote, on February 25th, 2010:

     

     @metys2000,

     the GDDR3 version will be “faster” but on games that require more memory due to bigger maps or less compressed bitmaps, you will experience stutter/lags when you arrive in new areas or open doors where 512’s performance will be slightly more consistant.

300. Steve Martin wrote, on February 26th, 2010:

     

     Thanks for all your help Morris. Although the laptop is out of warranty, I have been advised to try and get a repair/replacement/refund, from the vender. I really don’t think 17 months is a decent return for £749 outlay. Theres a British law, Statutary Rights Bill, so if I can prove it was not of good quality, fit for purpose, etc. I might get somewhere. Not going to mess with anything inside, untill thats all resolved. It can take months to settle, but if I get nowhere, I will probably replace with one of the three you have mentioned, unless I can find someone with a few more skills than me to fit the HD3650. Thanks again for your help.

301. u6b36ef wrote, on February 26th, 2010:

     

     Dear Mr Morris,

     I’ve read this whole interesting page twice, and it’s left me with a few things to ask you please, if you don’t mind.

     Where in your note you have written, 25th Feb, (and previous sections of this page):

     ‘Your best bet is to switch to HD3650 — you also need to replace the thermalpad with copper plate’

     I’ve been wondering about the exact pupose of the copper plate. Is it:

     To replace the gap left behind after removing the thermal pad, because thermal pad has insufficient cooling properties for HD 3650. A Cu (copper) plate in then most sensible option.
     Fixing a plate in place then leaves the graphics card sat in the same position.

     I have re-sat an Nvidia 8600 in a 5920 ‘without’ the thermal pad. I think it leaves distance between the graphics chip and heatsink, which ’seems’ slightly too large, for thermal paste only.

     The graphics card is held in a postion fixed by the four mounts, which the four screws fix the card onto. Therfore the card position can’t be altered in compensation enough after the removal of the theamal pad.

     Is this your principle that thermal pad removal leaves a gap. HD 3650 is too hot for thermal pad. Cu plate thermal conductivity is excellent.

     Yours faithfully.

302. u6b36ef wrote, on February 26th, 2010:

     

     To Morris,

     Oh I see, maybe you’ve already explained in your post 23 Jan 2010:

     Quote,
     “so you are saying you are using the original thermalpad for the core that is from the 8400m GS? cause that one should not be thick enough to contact the HD3650 core, you should try using the one from RAM and move it over.”

     It’s just that I think removing the thermal pad from under the nvid 8600, leaves space too. I’m looking at buying a 0.7mm thick Cu plate, and hoping it’s not too thick.

     Cu plate is better thermal conductivity than a thermal pad, I think , even for nvid 8600. Do you agree?

303. Morris Lee wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     I think you are on the right idea, the whole point of copper for HD3650 is because the core is actually farther away than how a 8600m GT’s original core, HD3650 is based on 65nm, which I think is the main reason that it is soo much thinner than the 8600. By using the copper plate, not only it is better than thermalpad/paste(drops around 20degrees by comparison) since it is just thick enough and providing a better heat conductivity at the same time. Where when i used the thermalpad/paste, they all heat up quite crazy!

     Since the 8600m GT is thicker core, so the thermalpad is thinner, so it won’t be suitable for the HD3650. a air gap will increase the heat by a large amount. it is also a good idea to use alcohol to clean the heatsink + copper plate and JUST the core(the shiny part) of the video card.

     Morris Lee

304. u6b36ef wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     To Morris

     Ahh,

     I found a clue in your 23 Jan 2010 message. I tried to post this back today but got a ‘duplicate message’ window, and it wouldn’t post for me.
     I’d originally thought the reason was that thermal pad did not have enough thermal conductance for HD 3650, which made sense.

     That lead to the greatest mystery of all to me, which was, using direct contact between core, heatsink and paste seemed less efficient than copper plate.
     Adding a copper plate and another layer of paste introduces more thermal interfaces, and should reduce thermal conductivity. (A level Physics I think).
     Core to heasink, and the thinnest layer of paste seems to be the rule.
     Anyway all explained by the ‘gap’, between core and heatsink.

     It’s a shame there is not a more effective (and quiet) fan, to modify to.

     Didn’t you find that there was a gap left after removing the pad from under the Nvid 8600. I thought so.
     It’s a bit of a headache. I’m considering a 0.7mm (thinnest I can find) plate under the nvidia. I worry however that even 0.7 will be too thick, then fastening down the vid card would apply pressure across it.

     ——————————————

     However, other issues are just as worrying. The increased power consumption of the HD 3650 (~30W) over nvid 8600 (~20W). Drawing another ten watts through the cicuit feeding the GPU would have side effects, I’m thinking. Is it risky?
     - More heat,
     - Isn’t there extra pull on the power supply circuits,
     - Possibly extra pull on the laptop power adaptor. It’s only a 90W supply. Screen, gpu, CPU, mainborad all working in a graphics intensive game. Than only leaves HDD, ports and DVD drive.
     If so these changes might produce a minimally shorter lifespan of the affected circuits.

     Though down voltaging would most likely compensate for these factors, because less voltage means less current.
     Maybe I’m thinking too deeply, though I’ve been looking closely at these factors.

     Maybe I’ve understood if wrong.
     Maybe the mainboard has tolerances much higher than I wondered.

     —————————————–

     Had better stop here for now otherwise my text will scroll off the bottom of the page.

     Thankyou very much for writing back, your answer very much useful, and ‘food for thought’, and re-assuring.

     Yours,
     u6

     P.S. I’ve read the HD 3650 is 55nm technology: sure you’ve suggested it’s 65nm in your last post.
     I’ve however only checked one source.
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650.8839.0.html

     P.P.S. Notebookcheck website had this onfo too for the HD 4650, “quote”.

     ‘AMD published a current consumtion of about 15-25 Watt for the HD 4650. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).’

     http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650.13883.0.html

     This is interesting, because surely less power can means less heat.
     Nice graphics performance card, and newer GPU features probably.

     Ciao.

305. u6b36ef wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     To Morris

     Ahh,

     I found a clue in your 23 Jan 2010 message. I tried to post this back today but got a ‘duplicate message’ window, and it wouldn’t post for me.
     I’d originally thought the reason was that thermal pad did not have enough thermal conductance for HD 3650, which made sense.

     That lead to the greatest mystery of all to me, which was, using direct contact between core, heatsink and paste seemed less efficient than copper plate.
     Adding a copper plate and another layer of paste introduces more thermal interfaces, and should reduce thermal conductivity. (A level Physics I think).
     Core to heasink, and the thinnest layer of paste seems to be the rule.
     Anyway all explained by the ‘gap’, between core and heatsink.

     It’s a shame there is not a more effective (and quiet) fan, to modify to.

     Didn’t you find that there was a gap left after removing the pad from under the Nvid 8600. I thought so.
     It’s a bit of a headache. I’m considering a 0.7mm (thinnest I can find) plate under the nvidia. I worry however that even 0.7 will be too thick, then fastening down the vid card would apply pressure across it.

     ——————————————

     However, other issues are just as worrying. The increased power consumption of the HD 3650 (~30W) over nvid 8600 (~20W). Drawing another ten watts through the cicuit feeding the GPU would have side effects, I’m thinking. Is it risky?
     - More heat,
     - Isn’t there extra pull on the power supply circuits,
     - Possibly extra pull on the laptop power adaptor. It’s only a 90W supply. Screen, gpu, CPU, mainborad all working in a graphics intensive game. Than only leaves HDD, ports and DVD drive.
     If so these changes might produce a minimally shorter lifespan of the affected circuits.

     Though down voltaging would most likely compensate for these factors, because less voltage means less current.
     Maybe I’m thinking too deeply, though I’ve been looking closely at these factors.

     Maybe I’ve understood if wrong.
     Maybe the mainboard has tolerances much higher than I wondered.

     —————————————–

     Had better stop here for now otherwise my text will scroll off the bottom of the page.

     Thankyou very much for writing back, your answer very much useful, ‘food for thought’, and re-assuring.

     Yours,
     u6

     P.S. I’ve read the HD 3650 is 55nm technology: sure you’ve suggested it’s 65nm in your last post.
     I’ve however only checked one source.
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650.8839.0.html

     P.P.S. Notebookcheck website had this onfo too for the HD 4650, “quote”.

     ‘AMD published a current consumtion of about 15-25 Watt for the HD 4650. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).’

     http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650.13883.0.html

     This is interesting, because surely less power can means less heat, (depends how you use it).
     Nice graphics performance card, and newer GPU features probably.

     Ciao.

306. Morris Lee wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     I think the whole point using a thermalpad and have a small space between is to make sure the chip will fit more “smoothly” in a way as there should be more room of tolerance. but if you use direct contact to copper, you will need to use thermalpaste, where it needs to be replaces every time when you do a dis-assembly for repair.

     Forgot to mention, if you use copper plate, you will still need to use small amount of the paste between the 2 sides of the copper, to make sure there is no air bubble at all.

     When I have my copper, it is actually slightly thicker than it should be, maybe 0.1-0.2mm thicker than what it should be, I can see a small bump when I screw it in. But this is sort of a good thing, it makes sure it is always fully against the copper surface and there is no way of getting air inside. you can see results on newer desktop motherboards, you will literally see a huge bump on the back of the motherboard of the location of the CPU is installed.

     Morris Lee

307. Morris Lee wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     and yeah, I might have missed the nm numbers, yes, it is 55nm, I got it confused with the CPU standard! thanks for bringing up the correct information!

     Morris Lee

308. u6b36ef wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     Agreed. Some pressure on the heatsink is a good thing, especially in desktop pc’s where nothing bends.

     I’m actually considering the nvid 9500 gs is quite a good option. I know (I know), it’s from the G86M G84M family, 8600 GS, GT’s, with heat problems and failings.

     I’ve read it’s the heat cycle stress that causes the destruction of these chips, and less an overall high temperature. [Heat cycle - cool to hot to cool etc.]

     This is why I’m following your copper plate mod direction closely, because it may help offer part of a solution.
     Part 1. Replace thermal pad with Cu plate. By reducing overall temperature of the GPU the heat cycle will follow lower range of temperatures, I think, and a lower top temperature. Overall that would inflict less stress on the chip.
     Part 2. Use a laptop cooling pad, e.g. the Belkin Laptop Cooling Stand.
     http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-F5L001er-Laptop-Cooling-Stand/dp/B000W0D15O
     I’ve mentioned this one because people who’ve bought it seem genuinely excited.

     During gaming the palm of the left hand gets quite hot when resting over the HDD area, so a cooling stand would help with that. Good for the HDD I think. CPU and GPU temp would reduce, and general mainboard temp too. It also seems that the slope offered by a good value cooling stand like the Belkin makes a laptop more comfortable to use.

     Then maybe a mod cooled version of The Nvidia 9500m gs seems the easiest solution, all the Nvids use the same diver, (Nvidia website moblile driver seems same for all mobile vid cards. Though the latest version didn’t like a 5920. I’ll bet the Acer driver runs the 9500M GS.

     Of course the HD 4650 is excruciatingly tempting?!

     Anyway, best cut off for now.
     u6b36ef

     You did mention that you had to paste both sides of the plate, see your post:
     wrote, on December 1st, 2009:

309. Morris Lee wrote, on February 27th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     I would not recommend the 9500m GS, as it is IDENTICAL to 8600m GT. so if you already have 8600m GT, just try the Cu, maybe it will reduce or even remove the problem. In my theory, it should help.

     Sure 4650 or 70 is very tempting, but I can’t find them!

     Morris Lee

310. u6b36ef wrote, on February 28th, 2010:

     

     To Morris,

     Yes, thankyou for reminding me the 8600m gt and 9500m gs are identical! I read that some time ago, and they have identical specifications.

     What lead me away, was the following article I found at:

     http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8600M-GT.3986.0.html

     ‘The GeForce 9500M GS is a middle class graphics card from the GeForce 9000M series and the successor of the 8600M GT GPU. Benchmarks show an average 10% increase of frame rates in all games because of internal optimizations (compared to a 8600M GT with the same GPU and memory clock). According to Nvidia the card should also have a lower current consumption.’

     ______

     What gives this weight is:
     1. It makes the claim of ‘internal optimisations’.
     2. It also states Nvidia are claiming lower power consumption. (I’m sure I read somewhere said the 9500 is 8600 overclocked too.).

     Somethings changed, less power ~ maybe less heat.

     Looking further today I found this link
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

     I question whether all these are benchmarks made on the same machine.

     ———-

     With reference to finding a 4650/70, Thomas posted (in this blog January 14th 2010,) a link to a retailer of the 4650. I think you replied you thought the site looked ’sketchy’. I tended to agree, a complete unknown. A way to try to find out about that retailer will be to search for reviews about the retailer. I’ll do it myself soon now, I think.

     Secondly, I’ve recently emailed an ebayer who claimed to have 4650’s, but I saw none under the ’see other items’ link. I’ll make an enquirey about the 4650 and post to you anything they say.

     I’ve just discovered there’s a ‘Mob Rad HD 3870 X2′ that gives astonishing benchmark results – ha ha. That’ll probably set fire to the 5920. Only joking, it’s doubtfully MXM II.

     u6

311. Morris Lee wrote, on February 28th, 2010:

     

     3870 X2 is not on MXM2, there is no way as it will have 2 cores and will require 2 contact points for the heatsink

     and please compare both 8600m GT and 9500m GS, they both share the same nm and the number of transistors, therefore they are completely identical. As they are identical, that is why that is the one of the 9xxx cards that work on 5920, as they do not genuinely support 9XXX series as seen on people who tried going to 9600m GT even if it is acer BIOS based.

     Trust me, they are identical.

     If you can find a good 4670 price, let me know! i don’t want to trash my laptop yet!

     Morris Lee

312. u6b36ef wrote, on February 28th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Precisely that. (9500 is G84M)

     I’m going to email Nvidia about what internal optimisatons have been made. [Probably BIOS, firmware.] I don’t anticipate an answer since they prioritise replies.

     Then with HD 4650/70’s being PCI Ex16 2.0, you move onto wondering about information about PCI Ex16 ver 1 bandwith.
     Mainly what is the output data speed of the PCI Ex16 2.0 GPU card you are interested in. Compare that to PCI Ex ver 1 port (on the 5920).
     They are perfectly compatible, beyond doubt. At what bandwidth does PCI Ex16 ver 1 reach its upper limit.

     Incidentaly the ‘tomshardware’ link in the post you made on 24th Feb 2010 was interesting.
     You moved to ATI as did manufacturers. HP and Asus approached cooling with their BIOS set up, and I’m chasing Cu plate and laptop cooling pad.

     Anyway.
     Bon voyage
     u6

     I liked your theory that 3650 technology (nm) was smaller than 8600, and that’s why the core was further from heatsink. (I’ve seen a 2.5mm x 25mm x 0.7mm for £5, am worried about cutting)

313. u6b36ef wrote, on February 28th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Apologies – that last sentence was about a Cu plate and was meant to read:
     I’ve seen a 25mm x 25mm x 0.7mm for £5, am worried about cutting. I might bend it.

     u6

314. u6b36ef wrote, on March 4th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Hello again.

     Something else I noted when reading through this page, is the reference to memory usage and operating systems.

     I’m thinking specifically, about the 32 bit operating system with 2GB memory installed. Inquiries about this centre around upgrading to 4GB, and having a wasted 1GB.

     I wonder if it’s necessary to upgrade with the 5920. Although different 5920 models are different spec, some if not all ‘are’ fitted with another 1GB ram. Therefor with a 32 bit op system and 2×1gb ram installed, the situation is almost maximied.

     It’s the 512MB, or 1GB, or 2GB, Intel Turbo Memory card.
     Specifically, for example, if you have the 1Gb version installed, it’s divided in half for two different applications.

     1. You have access to a 512MB of flash memory, that works like Readyboost.
     2. You have a 512 partition that acts as a SSD hard disc. The 5920 assigns regularly used programs to this drive. This has the effect of saving your hard disc from spinning up to open your regular apps. If you look in computer management and disc management, you will see a 512mb partition.

     If you have one, the intel tubo card is situated on the motherboard in a pci slot. It’s situated nearest to the bass subwoofer, and visible when you have the rear panel off.

     Just having the latest drivers installed doesn’t necessarliy make it work. You need to install the ‘Robson’ application installed from the original driver disc. (Copies can be obtained if you don’t have one) That installs the software that turns it on.

     Obviously installing 4gb ram ‘could’
     a) make the Intel Turbo Memory Card redundant under a 32 bit system. Processor can on access ~3gb system ram here.
     b) It would be a bonus under a 64 bit op sys, because you’d be able to access 4.5GB system ram, and 1/2GB hard disc.

     Oh well, something to think about.

     Many thanks,
     U6

     I ‘WILL’ email the ebay vendor TODAY to see if he really has a HD4650.

315. u6b36ef wrote, on March 7th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     This is all I got back from the email vendor,

     “Hi, friend, please go to see the link, http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=399430,

     we now have ATI HD 4650 DDR2 1G $250 USD.”

     They say they have the HD 4650, but I’ve NEVER seen it on their site.

     However the link goes to a forum that discusses upgrading this, same as this blog page. Within it is reference to someone who has bought a HD 4650, and from where. I think it was page 3. Up to you. If u want I’ll post their page link to you.

     Nvidia replied: (8600M GT + 9500M GS)
     Quote:
     The specification from a reference board standpoint is identical as listed below for both boards. The GeForce 9500M GT does have the benefit of a newer process which does help to reduce power consumption. It’s basically G84M 1.1
     GeForce 9500M GS: 32 cores, 475Mhz Core Clk, 950Mhz Processor Clk, 700Mhz Mem Clk, 512MB, 128-bit, DX10, SM4.0
     GeForce 8600M GT, 32 cores, 475Mhz Core Clk, 950Mhz Processor Clk, 700Mhz Mem Clk, 512MB, 128-bit, DX10, SM4.0

     u6

     You may be lucky if you’re looking for a Merom T7 series, let me know.

316. u6b36ef wrote, on March 19th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Please can you advise?

     I’ve been looking at the following figures from the Nvid website, and pasted them in.

     GeForce 8600M GS
     Stream Processors 16
     Core Clock (MHz) 600
     Shader Clock (MHz) 1200
     Memory Clock (MHz) 700
     Maximum Memory 512MB
     Memory Interface 128-bit

     GeForce 8600M GT
     Stream Processors 32
     Core Clock (MHz) 475
     Shader Clock (MHz) 950
     Memory Clock (MHz) 700
     Maximum Memory 512MB
     Memory Interface 128-bit

     I’d downloaded and looked at Ntune, as you’d suggested it in one of your posts. In the subset under ‘performance’ – is the ‘adjust gpu settings’. The two components that can be altered are core bus and memory bus.

     I have been puzzling if core bus and memory bus relate to the same element mentioned by the Nvidia website, as core clock and memory clock, respectively.

     Bus and clock I believe are different with respect to motherboards. Now graphics cards have me thinking again. What really puzzles me more is that the values in Ntune don’t match the values from the Nvid site.

     I.E. Nvidia Ntune shows:
     Core bus @ 450MHz
     Memory bus @ 400MHz

     Ciao

317. Morris Lee wrote, on March 19th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     I believe it works similar to the CPU and the RAM, there is a memory bus speed @400, but the 700Mhz for the RAM is really 350MHz(and double rated therefore, 700mhz) so it is not limiting the speed. the Core bus I believe is what the GPU itself can handle, such as a typical core 2 duo is at 800mhz.

     If you are just looking for simple answer, 8600 is faster regardless of the coreclock, the stream processor makes it all. You can push the 8600m GT to 600Mhz, not a big problem, people push it all the way to 700 I recall.

318. u6b36ef wrote, on March 20th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     I have to agree with you that my Ntune figure of 400MHz must be memory speed ~ 800Mhz at DDR2 factor. I’d just recently downloaded Nvidia BIOS Editor (NiBiTor), and yesterday then got it to start working. This gadget also shows clearly a column for ‘Memory’, the result is 400 (800MHz DDR2).

     This suggests that the memory is overclocked in this GPU unit, because it shouldn’t exeed 700MHz.

     However the ‘Core’ column is reading 450MHz in NiBiTor, and 450MHz ‘core bus’ and Ntune. If this is the core ‘clock’, then this card is underclocked quite extensively. 150MHz for the 8600M GS, and 25MHz were it an 8600M GT.

     Looking though at fsb and core clock being different in CPU:
     FSB is the bus that leads from the CPU to the chipset (mini quote Morris, “typical core 2 duo is at 800mhz”). I remember this being quad pumped, something which appeared a long time ago [1998-ish]. It’s how we jumped up quickly from fsb’s between 100MHz – 200MHz.
     100MHz fsb became 400MHz,
     133’s became 533’s,
     166 became 667,
     and 200MHz became 800’s.
     In an example of a 2.2GHz processor, the clock runs at 200MHz (I think) and is multiplied by factor 11.

     I see a connection here that there is a common element of 200MHz unmultiplied clock speed in the processor and 200MHz un-quad pumped fsb. Anyway I’m LOST at this point.

     Regarding the GPU I’ve continued to search and wiki ‘core bus – core clock’.
     I think I should down clock the memory speed and increase the core clock speed. Though it is probably these timings which have kept this GPU alive, with an underclocked core. However the 3Dmark is almost exactly where it should be, maybe low.

     Finally I’ve discovered GPU bios, something I was introduced to here on your page. Apparently upgrading bios can improve performance, maybe unlock features, (and reset timings). Only I can’t find bios versions to download. The only link is this:
     http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,select/id,74/
     Nvidia section, Nvidia bios, Nvidia Bios files, and so on. Only the bios versions I need are not there. Ha!

     Adios

319. JY18103 wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris, thanks for your helpful info.

     I am not good at hardware stuff and so I need your help. My problem is easy.

     I have an ACER 5920G. The graphics card failed today. I just want to replace it with the same type of card, AVIDIA 8600m GT.

     In your post, you mention that: “the card’s compatibility can be tricky, but if you chose the ones with Acer vBios preloaded, it shouldn’t be a problem”.

     Since I just want to use the same type of card (no upgrade or downgrade), can I just order the same one from eBay without knowing if it is Acer vBios preloaded?

     If the answer is no, what is the procedure to make it work? Thanks for the help.

320. Morris Lee wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     @JY18103,

     As a matter of fact, I have a Nvidia 8600m GS, not GT, but pulled straight from my 2nd 5920G on the first day, should still be fully working condition. If you want it, I can send to you for just, say $50 USD? what do you say?

     Morris Lee

321. JY18103 wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     Good. Let us do it. How can I contact you?

322. Morris Lee wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     @JY18103,

     you can transfer the funds by paypal, the only way I think it is the safest and easiest at the moment for online transaction. contact me through the email I provided in the guide, and let me know your preferred address for me to send it to. I will do a fund request from paypal so there won’t be a chance of inaccurate fund transfer.

     Cheers,
     Morris Lee

323. JY18103 wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     I am sending an email to your email account

324. Michael Walsh wrote, on March 31st, 2010:

     

     @Morris and @JY18103 – Glad you found each other. soon you’ll be able to do this through the Acer Guy’s Classified section.

325. Marco wrote, on April 5th, 2010:

     

     Hi, I’m Marco from Italy. I’ve installed in my Acer Aspire 5920G the nVidia 9600M GT, I know that it’s problematic, but I’ve discovered it too late. However, I put the 9600M GT with the drivers downloaded from the Acer site for the model 5930G, I’ve installed Windows7 64 bit, drivers are for Win Vista 64 bit because for Win7 there are not available, and after many tries these are the only drivers that let me change resolution of the screen. The bug is that I need to restart twice the S.O. every time I turn the notebook on, because the first time the screen turns black after the screen with the Windows logo (Windows is starting), I have to turn off but at the second restart all goes ok. I don’t have tested the nVidia card with applications like videogames, so I don’t know if there are others problems.

326. Morris Lee wrote, on April 6th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     So you are saying you are getting an image from the 9600m GT you’ve installed? that is a break through, some people can’t even boot to BIOS with the card. I think it is just the matter of the correct driver.

     Uninstall all the drivers, and install the ones off nvidia website and see how it goes.

     Morris Lee

327. Marco wrote, on April 6th, 2010:

     

     I,ve tried with drivers for notebook downloaded from nVidia site, but they don’t let me change resolution (800×600). The 9600M GT I’ve purchased has 256mb of memory GDDR3, and the subvendor is Acer (GPU-Z says so)… maybe I’m really a lucky guy that’s all goes quite well?
     Thinking of drivers confusion in Windows, I’ve formatted and reinstalled the O.S., but the only drivers that make me work in a resolution different from 800×600 are from Acer. I’m thinking to reinstall Win7 but the 32 bit version, maybe same newest drivers will work (now with Win7 64 bit drivers working are Forceware 175.61)

328. Morris Lee wrote, on April 7th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     Did you try drivers at laptopvideo2go?

     Morris Lee

329. Marco wrote, on April 7th, 2010:

     

     Yes, I’ve tried the last two, but system use a generic VGA driver because the 9600M GT has a problem (yellow triangle in hardware management).

330. Morris Lee wrote, on April 8th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     that is weird, did you use the modded INF? disabled driver signing?

331. Marco wrote, on April 8th, 2010:

     

     Yes, I tried with modded INF downloaded with appropriate drivers, confirmed installation of software no signed…

332. Marco wrote, on April 10th, 2010:

     

     It’s very strange, I’ve installed Win XP into an external HD USB, and the only drivers working are from Acer, downloaded for Aspire 5930G, other drivers don’t work. No Cuda or PhisX enabled say GPU-Z, but all goes great. With VGA safe drivers the 9600M GT is in conflict with chipset

333. Morris Lee wrote, on April 10th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     sorry, I do not understand the last line you wrote.

334. u6b36ef wrote, on April 10th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris
     Hi!
     Last Time I’d written I couldn’t find the Acer VGA bios (from the page telling how to update VGA BIOS).
     Anyway the first google of ‘Acer bios update’ found the results I needed. This Nvidia 8600 now has the latest vBIOS, and the Windows Experience Index score improved by .1 for the graphics. Extatic!

     Anyway – these are the links I used:
     (FOR GUIDE) http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/34

     (AND FOR BIOS’S)
     http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?page=1&architecture=&manufacturer=Acer&model=&interface=&memSize=0

     They have all the Bios’s (incl. ATI), I think, but I filtered for Nvid and Acer.

     Success is great, but however it does leave me with a burning question that ‘JY18103′ almost touched on during his/her post on March 31st.

     If you have a video card with a different video bios can it be updated to your own vbios.
     I.E. If you bought (by accident or whatever) a video card with e.g. an Asus vbios, could you convert it in an acer laptop, to Acer vbios?

335. Marco wrote, on April 11th, 2010:

     

     Sorry for my bad english:-P
     When I run Windows with no drivers for the 9600M GT, the system use a generic driver VGA, in the system properties the video card results stopped because has some conflicts with the chipset (same location of memory are used both from chipset and 9600M GT).

336. bamm2808 wrote, on April 12th, 2010:

     

     I have bought two acer laptops. One in which the power cord burnt up after 4 charges and the I had to send it to repairs for a whole power supply. The second one was a m 5315 nothing but problems. Everything always messed up in it. Now I have a toshiba satellite. Not on problem after almost two years, In my opinion toshiba is the only way to go

337. Morris Lee wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     Technically, yes, you should be able to use it if you load the acer bios

     @Marco,

     So in Windows XP, the 9600 does not work properly either?

     @bamm2808,

     I am sorry with your experiences, when I used acer laptops, they work just fine, then I gave my netbook to my dad, he seems to have a lot problems. In my opinion, it is base on the users.

338. u6b36ef wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     RE: u6b36ef wrote, on April 10th, 2010

     Actually I’ve thought again about what’s allready come up on this page. You’ve allways said buy a card with the right bios.

     @ Marco

     I’ve been thinking about you situation, because I was wondering if it was possible to modify the 5920 to accept the 9600M GT. I looked at the mainboard BIOS issue a while ago.

     It’s my theory that your problem issue with the: ” video card results stopped because has some conflicts with the chipset”, is due to the mainboard.

     The 5930 driver you are using works with the 5930 mainboard, which incorporates the PM45 chipset. The Acer 5920 uses the PM965 chipset.

     The chipset being the ‘hub’. Data for graphics goes throught the chipset.

     The Vista driver you are using is expecting PM45.

     ONLY MY THEORY.
     Anyway, like Morris says, lucky you have a picture to start from.

     U6b36

339. u6b36ef wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Sorry, I was writing my 13th April post while yours was posted.

     I was wondering if the video BIOS flash chip is pre-loaded with the repective laptop manufacturer’s code. Maybe that would have left the graphics card responsive to showing no image if placed in the wrong brand machine. If’s respective to whether the GPU can display before the vBIOS controls the graphics module with clock settings and whatever it needs. (Its basic input output settings).

     U6b36

340. u6b36ef wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris
     Thankyou all the same.

     Please could you advise me with my following problem? I have pressing matters which are troublesome.

     I bought an Nvidia 9500M GS eventually. It was assured to be Acer vBIOS. I installed it and got ‘black screen’ I get no result at booting. I’m sure that I’ve been sold a dead graphics card.

     The latest 5920 BIOS is installed. The laptop is standard in every other way. When the 9500m gs is put in, the system will not boot. The 5920 blue lights come on but black screen, no bios screen, and definitley no boot occurs. Re-insert the original 8600m gs and the laptop boots happy.

     It seems obvious the 9500m gs is compatible with the 5920 because of the various posts in forums. Shouldn’t it be just a straight insertion of the graphics card and “success”. [All compatibility pages say this card is ok with this laptop].

     I’m actually now wondering which driver I would have used if the 9500M GS had worked. There isn’t a 5920 Acer driver for it. The Nvidia v195.62 was not working, though there is now version 197.16, I guess laptopvideo2go.

     U6b36

     I did wonder if the black screen no boot was a symptom of incompatibility. I wondered if this is what 9600M GT’s do in the Acer 5920. Only everywhere says the 9500M GS is compatible.

     I’m going to put it in an over at 200′C and see if that helps.

341. Morris Lee wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     the reason why 9500m GS should work is because it is identical to 8600m GT, same core, same board everything. but this maybe a BIOS problem.

342. u6b36ef wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     I have to agree it may be the Acer BIOS, but I can also suggest why maybe not. More likely I’m thinking it could be the graphics card. Either way I’m stuck at the moment.

     Via compatibility, the 9500M GS is definitley compatible with the 5920. I’ve been on the Nvidia Forum website, and some people there have them installed. Either on a laptop they’ve bought, or replaced by Acer for a bad 8600M GT.

     I don’t know if Acer technicians have a different BIOS they install for 9500M GS’s.
     This machine has the latest Acer BIOS.

     Please can ANYONE with ACER ASPIRE 5920 with NVIDIA 9500M GS advise?

343. Marco wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     Well, with Win7 I have to turn on two times my notebook because the first time the screen turns black after the loading of the OS (during the POST and the screen with the Win logo all run ok) and is not responding (seems to me driver video is not loaded correctly), I have to turn off holding down power button, then I turn on and after the POST appears the screen where it says windows has been not shutdown correctly, I choose to start Windows normally, and all goes well (some flickering of the screen before desktop appears), but nothing else seems to be wrong. Chipset is correctly detected as PM965.
     With WinXP all goes well at first turn on, no conflict with drivers Acer for 5930G (only for VGA, of course), chipset is detected right, OS run faster than my old midtower PC, I’ve tried to play the videogame Silverfall, and runs well at maximum details, better than my old PC with Athlon XP 2800+, 1,25 GB memory DDR2 333Mhz, Ati HD4650 AGP with 512 MB memory video.
     The Bios of my Acer is the latest dowloaded from the Acer site (3813).
     It’s strange I’m the only owner of an Acer 5920G with 9600M GT running well… I bought this VGA from eeshops, has only 256 MB memory GDDR3, Acer BIOS preinstallated.

344. Morris Lee wrote, on April 13th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     for real? everything works fine? screen scaling, external output and powermizer all works well? where is “eeshops”? how much was the card?

     Morris Lee

345. Marco Meneguzzo wrote, on April 14th, 2010:

     

     All works fine, yeah, take a look at http://www.eeshops.com, I spent 155.90 USD. External output works, powermize too. I’m satisfied;-

346. u6b36ef wrote, on April 16th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     In my posts on the 28th Feb 2010, and 2nd March 2010, I reffered to an email vendor I’d been contacting. I said in both these posts they claimed, quote,
     “we now HD 4650″.

     I mentioned to you I’d not seen their 4650’s ever. I looked frequently.

     I’ve just made an ebay search for HD 4650 and they now have them listed (with 1GB).

     http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650-MXM-Type-A-Video-Card_W0QQitemZ170462101387QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item27b0553f8b

     http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650-MXM-Type-A-Video-Card_W0QQitemZ170462105120QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item27b0554e20

     U6b36ef

347. Morris Lee wrote, on April 16th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     yes, I have seem them a few days ago, question is, do these versions work with 5920?

     by the price it is selling, I don’t think it is worth it over the performance you can get from HD3650.

     Thanks for bring it up though

     Morris Lee

348. u6b36ef wrote, on April 16th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris Lee

     100% concur reference to compatibility.
     They prompted the Acer BIOS with their 9500M GS’s, (that had me drooling). No BIOS ref. with these ATI’s.

     Actually I thought the 4650 went like a firebolt. You must hold the 3650 in high esteem/cost of upgrade. That’s interesting. I think they ask top price too for their products, their 9500’s were about £125. (There’s no real evidence their stuff ‘is’ new.)

     I baked my suspiciously dead nVid 9500, but a bit too long I think. It came out a bit tinged. A garbled image 8600M GT I put in at the same time now has a displaced ram chip. Time to start all over again.

     Someone pass me the frying pan so I can bat myself round the head. Oh – I can just reach the ‘I give up’ placard I made earlier.

     U6b36ef

349. Younes wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,
     Thanks for your response last time,and now I have another question.

     A friend bring to me an ATI 3650 hd for my Acer 5920 g. It’s working fine , but when I activate Windows Aero on 7 then a lot of colors artifacts began to appair and it was impossible to work with Aero. So in your opinion does the card broken?

350. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Younes,

     it is not the card problem, I had the same problem when I first got mine, it was because it was too hot, what you will need to do is use copper plates to replace the thermalpads used for the original card, or you can just extract the firmware on the card and modify the voltage and the clock speed to reduce the heat.

     Morris Lee

351. Younes wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     Thanks for your response.
     Does this card more reliable than 8600m gt,or it has the same problem.

352. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Younes,

     my 8600m GT did not even last a year, but the HD3650 is almost 2 years old now, still running like a charm even overclocked.

     Morris Lee

353. u6b36ef wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Is
     ‘extracting the Radeon BIOS’
     the same as using
     ‘Radeon BIOS Editor, ATi Winflash’?

     U6b36ef

354. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     yes, you should be able to extract the BIOS with those tools

355. iSmarties wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     hi acerguy! i hope you can help me. i have a 5920g with a 8600m GS after playing for like 15 hours straight, the screen goes black and when i turn it on again. all i can see is a black screen but i can hear the windows start up sound. what do you think the caused? if its the GPU. what GPU do you recommend for gaming? Thanks! Godbless.

356. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @iSmarties,

     It does sound like video card problem, but you never know if it is just the connection for the monitor is loose. I recommend HD4650 on ebay for gaming, HD3650 for bang for the buck.

     Morris Lee

357. iSmarties wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     thanks for the response. yeah i think so too coz the last time i used it, the GPU temp is getting high. overheat problem i guess. thanks again.

358. u6b36ef wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     I’ve been back looking at the HD4650’s on Ebay. I can say for sure they are not compatible with the 5920. They have a designation Type A, and I guess this relates to the reason for non-compatibility. The MXM slot connection pins run along a different side of the board.

     U6b36ef

359. u6b36ef wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Oh NO maybe not sorry – can you look at them Morris. On second look back they do look like they could be OK.

     U6
     Please feel free to delete these last two posts of mine if you can.

360. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     Yes, as a matter of fact, there is 2 versions of the 4650, there is the new type of MXM and the original version like the 5920 has. just make sure it is the original version, however, the new MXM is much cheaper.

361. Younes wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,

     Can you give me a link to an ATI mobility 3650 hd bios please.

362. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Younes,

     you should not use other BIOS other than your own.

     Extract the BIOS using Radeon BIOS Editor or something, edit it, then flash it back in.

363. Younes wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     Ok , can you give me the commande to use to extract the ati bios plz thx .
     Because I have the same problem I can’t play or activate AERO , did you do the copper under memory units ?

364. Morris Lee wrote, on April 18th, 2010:

     

     @Younes,

     yes, I did use copper, but I still had to downclock the memory to 700mhz

     use this http://www.techpowerup.com/rbe/ it should be pretty straight forward on aquiring the BIOS, for the clock speed, just change all the memory clock speed value of 750MHz to 700 and down volt the core slightly lower, only choose the ones from drop down menu. after flashing, if there is a problem, downvolt and downclock the core aswell

365. Younes wrote, on April 19th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     Thx for your response but gpu-z says :
     gpu clock = 296 mhz. Memory = 396 mhz.

     the temperature : 57

     and still can’t use aero .

     Does the driver causes this?

366. u6b36ef wrote, on April 19th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     I found this Wiki page after googling ‘mxm and mxm type A’.
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

     It seems that the current ebay hd 4650’s, Type A, are allmost 1cm wider. (It’s how they look to be.) The contacts must be 2cm too wide for the MXM II 5920.

     U6b36ef

367. Morris Lee wrote, on April 19th, 2010:

     

     @Younes,

     That is because powerplay is in effect, it uses the lower clocked profile when not necessary, it is not accurate when you use GPU-Z to check the clock speed. When AERO is in effect, it still creates more heat as the video card is actually processing something 3D, so you need to downvolt or downclock the video card. by the way, the thermalpad for the original video card is too thin, you will need a thicker thermalpad in order for the heatsink to be contacted to the core.

     @u6b36ef

     This one is MXM type 2, like I said, the MXM type 2 is much more expansive, they are out dated now.

     http://cgi.ebay.ca/ATI-HD-4650-4670-M96-DDR3-1GB-MXM-II-Vedio-VGA-Card_W0QQitemZ260586481548QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3cac2a278c

368. Younes wrote, on April 19th, 2010:

     

     @Morris,

     Good morning , thank you for all your explaination but the card died today, I have a black screen just like the nvidia 8600m gt.

     I found a gf 8600m gt , but somtimes the screen flicks I have installed forceware 195…. .

369. u6b36ef wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     That (ebay.ca) HD4650 is a Toshiba BIOS card, and they’ve said not usable with Acer. Exactly like you said though, EX-pen-sive..
     I wondered how you found it because I tried all variations of HD4650 search in ebay; anyway – clever.

     I’m very dubious now about trying to run such a card. The Wiki MXM article I posted about on 19th April, restates that the MXM II has a power limit of 25 watts. Odd though that they produce cards that heavily exceed these limitations.

     I too think it is a bit of a false economy to pay such a high price. Like you say you’d like a HD 4670 at the right price. The alternative being to save the card upgrade money and change you laptop. The HD3650 and 8600m GT are still good runners, depending on what you really need.

     Anyway best of luck.

     @ Younes,
     You may find an answer to your flickering at this Nvidia forum. The article is about the Nvidia 9500m GS but have a look please and see if it applies to you.
     http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=156422&st=0&gopid=1038256&#entry1038256

     They say the flicker is when Powermizer changes the card clock frequencies.

370. Ulukai wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     Hello Morris,

     I have a question about upgrading 5920G with GF 9600M GT. I know it needs BISO tweak, but I heard it is possible. Can you confirm it? I was not able to find any modified BIOS over internet. Any help appreciated!

371. Morris Lee wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     Interesting enough, this one says “Acer ver” in the title yet it says it is not compatible with Acer laptops in the description.

     http://cgi.ebay.ca/ATI-HD-4650-4670-M96-1GB-MXM-II-Vedio-VGA-Card-Acer-Ver_W0QQitemZ250616299146QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item3a59e53e8a

     I just searched for 4650 mxm rather then HD4650 mxm, ebay seems to search for the exact string.

     @Ulukai,

     A few post back has verified this, and also provided the store that supplied it, you can get it from there, but I can’t confirm the compatibility as most users came across problems.

     usually if the BIOS is not compatible, it could be useless to try anyways, as you might not even be able to blind flash it at all since it won’t allow you to boot.

     Morris Lee

372. Ulukai wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     Thank you for the answer! I guess i better stick with my 8600. The only thing is, my card has that downclocking bug. You mentioned that you fixed this problem in BIOS. Could you please explain how to do so?

373. Morris Lee wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @Ulukai,

     I would suggest the rivatuner workaround, use the “force constant 3d performance” thing in that program.

     Morris Lee

374. Ulukai wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     Oh well, I am currently using this method..was hoping to get a permanent workaround.
     Say, what about ATI 4650, is it 100% compatible with 5920g? Or does it require undervolting/clocking? Even if it does, its worth a deal, if a card works and is faster then 6800gt!

     Cheers

375. u6b36ef wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @ Ulukai,

     A solution to your 8600M GT issue may be at the following link. I really don’t know if this is what you want.
     http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/nvpmmanager/
     I’ve not used it, and can’t give you any further advice if it is what you need.

     There’s another minor remidy if you’ve not allready done it. Cleaning the fan and exhaust vents will allow the graphics card to run cooler. That will reduce the need of the Powermizer implementation within the Nvidia card. Powermizer throttles back the clockspeed of the card if starts getting too hot. A laptop cooling pad may give you a few degrees cooler, and therefor a bit more performance. (Updating drivers can improve performance also/ as well as updating vBIOS)

     Beware that tampering with Powermiser settings to allow your Nvidia to run hotter could have consequences. You may damage it.

     U6b36ef

376. Morris Lee wrote, on April 20th, 2010:

     

     @U6b36ef,

     GREAT FIND! that might be the simpler solution over using rivatuner, as it takes forever to install it and configure it properly.

     Morris Lee

377. u6b36ef wrote, on April 21st, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Thankyou dude.

     I found this item/gadget quite recently. It’s included in the page I pointed ‘@ Younes,’ to on April 20th. I discovered that Nvidia Forum while google checking Nvid 9500M GS plug and play compatibility with 5920. My post is almost at the end of the current posts there (in quite a short page). The Nvidia Powermizer Manager gadget was linked in a post on March 25th, in the post above mine (April 12th).

     I twice tried Rivatuner some time back when I was looking at graphics card clock settings, ‘core clock – mem clock’, etc. I tried Rivatuner a second time because I forgot I tried it the first. On both occaisions I took a good long look at it and thought,
     “Uh oh?”, and uninstalled it. It’s the one with the massive tree structure with seemingly zillions of options.

     Slightly changing the subject; I’ve been directing someone through a thread on the Nvidia Forum, mirroring this one. How to upgrade graphics in a 5920. I’ve referenced your page much, and directed them here to your page. This is the link.
     http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=166164&st=0&gopid=1039920&#entry1039920

378. u6b36ef wrote, on April 22nd, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Morris, have you seen this page?
     http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Store_13.html

     U6b36

379. Ulukai wrote, on April 22nd, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef
     Thank you. I did vBIOS upgrade, it seems to help. The card is running cooler and no underclocking till now.

     @Morris
     I am still curious about ATI 4650. Is it wort of upgrading?

380. Morris Lee wrote, on April 22nd, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     as a matter of fact, yes, I have seen them, I show no interest because they were all DDR2 editions, and we do not know if it works with the 5920 series either.

     @Ulukai,

     It is worth it if it is the DDR3 version, you can just overclock it to the 4670 clock speed, then you have a cheap 4670 made from 4650. if it is DDR2, then it is probably only slightly faster than a 3650 in DDR3 and the 8600m GT is between HD3650 DDR3 and DDR2, where the 8600m GS is more like 3650 DDR2

     Morris Lee

381. rony59 wrote, on April 24th, 2010:

     

     To everyone with nVidia GeForce 8600M GT video card blinking/black screen/sudden death problem:

     There is a REPORTED HARDWARE ISSUE related to 8600M GT (MXMII card) with nVidia MCP67MV chipset used on the motherboard. The PROBLEM is with one of the CIRCUITs on the MOTHERBOARD, NOT THE GRAPHICS CARD itself.

     The problems may or may not occur.
     If it does occur, it may be in a form of a blinking, “distorted or “striped” video and sometimes no video at all” or black screen (while a notebook is powered on) etc.

     There is no known published way how to test it.

     So, if you have this MCP67MV chipset

     (see http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/265484666/Brand_new_orignal_MCP67MV_A2_BGA.html

     Brand new orignal MCP67MV-A2 G86-770-A2 G86-730-A2 G86-630-A2 NF-G6150-N-A2, , GO7600-N-B1 BGA Chip

     The part numbers:
     G86-630-A1, G86-630-A2, G86-730-A2, G86-750-A2, G86-770-A2, etc.) this applies to you:

     Replacing the old 8600M GT with a new 8600M GT does NOT solve the problem.

     Replacing the old 8600M GT with a different nVidia graphics card model or even with ATi does NOT solve the problem.

     Playing with Windows 7, various ATi, nVidia or third party control SW or different types of drivers does NOT solve the problem for the HARDWARE problem may occur anytime in the future, without any warning.

     Solution: Preventive (? if the vendor grants that in case you are in the possibly-affected group) circuit replacement/mending.

     References:

     1. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=cs&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbservis.cz%2Fcs%2Facer-aspire-zavada%2F

     (a Czech service, autotranslated into English)

     2. Report by Apple – Some MacBook Pros have this NVidia issues too:

     http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377

     http://gizmodo.com/5061605/apple-confirms-failing-nvidia-graphics-cards-in-macbook-pros-offers-free-repairs-and-refunds

     http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/10/apple-nvidia-chips-to-blame-for-macbook-pro-video-problems.ars

     “Apple will repair any of these computers free of charge up to TWO YEARS from the date of manufacture, and include MacBook Pros with the 8600M GT graphics chip made roughly between MAY 2007 and SEPTEMBER 2008. If you experienced this problem and already paid for a repair, Apple will also refund your repair cost. Apple notes that if you aren’t experiencing problems, then there is no need to have your computer repaired.(?!)”

     I originally intended to buy this Aspire 5920G, but this issue and to my opinion a very fragile opening handle mechanism (I was worried about breaking the wabcam handle) discouraged me from doing that.

     This is also the answer and reaction to thread:
     http://www.theacerguy.com/forum/topic/acer-aspire-5920g-screen-blinksflickers
     ___
     This is also the answer and reaction to thread:

382. Morris Lee wrote, on April 24th, 2010:

     

     @rony59,

     Please check your sources again, the 5920 does not use nvidia chipset on the motherboard, it is intel based board. you said replacing it with ATi card does not work, I don’t agree, I been using this laptop with HD3650 replacement, working almost 2 years when the old 8600m GT did not even make it an year, and the problem also appeared to a same 8600m GT I tried to replace it with, only replacing it with the HD3650 solved the problem.

     check your sources again next time

     http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

     http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/07/09/nvidia.g84.g86.faulty/

     As you can see, it is the core of the video card failing, NOT the motherboard.

     If you read a little more carefully, even your sources stated that it is the video card’s problem, as Apple is willing to repair the video card NOT the motherboard, from gizmodo source you listed:

     “…Apple will fix any Nvidia graphics card problem for free within two years of the original purchase date…”

     Do more research before posting anything misleading.

     Morris Lee

383. rony59 wrote, on April 24th, 2010:

     

     @Morris and everyone with nVidia GeForce 8600M GT:
     Correction of my night googling: The MCP67MV chipset is on the video card,not the motherboard, so replacing the video card with ATi would definitely solve the problem. So, the safest way is to avoid nVidia GeForce8600M GT and some other nVidia cards affected by this manufacturing defect. Wanted to help those having problems with 8600.

     Morris is correct as usual. My apologies.

     PS: Question for Morris: Is the opening mechanism so fragile as it looks like? Plus, the keyboard is said to flexing, is too shallow to press (I am right now typing on Acer Apire 5720ZG and the typing is splendid) and strongly flexing around keys 7,8?
     BTW Aspire 5720ZG has NVidia GeForce 8400M-GS 256MB and no video overheating/blinking… problem so far.

384. rony59 wrote, on April 24th, 2010:

     

     Oven trick filmed:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVWDru1bub8
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_taI-CkPD3M
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gb1ujGfp0M
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8yUdwMYH6k

     … more: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gpu+oven+fix&aq=0

385. u6b36ef wrote, on April 25th, 2010:

     

     @ Ulukai,

     You’re welcome. (Thankyou for posting your good results.)

     @ Morris,

     1. I’m intrigued by this, have you seen it.
     http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6159430&postcount=9

     The 5720 series uses either the PM965 or Mobile Intel® GL960 Express Chipset (for selected models). All other specifcations are comparable with 5920.

     2. The Acer vBIOS HD4650 seller has corrected his eBay listing, and removed the not compatible with Acer statement. (Maybe he originally copied and pasted from his Tosh vBIOS 4650).

     3. The second link on your 24th April post, doesn’t seem to open.

     @Michael Walsh,
     @Morris,

     Is there an Acer Guy Classified section? (Michael Walsh’s post 29th March 2010).

     I have two perfect condition (if not new) Acer Aspire 5920 remote controls, that I want to sell. They work with other models too like the 5935’s. They’re ok as long as you have the CIR (infra-red reciever) on the front of the laptop.

386. Morris Lee wrote, on April 25th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     humm, I always recalled that the 9650m GT is 8700m GT rebranded, however, it is simply a faster 9600m GT, I AM surprised that it still worked! Then again, with the nVidia card problems, I am not willing to risk it.

     You have remotes for the 5920? is it Acer branded? cause I am using an HP remote, do you have images of it? I have never seen one for acer yet, the express slot version right? I am actually kind of interested.

     Morris Lee

387. u6b36ef wrote, on April 25th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Not express slot version – yes Acer branded.

     For the exact type, look on page sixty-four of the user guide, (not service manual).
     They control the Deluxe Arcade, Windows Media Player, Cyberlink etc, and TV if you have the Aver-Media card installed. They have buttons 16, and 17, which give standby mode and DVD menu respectively. See page sixty-five for the ‘Remote Functions’ features.

     Yes I do have pictures too. Mine are all black, rather than grey and black – like version in the user guide image.
     I took pictures with the intent to open an Ebay seller account. Not done that yet though. They are in a desktop folder. I’ll look again for your e-mail address. I’m sure I saw it somewhere on Acer Guy, and then I can post pictures to you.

     Thankyou for showing an interest.

     U6b36ef

388. u6b36ef wrote, on April 25th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     The 8700M GT I’m sure was a G84 (MXM III)
     Im sure too that the 9650M GT is G96 (MXM II), and just a higher clocked 9600M GT.

     However, it’s the cost of buying the 9650M GT, to do the test that is a worry. They are reasonably priced on eBay though. I wonder who is going to try it.

     U6b36ef

389. Younes wrote, on April 26th, 2010:

     

     @U6b36ef

     Does the 8700m GT gpu is writen G86 700 because if it’s the case I have tested this one (on aspire 5920g)with a MXM II slot and it wasn’t working cause of the bios I think .

390. u6b36ef wrote, on April 26th, 2010:

     

     @ Younes,

     RE: 8700M GT
     G84-750-A2 DDR3

     Core reference page.
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#GeForce_8700M_Series

     MXM Reference page.
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8700M-GT.3987.0.html

     U6b36ef

391. Younes wrote, on April 26th, 2010:

     

     @ U6b36ef

     So it’s just a 8600m gt with differents clocks.

     That’s it?
     Does anyone test it on a laptop ?

392. u6b36ef wrote, on April 26th, 2010:

     

     @ Younes,

     8700M GT: MXM III
     G84 core
     32 Stream Processors.
     625 MHz core clock.
     1250 MHz shader clock.
     800 MHz memory clock.

     9600M GT: MXM II
     G96 core
     32 Stream Processors.
     500 MHz core clock.
     1250 MHz shader clock.
     800 MHz memory clock.

     9650M GT: MXM II
     G96 core
     32 Stream Processors.
     550 MHz core clock.
     1325 MHz shader clock.
     800 MHz memory clock.

     u6b36ef

393. u6b36ef wrote, on April 27th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Please, I’m a bit stuck.

     I need to know something that I’ve seen you answer part of before, but I can’t find the whole post.

     Your experience of failed 8600M GT’s is, I’m hoping invaluable, and going to help.

     What are the symptoms of failed graphics cards? I’ve written out here what I think.

     1. I know I saw somewhere that you said a garbled image is a failed card.
     I’ve had a garbled image 8600M GT. (Although a failed processor can do this too – I’ve seen it) I saw you write this symptom somewhere before.

     2. A black screen with booting indicated by windows sounds seems to be another most obvious symptom.

     3. THIRD THOUGH, AND THE SYMPTOMS I’M CONFUSED ABOUT AND NEED HELP WITH.
     Can a failed card give the symptom of not even booting to BIOS? In effect, prevention of boot is caused by faulty card, as well as no image.
     I mean not even showing the first ACER screen, or a POST (Power On Self Test) screen. Just black screen, blue lights, fan, and definitely no boot.

     Question 1. (Please)
     Is this third situation also a known symptom of a ‘failed’ card.

     Question 2.
     I’ve never tried a 9600. Is this third symptom what happens when a non-compatible 9600M GT is installed in a 5920? Black screen, blue lights, fan, no boot.
     I saw you said recently that most people can’t boot to BIOS with a 9600M GT.(ref: Morris, April 6th, 2010. Getting an image was a breakthrough).

     (Apart from Marco’s 9600, of course).

     Thanks,
     U6b36ef

394. Morris Lee wrote, on April 28th, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     first and second cases are only partially failed, the third sounds like the very basic part such as the video card identifier is broken or could be entirely broken, at this case, you might hear some BIOS beeps, that is about it.

     The main problem of the 8600m GT is the core itself, the material that nvidia tried for the first time was bad, so if there is any problems, it is usually from the core, so for your 3rd problem, it could be that the core is completely gone, therefore it can not be powered up at all.

     as for your question 2, I am starting to doubt that the 9600 is fully incompatible, I am actually assuming that MXM should all work as long as the specification is correct and the firmware/BIOS is correct with a BIOS on the motherboard recognizes upgrades.

     anytime chief!
     Morris Lee

395. Alx wrote, on April 28th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     Cheers for this guide mate it has been a great help. My GPU died a couple of weeks ago and I managed to source and fit a ATi 3650 with the coppermod you suggested and I can game again!

     I get temps of about 51 idle and just under 80 when gaming so I think thats pretty good. Just a quick question though, would updating the driver do much for the performance and if so which one would you recommend (and from where?)

396. Morris Lee wrote, on April 29th, 2010:

     

     @Alx,

     updating the driver should help stability, sometimes you can get slight performance drop in return of stability, sometimes you get both. it is really depended on the software and the driver version

     You can get the latest one from AMD/ATi on ati.amd.com right now, just select Mobility Radeon instead of just Radeon like the desktop version.

     Morris Lee

397. Mike_A wrote, on April 29th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris and Everyone,

     My 5920g is 2 years old and starting to show signs of the flakey GPU, i.e. jumpy unstable video. I have been following all the threads I could find on the subject and I have been looking at the following card on eBay. The person claims it has Acer BIOS installed, but I am getting conflicting messages as to whether this will work for me or not.

     http://cgi.ebay.ca/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-3650-MXM-II-VGACard-512MB-HD3650-/270571096099?cmd=ViewItem&pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3eff4b4823

     Any thoughts, comments or experience with this vendor and/or card would be appreciated. I am not looking for gaming performance, I just want to get my laptop good and solid again.

     Many Thanks
     Best Regards
     Mike_A

398. Morris Lee wrote, on April 29th, 2010:

     

     @Mike_A,

     it seems like it is perfectly fine, and as far as I know, all the people who bought their HD3650 from ebay has worked, have not heard of a failed upgrade/replacement. if it is acer bios loaded, it should be perfectly fine.

     Morris Lee

399. Mike_A wrote, on April 29th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,

     Many thanks for your prompt response. I guess I will do some ordering and give it a try. I will report my experience back here as this seems to be one of the most popular sites for this.

     Thanks again
     Best Regards
     Mike_A

400. Alx wrote, on April 30th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Cheers for the info. I found and installed the latest one from AMD/Ati and I now have the Cataylst control center etc, which was missing before.

     Thanks again for your help
     Alx

401. The Acer Guy » Blog Archive » Morris’ Aspire 5920 CPU Swap/upgrade wrote, on May 18th, 2010:

     [...] from one of my other articles, the “Morris’ Aspire 5920 GPU Swap/upgrade”, use that as a reference for part of the dis-assembly for the cover and the GPU, now we are going [...]

402. Mike_A wrote, on May 21st, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,

     Just wanted to report back that the installation was a breeze. I used the “copper mod” and the temp. on first boot was sitting at 45 deg. and up to 54 deg. after a little stress. I know that this might improve once the thermal compound get’s “settled in”. Windows is reporting better performance numbers and I notice the fan running a lot less.

     Many thanks for your help.
     Best Regards
     Mike_A

403. u6b36ef wrote, on May 25th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     25th April 2010 we both said we were ’suprised’ the 9650M GT was working on an Acer Aspire 5720. (5720 – PM965; or GL960 for integrated graphics)

     I’ve just now read of someone who has one installed in a 5520 (Chipset: nForce 610M
     ).
     http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/396320-acer-mxm-models-cards-70.html

     Arminator is the blogger of interest here.
     Please look in the subtext after his blog message: I.E. the text which shows his/her laptop info.
     Please also look in the main blue ‘quoted’ text of the second ‘Arminator’ posting on this page.

     U6b36ef.

404. u6b36ef wrote, on May 25th, 2010:

     

     Correction: Arminator’s third posing on this page; main blue ‘quoted’ text.
     U6

405. Chris wrote, on May 26th, 2010:

     

     Hi. My 5920G’s display went blank (black) when I turned on my laptop a few days ago, but windows loads fine and there is the logon sound etc. After reading all the posts above, I assume that my graphic card (8600m GT 512MB) is dead. I have tried using an external monitor at the VGA port and also a TV at the S-Video port, but with no results (no signal/blue AV screen).

     Therefore I guess I’ll need to change my graphic card, and not wanting to get another possibly failing Nvidia card, my only option is ATI’s HD 3650 (correct me if there are other better ones that I can get). HD 4650/4670 is rather expensive, therefore out of my current budget.

     My questions are:
     1. Could the problem be any other component on my laptop? (I don’t think its the LCD / controller etc because external monitor doesn’t work either).

     2. How good is HD3650 512 compared to my current 8600GT 512? Also, Should I go for 512 DDR2 or 256 DDR3, since the present one has 512 DDR2?

     3. What are the risks when changing the card myself? I have changed/upgraded lot of other components on all of my computers before, including AGP & PCIE graphic cards, but never a MXM one. I have even changed my 5920G’s hard disk, RAM and DVD drive myself in the past 1 year.

     I’m asking because I have never done anything involving thermal paste before, and I read somewhere in the past that it could be risky if not done right.

     BTW, I don’t want to send it to a proffessional repairman because the local service centres here charge a lot, and also because I prefer to do things myself to learn, unless if its a very dangerous job or impossible for me to fix myself.

     Thanks.

406. Tberg wrote, on May 26th, 2010:

     

     Hello Chris.

     This is easy, and far from dangerous.

     Im not a professional on the matter, however i do have some knowlegde on this subject, i have recieved alot of help from this site, and i want to give something back again. So i’ll do my best to write you a great answer.

     The HD3650 is a pretty good card, both the DDR2 512mb and DDR3 256( note 256 is better, however be aware of heat issues, it will require better cooling)

     1st question: i cannot confirm wether it could be something else or not sorry

     2nd: I myself have been comparing cards by using the following site:

     http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

     Here you will get a large benchmark list of the GPUs for notebooks. Just pin out the ones you wish to compare. as you will notice the HD3650 is rated better. If you want max performance you should go for the 256 ddr3 version, but it will create more heat, so you need better cooling, than you would for the 512mb card.

     3rd: It’s a small risk really. Loss of warrenty is one thing. Just keep a steady hand, and remember to take Static electricity into consideration. (discharge yourself before going in, since you will have a risk of damageing the components.

     Use little, but enough thermal paste.

     A “copper mod” might be needed. It depends on the gap between the GPU core and heatsink. Filling up a large gap with thermal paste will give negative results.

     Finaly! Look through Morris’s Swap guide throughly. And read through the posts and you will be fine.

     I hope this will answer your questions. Sorry for “bad english”

407. Chris wrote, on May 26th, 2010:

     

     Forgot to mention, the problem actually started many months ago, but randomly and only once. (computer starts, windows loads, I can hear sounds but no display). It usually only happens once, and after a restart everything works ok. I thought it was Windows’ problem. This time though, it seems permeanent because I have been restarting countless times in the past few days.

408. Chris wrote, on May 26th, 2010:

     

     @Tberg
     Thanks for the very fast reply.

     I’ve been looking at some China/Taiwan ebay offerings, and I guess I’ll go for 512 DDR2, partly because of its slightly lower price, but mostly because of the heat produced by DDR3, which I think would be an issue to me because I live in a very hot & humid climate, and I do a lot of gaming on this laptop.

     I’ll definately need the copper mod. Are there any specific guides/instructions for that? Like maybe an external link with photos?

     Thanks again, and your English is good and fully understandable.

409. Mike_A wrote, on May 27th, 2010:

     

     Hi Chris, I just completed an installation with the DDR2 card and it was very easy and took me about half an hour to complete once I had my \copper mod\ ready to go. It also outperforms my original nVidia 8600M GT. For the copper mod I flattened a penny (check date for copper content) and then I filed it so that it was 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm x 0.1 cm (thick), as per Morris and then I polished it. When you are ready to install, put a small amount of thermal grease all over the copper to fill in any rough spots and then put thermal grease on the heat sink, add your copper and then thermal grease on top and then install the new video card and screw down. I checked a few sites about using the thermal grease and they suggested to use an amount about the size of a grain of rice. I followed these instructions and my temp. is pretty much staying at or below 50 degrees.

     Hope it helps

     Mike_A

410. Tberg wrote, on May 30th, 2010:

     

     Hello there Morris and co.

     I was wondering which card would give the best performance.

     1. Hd 3650 256 GDDR3

     or

     2. nVidia 9650 GT 1GB ddr2.

     According to my findings the 3650 card is around $20 more expensive, and produces less heat due to the GDDR3 mem, am i correct?

411. u6b36ef wrote, on May 31st, 2010:

     

     @ Tberg,

     Hi. Interesting choices.
     I have been looking at these GPU cards myself.

     I found and posted that I’d found the 9650M GT is reported as works with a 5720 at, – u6b36ef wrote, on April’ 25th, 2010.
     Also I found a report of a 5520 stated working with the 9650M GT, and posted about it at, ‘u6b36ef wrote, on May 25th, 2010:

     This leads to the prospect that a 9650M GT has a good chance of working for the 5920.
     Then only two days ago I found a 9650M GT reported working in a 5920. I guess the owner at this link needs to do a copper mod. Please see link. http://forum.notebookreview.com/6249336-post678.html

     Considering the availability for a 9650M GT, this is a considerable GPU candidate for the 5920.

     However the choice is affected by personal preferences, and/or modifications.

     The HD3650 DDR3 needs:
     It’s memory downclocking slightly, Morris has reported it needing doing in this blog. This is because DDR3 is hotter than DDR2. It’s technical why, but DDR3 operates on more parts of its clock cycle.

     Morris also has overclocked his GPU and unvervolted it, to reduce temperature. All the clues of how to do this are listed here in this page.

     The HD3650 draws 30W of power.

     The 9650M GT may need modifications of its own.
     The 9500M GS in the 5920 suffers from a flicker everytime the GPU clock changes speed. As we know the GPU up/downclocks depending on the demand/load.
     Is the 9650M GT going to do the same? It has been reported for the 9500M GS here. http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=156422&st=0&gopid=1038256&#entry1038256
     There has been a workaround fix for it reported though. I pasted the link on this page, at my post on, ‘u6b36ef wrote, on April 20th, 2010′. This link explains everything you will need to know.

     The 9650M GT draws only 23W of power.

     The 9650 has the same reference board specification of the 9600M GT, but is also higher clocked. More importantly the 9650M GT is produced using 55nm technology, whereas the 9600M GT used 65nm technology. As is the case with the 9650, having smaller technology there is a good chance is will aslo run cooler. Also smaller size technology is inherently fasted that its larger cousin.
     Remember too – the 9600M GT mostly didn’t work in the 5920!!!!

     You’ve asked which will give the highest performance. My guess is the 9650M GT is faster. I expect it will either beat the HD3650 by about 200 marks at 3D Mark ‘05, or by about 2000 marks.
     presided new
     The notebookcheck website shows the HD3650 [probably the DDR2 example] on average manages 7539, in 3D Mark ‘05. The 9650M GT manages an average of 8387. However the figures for the 9650M GT in an Acer laptop, were much higher at this website, until recently (removed). Only three days ago they had an Acer laptop as the top scorer with a 9650M GT, at approx 10200. An excellent score. This figure is backed up by the fact the 9600M GT makes 9592 on DDR2.

     Anyway – there you go.
     U6b36ef.

412. u6b36ef wrote, on May 31st, 2010:

     

     @ Anyone,

     Please delete the words, “presided new”, form my above post, as I don’t know where they came from.
     U6b36ef.

413. u6b36ef wrote, on May 31st, 2010:

     

     Sorry, finally I should have added that the HD4650 is the probably the dream choice. There have beed suggestions it draws less power than the HD3650 to which is perfect case senario. Unfortunatley it is almost prohibitively expensive.
     Good luck!

414. Morris Lee wrote, on May 31st, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     Hammered the question pretty well, the 9650 is only ever so slightly more powerful than a HD3650 yet it is like 30-50 USD higher priced, and we are not sure if it is plagued with the same issue from G84 and G86, however, it does have nvidia CUDA(and Physx) support. None the less, according to that user’s reports, he ran about the same temperature as I did when I did not do the copper mod, which means it will run just fine after copper mod.

     HD4650 actually uses 35 watt, I am not sure if it will hold too well, I am pretty sure a copper mod will be required to make to stay under 80c for max temperature.

     As a reminder, all ATi cards seems to work pretty well for all MXM laptops, they usually have better compatibility, and more reliable in terms of comparison to what happened to the G84 and G86 cards (some 9700m series are reported with same issues). If you want stability, go for ATi, if you want CUDA with physx, go for nvidia. they both will be required to have copper mod for reduction of the heat.

     Morris Lee

415. u6b36ef wrote, on June 1st, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Please, do you have a lead/link on the specification for the HD4650 using 35W. I have only a report from notebookcheck that says, quote:
     “AMD published a current consumtion of about 15-25 Watt for the HD 4650. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).”
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650.13883.0.html

     (Current comsumption is a significant decision making factor, as you’ve suggested.)

     Genarally at present the 9650M GT is readily available. Whereas the HD3650 DDR3 is allmost non-existant, unfortunately, I suppose. Even Eeshops one of the two vendors of the HD 3650 DDR3 have it listed as DDR2 and DDR3 in the same page. The second vendor seems to be related to Eeshops because they have the same advert ‘literature’.

     U6b36ef.

     NB. I think I know why you had the 9650M GT mixed up with the G84M core, earlier. The 9650M GS is G84M, and I saw a report of someone having a nil result fitting one to a 5920. (??Why).

416. Morris Lee wrote, on June 1st, 2010:

     

     @u6b36ef,

     Ahh, yes that was it, 9650m GS not GT, if you look closely, the specs are the same as 8700m GT, on notebookcheck says the 9650m GS has shader model 3.0, that should have been an error, as because 8700m GT has shader 4.0, there should be no way they are moving backwards LOL

     However, I am suspecting 35 watt is probably too much, the clock speed is actually lower than the HD3650 even on the same 55nm. I do no know how much difference the shader pipline will change the power consumption though. I am estimating maybe in the lower 30’s or even high 20’s watt power consumption for the HD4650/70

     Morris Lee

417. Morris’ Aspire 5920 CPU Swap/upgrade « Morrisoft wrote, on June 3rd, 2010:

     [...] from one of my other articles, the “Morris’ Aspire 5920 GPU Swap/upgrade”, use that as a reference for part of the dis-assembly for the cover and the GPU, now we are going [...]

418. Marco wrote, on June 6th, 2010:

     

     Hi, a little question: if the 9650M GT is a 9600M GT produced at 55nm instead of 65nm, why should be (more) compatible than the ‘old’ 9600?
     It’s a strange thing that I can’t understand…

419. Morris Lee wrote, on June 7th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     it is not depended on the nm for compatibility, it is more about the firmware if it is more universal, say a HP card might not work in acer ones, but acer cards might work in HP laptops – just hypothetical speaking.

     Morris Lee

420. Marco wrote, on June 9th, 2010:

     

     I’ve updated my old drivers with the beta version of 179.48 downloaded from the nVidia site, now Cuda is enabled

421. Morris Lee wrote, on June 10th, 2010:

     

     @Marco,

     It should have been enabled a while ago wasn’t it?

     Morris Lee

422. Draža wrote, on June 10th, 2010:

     

     Just a confirmation note to all those with dead 8600M-GTs. Oven “trick” really works, and I certainly recommend it for all those with dead GPUs. I have 5920G with 8600GT, and mine died a year and a half after I had bought the laptop. It was 7 months ago. I went crazy, couldn’t find a replacement card easy, and even those on ebay were like €200 ot smth. I was desperate, didnt have the money for a new laptop. And then the breakthru. Found the replacement cards cheap in Hong-Kong. Ordered one NV 8600GT and one ATI HD3650, both MXM-2, both confirmed Acer comaptible. Payed €155 for both with shipping. In the meantime learned about the oven trick. Put the dead card in the oven for 5 mins, works to this day. I keep the spare new 8600GT in the drawer, sold the HD3650 for €150, got my money back, and who’s the pretty boy?

423. Morris Lee wrote, on June 10th, 2010:

     

     @Draža,

     Congrats! it seems that the oven idea is to redo all the connections between the board and the chip, it may have to do with the heat that the video card did to break the connection in the solder joints.

     Morris Lee

424. Mike K wrote, on June 10th, 2010:

     

     Thanks for the great resource! I just had the Nvidia cards go out on two of our laptops within a month of eachother. The screen just went black one day and that was it for them. Both were about 2 years old. I followed the guide here for the Acer 5920G laptop and it worked ike a charm. The Acer 7720 laptop was a little bit trickier to replace (had to remove two cooling manifolds to get at it) but I was able to swap it out with no difficulties… for the 7720 laptop I followed the guide here as the design was essentially the same: http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/7520G.html

425. u6b36ef wrote, on June 17th, 2010:

     

     @ Morris,

     Ah yes I see why you put the HD4650 at 35W. It is listed like that in the ’spec’ section of the notebookcheck website page for the 4650.
     http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4650.13883.0.html

     I have found this confusing too! Listed as 15W-25W in the article main description, then as 35W in the spec list.

     Your answer about the HD4650 on June 1st is BANG ON. I have thought exactly the same.

     ———
     Since they seem adamant that 15W-25W is the figurework from AMD, I am inclined to think it’s right.
     I also found that the 4670 is described: AMD published a current consumtion of about 28-30 Watt for the HD 4670. Still it is unclear if this value represents the chip alone or the whole mxm board including the memory (which would include about 5 Watt).
     It makes a bit of sense that the 4670 draws a little more power than the 4650. The core and shader clocking are slightly higher with the 4670. However though, the 4670 is also listed as 35W current consumption in the spec list! (Durr?)

     I have been all over the AMD site looking for difinitive info. Nothing found. Niether elsewhere either.

426. Morris Lee wrote, on June 17th, 2010:

     

     @Mike K,

     Congrats!

     @u6b36ef,

     It is not only you find it confusing, I did too.

     Morris Lee

427. Lustimus wrote, on June 20th, 2010:

     

     Hi to all.

     I have an Acer 5920G with an Ati 3470 256MB.I want to know if i can just pull my graphic card out and use the onboard (i think its a intel 965).

     Since i dont use the Pc for gaming, im gonna offer my card to a friend.

     I already took it out, but when i turn the pc it just lights up and does nothing, No beeps, no nothing. Do i have to do somthing in the bios..? Can anyone help me…?

     Thanks

428. Morris Lee wrote, on June 20th, 2010:

     

     @Lustimus,

     You can’t use any onboard, as you don’t have any.

     For Aspire 5920, if you have either ATi or Nvidia, you don’t have the actual intel graphics chip soldered onboard. I hope you kept your card still.

     Morris Lee

429. lustimus wrote, on June 20th, 2010:

     

     thanks for the info

     im gonna keep my card then

430. Knucklez wrote, on June 22nd, 2010:

     

     Hi, I have a 5920g im planning to change my video card coz its already broken (8600m GS Overheated). I saw a Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT 512mb MXM II Acer BIOS on ebay, is this compatible with my 5920G? or can you hook me up with someone who sells GPU card for my 5920G with Acer BIOS ready? Im a gamer so im hoping for a GPU card that is good for gaming. i really need your help acerguy, hoping for your reply soon. thanks!

431. Morris Lee wrote, on June 22nd, 2010:

     

     @Knucklez,

     If it states MXM II and acer BIOS, most likely it is going to work, but remember, all G84 and G86 are in the same pool where they have the overheating issue.

     Morris Lee

432. Knucklez wrote, on June 22nd, 2010:

     

     i see. thanks morris for the quick reply. aside from 8600m can you give me a list of compatible GPU card for my 5920g that is good for gaming.

433. Morris Lee wrote, on June 22nd, 2010:

     

     @Knucklez,

     HD3650, HD4650, HD4670, just look for MXM II, NOT MXM type A or B.

     For the above cards, they get a little hotter. you will need to do copper modding or downclock the card

     Morris Lee

434. Knucklez wrote, on June 23rd, 2010:

     

     thanks a lot morris! ill post an update after i got the GPU card.

435. kevin wrote, on June 30th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris
     i read through the entire posts but met with a problem that i can’t seem to understand or solve. i was hoping you might be able to help me with this please? Thanks so much in advance!

     ok here goes.
     i replaced my old 8600m gt card with a ati hd3650. it can boot and there is bios displayed. I drive swept all ati and nvidia drivers in my 5920G and installed the latest ati driver from the amd/ati main website.

     The install was successful with no errors reported on the installed log. but after i restarted my comp, it was only able to reach the windows loading stage before the screen went black. i wasn’t able to see any windows logo or the login page.

     but when i tried connecting an external monitor to my laptop and restarted, it worked fine. both my monitor and laptop showed the same images. I took the opportunity to check the temperature on the graphics card and it’s showing around 80celsius which means no overheating yet.
     then the problem came back when i changed display status to show on just my laptop, the screen went blank again. Also tried unplugging the external monitor and my laptop went blank too. do you know how to solve this please? i don’t wanna depend on my external monitor to access my laptop thanks

436. Tberg wrote, on June 30th, 2010:

     

     @Kevin

     Hi there. Now i know, i am not Morris.Giving it a shot anyway. It seems to me that the ATI HD3650 is defective somehow, dispite “no overheat”

     Have you tried replacing the new card with the old one you have?

     Tberg.

437. Morris Lee wrote, on June 30th, 2010:

     

     @kevin,

     do you have DDR2 or DDR3 version? DDR3 version needs thermalpads and make sure it is not above 700MHz. Memory chips does not have temperature sensors, at least not accessible in windows I believe.

     Morris Lee

438. Mehdi wrote, on July 1st, 2010:

     

     Hi dear Morris :
     I have: acer 5290g with duo processor t5450 at 1,66 ghz 667 MHz 2mg l2cache / nvidia 8600m gs turbocach 256mb up to 1024mb / 2gb ddr2

     I am facing a problem for 6months since the warrenty went off , when I turn the laptop it does run like usualy But the screen stay black (back light on) no image , tried connecting it to external monitor VGA but the last turns black too ( off or sleep mode [no signal ])

     you are my last chance befor beat the shit out off it as Ian an addict to world of Warcraft , play it all day long ( the reason why killed my laptop) btw recently befor the bigbang , was so hot ( overheated)

     My request is is it from the graphic card or inverter ( tried connecting it to my 37″ 100hz Sony via hdmi but still no signal

     As my mane use is world of Warcraft toward my Sony tv, what graphic you recommande me (8600m gs again) .
     I don’t want to play with bios or face any overheating again, so I already bought a 4fan laptop table cooling system.(dint know about twiling as am wealing to use most expensive thermal paste .

     Q: should I also buy a another ddr2 ram of 2gb to get 3gb on my 32bit vista?

     This site is the best ever, keep the good work . Sorry for my English

439. SP wrote, on July 2nd, 2010:

     

     My Aspire 5920G died almost 6 month ago. And now i need to find a new VGA. I already contact Acer Service Center and they said it will cost me $190, but when i ask what kind VGA, they said they don’t know, they must ask their engineering. So i wonder if i choose 9650M GT for the new VGA, how much it will cost me and do i need the cooper mod or anything to use the 9650M GT ?????? Please help me.

440. Morris Lee wrote, on July 2nd, 2010:

     

     @SP,

     You can find them on ebay, you need one that is MXM type II (or type 2) nothing else will work. and preferably acer bios based.

     Morris Lee

441. SP wrote, on July 3rd, 2010:

     

     How about nvidia 9650M GT ???? Somebody says it can be use in acer aspire 5920G. But i’m still thinking about the heat this thing can produce. Oh i forgot to ask. Is Nvidia 9650M GT share the same problem with Nvidia 8600M GT ???

442. Stan wrote, on July 4th, 2010:

     

     Hi, I have a 5920g i change my video card coz it was already broken (8600m GS Overheated). I saw a Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT 512mb MXM II Acer BIOS on ebay,and i bought it. When i install the card the laptop show me black screen ( didnt turn on the screen) .
     My motherboard was updated to the latest BIOS but again nothing happened. So i start to thinking that it should be a video BIOS uncompatibility.
     Well ow do you think i can change my video BIOS on this video card which not allows me to turn on the computer?
     And can you explain me more about video BIOS, when i installin driver updates from the nvidia site is it included and video BIOS update?

443. Morris Lee wrote, on July 4th, 2010:

     

     @SP,

     I am not sure if the 9650m GT has the same problem with 8600m GT, but I know it gets as hot as the HD3650 in the 5920.

     @Stan,

     How were you sure if it was the 8600m GS that is broken? what were the signs? make sure all the contacts on the connector is clean.

     I don’t think nVidia driver update should include BIOS update at all, I have never seen that happen, and it is not suppose to.

     Morris Lee

444. Mehdi wrote, on July 4th, 2010:

     

     All whom have black screen or vertical stips it’s 200% graphic chip failur caused by oveheating , and whom have the mvidia 8400 and 8600 their came already faulty from the manifactury , and goes wrong after the warranty off.
     2 ways to fix it.

     1- reflow ( blow hot air gun direcly on the graphic chipsets for 2-3 min ) then change the thermal paste , use arctic silver 5 , and make holes under the graphic card directly , improove vantilation by updating the lates bios wich force the fan to turn max , then buy a laptop cooling table system

     2- reballing ( wich is done by professionals and make the graphic chip as new, but fail again after 1year if u have the 8400 8600 models)

     I will go for reflow with a hair drier for 5min on 3cm hight then improve the cooling by the thermal past and the copper shim, hole down the case , cooling table already have it for my ps3 slim .

     I can’t afford 90£ for rebailling

     Ps : if u don’t improve cooling on the reflow system , the problem will rescuer in 20min ……

     Thx to moriss

445. SP wrote, on July 4th, 2010:

     

     How about Ati Mobility HD 4650 temperature ???? It is too hot or not ????

446. Morris Lee wrote, on July 4th, 2010:

     

     @SP,

     You definitely need a copper mod for the 4650, make sure you get the MXM type 2(or called II), anything else will not work at all with 5920G

447. SP wrote, on July 5th, 2010:

     

     AH, i really regret to buy Acer Aspire 5920G. Right now i’m using ASUS K401N.

     Processor : Intel Dual Core T4200 2GHz FSB 800MHz (temp idle: 29 – 30 C; Full load : around 45 C).

     VGA : NVIDIA G102M (temp idle : 40 – 44 C; full load : max 65 C) it’s really cool VGA.

     RAM : 2GB DDR2 800 MHz

     With this ASUS K401N, i can play COD MW 2 with 800×600 low setting or 1366×768 low setting.

     Why ACER always get easily broken ????
     oh, i forgot, my ASUS K401N has 2 years warranty. I’m planning to sell my ACER aspire 5920G and buy ASUS N82jv or ASUS G51J.

448. Morris Lee wrote, on July 5th, 2010:

     

     @SP,

     this is not really an issue with Acer, it is happening to the G84 abd G86 chips to start from nvidia. It has been seen on dell, hp, and even desktop computers! so it is not really acer’s quality problem but acer’s fault choosing nvidia. Needless to say, ATi still holds longer history for making video cards!

     Morris Lee

449. Joey wrote, on July 6th, 2010:

     

     Hey!
     A few weeks back my 5920G was displaying multicoloured wavey lines across the screen from left to right after login on to windows. Over the past 2ish weeks it has got worse and upon turning it on it just displays a grey background with vertical lines which seem to change shades colours and widths!

     Initially the coloured lines appeared rarely, and seemed to get worse, i wiped my computer and reinstalled vista, which seemed to make it worse (could be a coinsidence) although it did seem fine in safe mode. Within an hour, booting in normal mode i started getting nvidia driver ‘not responding’ errors to which after attempting to update the drivers through safe mode, it then decided to give me this grey screen to which i can not do anything once turning it on.

     I took it to a local games shop and they hooked it to a external monitor and it did not work, so they said it must be the graphics chip, and something about I may aswell chuck the laptop because it could be within the board? or something? First of all is this true??!

     Im no pro on laptops but ive done a few trail and error things, ive taken out the grahics card as shown and instead of the grey line screen i get a blank white. As said before ive hooked it to a external monitor so dont think its the lcd.

     Any advice would be greatly appreciated! main concerns are diagnosis of whats wrong with the laptop, and estimated cost of repair?

     Thanks alot! Joey

450. Morris Lee wrote, on July 7th, 2010:

     

     @Joey,

     It does sound like the video card, but if you ever do want to chuck it out, let me know, ship it to me, I will scavenge the parts as I always do, I will pay for the shipping too.

     Morris Lee

451. Joey wrote, on July 7th, 2010:

     

     Thanks,
     Would it be worth buying a new video card and replacing the old one then?

     What did the video games shop mean by it could be the board video card in which case i may aswell recycle the laptop?
     Does this mean that some laptops have the video card connected to the motherboard, instead of how the video card is connected above?

     thanks again!
     Joey

452. Morris Lee wrote, on July 7th, 2010:

     

     @Joey,

     If it is intel X3100 you have, recycle is pretty much the only way as you don’t have the port I have shown above UNLESS! if you have nvidia card such as 8600m GS or GT, then you CAN replace it. However, this laptop is quite old, if you have been upgrading every now and then like I do, otherwise, trash it, as it will be to old if you get a video card that is too good for the system.

     Morris Lee

453. Joey wrote, on July 8th, 2010:

     

     I definately have the nvidia gefore 8600 GS, therefore i guess i will try and find a new video card! Cheers for the help!

454. Morris Lee wrote, on July 8th, 2010:

     

     @Joey,

     No problem! Good luck on your upgrade! If you still have more questions, you can still come back on here anytime

     Morris Lee

455. dev wrote, on July 11th, 2010:

     

     I’m starting to hate acer products, the problem with the video card is said to be Nvidia’s fault and yet Acer has done nothing to inform its clients about it. They could have at least done something like Dell and HP which have released updates on the bios affected by these problems or extend the warranty. It has already been almost two years when I purchased this laptop and the video card are showing symptoms of the problems with 8400s. I’m about to change my as4720g graphics card with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 hope this works. Otherwise I will be buying another laptop, one thing for sure it aint gonna be Acer and no more to Nvidia.

456. Morris Lee wrote, on July 11th, 2010:

     

     @dev,

     As a matter of fact, acer did release a BIOS update that helps the problem. I recall when you look in the change log for the 5920’s newest BIOS, they changed the fan speed table for it.

     I am sorry to hear that you dislike acer so much, maybe you will have different experiences with other manufactures I don’t know.

     All I gotta say is best luck to you!
     Morris Lee

457. SP wrote, on July 12th, 2010:

     

     Finally i got the news about my 5920G from Acer Service Center. And you know what they said ??? They said they need to repair my VGA about 1 – 3 month because they need to send my VGA to Taiwan. When i asked about part replacement, they said they can’t replace my VGA, so they just repair it. OH MY GOD !!!!!!

458. Chris wrote, on July 12th, 2010:

     

     Hey Morris,

     Kudos to you for keeping this going for so long. With that in mind, I’m curious if you’re still using the same card or if you upgraded to one of the 46** series cards or the 3650 DDR3?

     Another question is what components need thermal pads for the DDR3 3650?

459. SP wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     Hey, Morris.
     I just found something interesting when i read Nvidia at Wikipedia. I think 9xxx series are affected too, just like the 8xxx series.
     This is what i found :

     But at the end of August 2008, NVIDIA reportedly issued a product change notification announcing plans to update the bump material of GeForce 8 and 9 series chips “to increase supply and enhance package robustness.”[27] In response to the possibility of defects in some mobile video adapters from NVIDIA, some[which?] manufacturers of notebooks have allegedly turned to ATi to provide graphics options on their new Montevina notebook computers

     The link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia

     They said bump material of Geforce 8 and 9 series, and that’s mean 9xxx series are affected too.

460. Morris Lee wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     @Chris,

     Yeah, I am still using the HD3650, have not upgraded yet(who likes to donate!? anyone? no? sigh…)

     You are most likely will need the copper to replace the pad.

     @SP,

     I kinda saw the same symptom on the 9XXX cards AND the 2XX cards, so for me, there is no surprise.

461. SP wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     2xx series are affected too ?????
     WOW, that’s really a surprise for me.
     How about 1xx series ????
     I have Asus K401N with Nvidia Geforce G102M and the G102M is onboard graphic card.

462. SP wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     And how about 3xx series ?? I heard from the nvidia defect forum, that 3xx series are affected with the overheat problem too. I want to buy a brand new notebook with ATi as the VGA. I will never buy Nvidia again FOREVER !!!!!

463. Morris Lee wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     @SP,

     yeah, it is pretty crazy eh? nvidia screwed up pretty bad.

     No, I have not seen any reports of 1XX or 3XX having problems, 1XX are really mostly low end cards, therefore, problems like these will not happen as much, 3XX is smaller die size I believe, therefore, they run cooler and makes them less likely to be as bad as the old 8XXX and 9XXX series.

     Morris Lee

464. SP wrote, on July 13th, 2010:

     

     Ow Ok. Thanks for the help, Morris.

465. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Hey there all 5920 owners

     I have read through every post and have been doing alot of research on gpu upgrades for my 5920 which currently has an overclocked 8600m GS 256mb @ 550/450.

     I have some money spare atm and was wondering how easy it is to install an nVidia GeForce 9650M GT 1GB DDR2.

     Is it simply a case of ensuring my laptop BIOS is the most recent version and then swapping the cards over?

     Do I need to get any thermal pads for the RAM modules?

     will I need to do the copper strip mod?

     Is the nVidia GeForce 9650M GT 1GB DDR2 dramatically better than the ATI 3650 that morris has installed?

     This is a great database of information, its amazing how much can be learned from an hour or 2 on this page!
     I have also purchase a 5100 wireless card thanks to this page!

466. Morris Lee wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer,

     the 9650 is only slightly better than the HD3650, and it has the same problem like the 8600 series had. for the DDR2 version RAM chips should work just fine with original thermalpads but to make sure the core is cool, you will need to use copper mod too.

     technically yes, just to making sure it is acer BIOS loaded SHOULD* work, but I can’t make any guaranty about that statement.

     Morris Lee

467. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Thanks alot for info, i’ll probably go for the 3650 then since you have it and it works OK for you (its also alot cheaper), I have another question for you though.

     In the pictures above you are replacing an Nvidia card with an Nvidia card, did your laptop originally come with the 8600m gs? and in the photos above are you upgrading to an 8600m gt? I am just curious.

     Thanks for the fast answer

     Mike

468. KB wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Hey, same problem, Acer replaced my dead 8600m GT, but now I have some rare flickering (warranty till october). How do I know if this is an early sign of the video card problem or the loose connection to the screen? Moving the screen doesn’t lead to the flickering. Trying to get a HD3650, is only thermal paste needed? Can’t I ask Acer to put a HD3650 in it, why do they put 8600m’s in it when they said there was a problem with it? Should I only buy a card when I know it has Acer vbios?

469. KB wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Also, for 3650, can you change the voltage with all bios’s?
     I have 0.3508 and all update methods fail.

470. Morris Lee wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer,

     I changed from 8600m GT 256MB to a 512MB one, but it has the same problem too so I had to get the HD3650 at the end.

     @KB,

     Acer may know the problem but I don’t think the technician fixing the computers does, therefore they just use what they have, and 5920 was never designed for the HD3650 unless you use copper mod so if the technician replace it with HD3650, it will get pretty hot.

     Your BIOS will work with HD3650, but you may want update it if you ever want to upgrade to Windows 7, and yes, you can change the voltage, I changed mine to even lower the heat 20-30 degrees.

     Morris Lee

471. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Hey there, I have ordered a HD 3650 on ebay, with 256 ddr2, I was wondering where I can get copper plates for the core? I’ve looked on ebay but cant find any at the right dimension 2cm x 2cm x 0.9cm (are these dimensions correct?)

     thanks, Mike

472. Morris Lee wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer,

     2cm is too big, you are looking at around 1.5×1.5 and 0.7 or 0.8 at the most.

     Morris Lee

473. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     Many thanks Morris Lee.

     Have you upgraded your cpu yet?

     Mike

474. Morris Lee wrote, on July 16th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer,

     Yes I have, I upgraded to a T7700

     Morris Lee

475. Zurab wrote, on July 19th, 2010:

     

     Hi!
     Sorry for my English, I am from Russia.
     I have Acer 5920g and yestrday I replaced it with readeon 3650 ddr2 512 mb. The videocard works perfect but there is one problem.
     When I just use my notebook (intenet,office, etc) in 2d, the videocard’s temperarure if about 55 C. and SUDDENLY the fan starts work at MAXIMUM speed!!! And then the fan’s Rate falls… slowly…. And it’s happens every 10-12 minutes!
     I don’t know what do to! As I undesrtand it is unussual problem
     Please help me ! )

476. Morris Lee wrote, on July 19th, 2010:

     

     @Zurab,

     Maybe your fan is little clogged up to make unusual louder noises? Perhaps you need to update your 5920’s BIOS, but know the risk in updating it first.

     Morris Lee

477. Zurab wrote, on July 21st, 2010:

     

     Bios is updated, and the fan is cool)
     I decided to buy another GPU – 9650m gt. It works on 5920g

478. Morris Lee wrote, on July 21st, 2010:

     

     @Zurab,

     I would not bet my money on the 9650m GT, people reported to have the same problem just like the 8600m GT. 9650m GT is pretty hot too, you WILL need copper mod.

     Morris Lee

479. awan wrote, on July 22nd, 2010:

     

     many thanks to you Morris Lee ..
     i have successfully installed ati hd3650 on my acer 5930g because of you.. but i need little help, why the desktop screen on white color become yellowish? how to manage this issue? i have tried the monitor setting by newest catalyst center but no luck..difficult to find the best combination on brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation setting..

480. Morris Lee wrote, on July 22nd, 2010:

     

     @awan,

     Interesting problem, can you take a picture of it and post it on flickr or email it to me? I never had this problem when I installed my 5920. maybe it is your screen is getting old?

     Morris Lee

481. KB wrote, on July 23rd, 2010:

     

     @ Morris

     I received my 3650, I read the size of the copper I need, but is this all the material I need? And should I get compressed air too?

482. parcs wrote, on July 23rd, 2010:

     

     hi,

     does anybody know what size should be the copper for ati 4650? somebody swapped successfully with this card?

     thanks!

483. Kong wrote, on July 23rd, 2010:

     

     hi morris,

     i got a problem with my acer aspire 5920g (8600m gt).
     when i try to start it i cant see anything
     but i can login to my account(i can hear the login-sound)
     i also tried to connect it with another monitor but it doesn’t helped.
     do you think its a problem with the GPU or something different?

     (sorry for my bad english)

484. Kong wrote, on July 23rd, 2010:

     

     @parcs

     http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/399430-my-5920g-hd-4650-need-help.html

     on this site someone swapped with it

485. Morris Lee wrote, on July 23rd, 2010:

     

     @KB,

     the compressed air is just to help clean the fan and heatsink, yes the copper is required for the long run.

     @parcs,

     I believe it is roughly the same with HD3650 but the center core is not square actually, it is like like diamond shape(just the silicon part is rotated 45 degrees)

     @Kong,

     At this point, it could be either the graphics card or the connector in the screen, it is best to assume it is the screen’s connector’s problem as it is cheaper to fix. However, if after verifying the cables are connected properly, then you might need to look into a new graphics card.

     Morris Lee

486. Tberg wrote, on July 24th, 2010:

     

     Hello Morris.

     I have now sucessfully installed Nvidia 9650M GT 1GB (ASUS)

     Mostly P&P really but i had to do a copper mod,and use some longer screws, took some from another lappy. The driver was a bit tricky, i googled it, and ended up with a modified one, seems to work okay.

     the idle temps are low, which is great. but under load, i can get up too 103C as the old 8600M Gs could, however i removed the backplate and stacked the PC up, for better ventilation. and it drops like 10-15C. The high temps i’ve been getting while playing World of Warcraft.

     Since it is rather unpractical not having the backplate screwed on, i wanted to hear if anyone one in this forum, had experience with undervolting Nvidia cards? It is my belief that undervolting it abit could help on the temps.

     Oh yeah. i get 5000 3dmarks06 now instead of 2690 with the old one.

487. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 24th, 2010:

     

     Hey there just today i’ve installed the HD 3650 with copper mod and my windows experience index rating for gaming graphics rose from 4.7 up to 6! great stuff and made very easy thanks to this page.

488. Tberg wrote, on July 24th, 2010:

     

     Congratualtions MichaelAcer.

     THis site has also provided me with great guiding and knowlegde about this stuff

     Just out of curiosity, Did you get a red card or a green card. what i am refering to is, was the PCB (platic) of the colour red or green

     and a sidenote to what, is there any difference? does it matter wether if you buy a red or green one (i ask because the price is lower on the green cards, accoring to ebay)

489. Morris Lee wrote, on July 24th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer & Tberg,

     Congratulations to both of you! But Tberg, you can look into downvolting it, I did that for my HD3650 and it is working great!

     I actually got the red HD3650, and i like it, the genuine ATi color just like the desktop versions. The red has no differences to other colors, they are just for looks, but i like red

     Morris Lee

490. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 25th, 2010:

     

     @Tberg

     This is the one I got, worked straight away and my temperatures are lower than ever

     http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260591426074&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

     I also got the copper mod from here;

     http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110450580301&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

     I emailed the seller and asked for the specific size which is;

     15mm x 15mm and 0.7 mm

     and he custom cut it for me, highly recommended.

     hope that helps anyone who’s wanting to do this.

     @Morris Lee

     whats the best proccesor I could fit into this beast? do any of the T*** series fit or does it have to be a certain socket size? FSB Speed?

     many thanks!

491. Morris Lee wrote, on July 25th, 2010:

     

     @MichaelAcer,

     Socket P, 478 pins, FSB of 667 or 800 ONLY!

     Morris Lee

492. parcs wrote, on July 26th, 2010:

     

     thanks for answers.
     but i saw that the 4650 on eeshops (which had a good price) is a mxm type A, so it won’t work on 5920g.

     if i understood- the 9650 could have difficulties for non-acer bios, right?

     so i’m looking for 3650… is it true the ddr3 256mb model is better than ddr2 512mb one?
     thanks a lot (and sorry for poor english )

493. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 26th, 2010:

     

     Yeah I believe the GDDR3 is better but it has higher running temperatures.

     and thanks Morris Lee you are a legend among 5920 users

     the T7700 looks good

494. KB wrote, on July 29th, 2010:

     

     Received my Arctic Silver 5 and 2 (ordered 1, I think lol) 15×15x0.7mm copper sheets from MetalOffCuts.co.uk .

     What do you recommend for a first video card (vbios) test (nothing, orginal thermal pad)? When do I know it works (when anything displays?)

     If it works I will use these comments and the following link (editing & flashing tools, not overclocking or t7300 downclocking) to underclock to 700, right? I know there are now normal notebook drivers.

     http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/22215-upgrade-to-hd-3650-bios-tools-overclocking-undervolting-cpu/page__p__99677__hl__%2B5920+%2B3650__fromsearch__1#entry99677

     Also any waiting time after applying paste?

495. MichaelAcer wrote, on July 31st, 2010:

     

     The first test I did was the Windows Experience Index, you need to keep an eye on your temps.

     My 3650 512 ddr2 idles at 54-56 which im really happy with, I overclocked it by 20mhz core and memory to beef it up a bit.

     make sure you update your BIOS before installing new card and dont use too much thermal paste, less is more.

     you might not need to underclock your gpu if you find temps arent getting too high.

     you might want to get a cooling pad aswell, I got a cheap one on ebay from china with 3 fans, lowers my temps by about 4-5 degrees.

     Mike

496. KB wrote, on August 1st, 2010:

     

     ^Why do I need to update the bios?
     Does it make it compatible with 3650? I got 0.3508 , new one makes the fan spin faster at lower temps right? Does it still need that if the card is 3650 instead of 8600m?
     Morris said I needed it for windows 7, but im already on that.

     If I need it, does any1 have a w7 64 bit flas tool?

497. MichaelAcer wrote, on August 1st, 2010:

     

     Thats the oldest BIOS, I think morris will agree that you ought to flash the newest BIOS in from

     http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5920.html

     I’ve got windows 7 aswell and I upgraded my BIOS before I upgraded, just imagine how much of a pain it would be if you installed your new GPU to find that your screen doesnt work because your BIOS version doesnt have support for your GPU, especially since your GPU has DDR3!

498. Morris Lee wrote, on August 2nd, 2010:

     

     @KB,

     The newest BIOS is to be more compatible with Windows 7, they made a few tweaks for it I believe.

     Morris Lee

499. parcs wrote, on August 2nd, 2010:

     

     hi again,

     so what is the best thickness for 3650 copper mod? i sometimes read 0,1, sometimes 0,7 or 0,9… i’m a little bit confused

     thanks!

500. Morris Lee wrote, on August 2nd, 2010:

     

     @parcs,

     I don’t have a thickness measuring tool but I would say it is .7mm is the closest you want.

     Morris Lee

501. KB wrote, on August 2nd, 2010:

     

     I actually managed to do the bios upgrade this time (confirmed with Speccy). I used phlash17 and the HP USB format tool and that worked.

     Will report when I tested my card and installed it with the coppermod & a bit of AS5 paste.

     One more thing: with this laptop & gpu change they removed something (not thermal compound, but ‘GPU Adhesive’) of the processor, did you do this too?
     http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/268081-dell-xps-m1330-nvidia-geforce-8400m-gs-copper-mod.html

502. KB wrote, on August 2nd, 2010:

     

     Sorry, forget that other laptop guide.

     But look at this pic of some1’s card:
     http://www.pcsuperfreak.com/ebay/photos/ati3650-mxm2/ati3650-3.jpg

     There some stuff on the CPU, is that how it should be? I think I got that too.

503. Morris Lee wrote, on August 3rd, 2010:

     

     @KB,

     I did remove the GPU adhesive, and I replaced it with copper plate, not for the CPU, the CPU was in direct contact with the heatsink metal anyway.

     Morris Lee

504. Stan wrote, on August 3rd, 2010:

     

     hi, i just recieved the HD3650 and imediatley i installed it on my 5920g but ….
     now i got some problems – it starts , booting windows vista ( windows vista loading screen appear, and after that black screen) i feel im soo close to run my machine again, but something missing maybe?

     im with the newest BIOS 1.3813
     well is it possible to hapen , because the Nvidia drivers are installed on the hard drive or this shouldnt make such a problem?

505. Morris Lee wrote, on August 3rd, 2010:

     

     @Stan,

     Try this:

     during the booting proccess, press F8 to go into safe mode, see if you can remove the nvidia driver(just to make sure the driver does not get in the way)

     did you use the original thermalpad for the core or did you do the copper mod?

     Morris Lee

506. Stan wrote, on August 4th, 2010:

     

     hi i just removed the the windows Vista and installed the windows 7, and it work just fineee yupeeee, im so happy now, thx to your site.

     i just used a aluminium foil and termal pasta and the temperature is about 54 degree.

     But now i have a question, i still dont have the ATI catalist drivers installed, so can i go to the ATI site and download the latest from there, or its not good idea?

507. parcs wrote, on August 5th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     thanks a lot;

     @KB

     watch out, I bought a graphic card from that ebay seller and it has never been shipped to me; stay away!

508. KB wrote, on August 5th, 2010:

     

     @Parcs, no worries, it was just a pic I needed. I got it from someone else on our local ebay equivalent, received it some weeks ago, now just preparing my installation plan.

509. Morris Lee wrote, on August 5th, 2010:

     

     @Stan,

     yes, you can grab the driver from ATi’s site directly, they are better as they are newer.

     Morris Lee

510. dazzday wrote, on August 9th, 2010:

     

     Excellent guide i must say…loving this site!

     Guessing this would be the performance ranking for possible cards:

     4670 DDR3 > 4650 DDR3 > 4670 DDR2 > 4650 DDR2 > 9650M GT DDR2 > 3650 DDR3 > 3650 DDR2

     Is there much difference between the 9650M GT DDR and 3650 DDR3?

     Biggest performance boost between the 9650M GT and 4650 DDR2, also the biggest price increase.

     Guessing best bang-for-buck upgrade from 8600M GS would be 9650M GT DDR2/3650 DDR3.

     How much real life performance gain could i expect with this upgrade?

511. Morris Lee wrote, on August 9th, 2010:

     

     @dazzday,

     not much from the upgrade to 9650 or HD3650. 9650 is quite hot btw, and HD3650 is cooler and can be downclocked to be even cooler easily. therefore I say the HD3650 is still the optimal choice.

     Morris Lee

512. Mike F wrote, on August 10th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,

     Just wondering if I could get some quick advice off you with regards to my 5920g. I upgraded to a 3650 and was very happy with it, but being the fool I am, I overclocked it significantly and it died. Now I have replaced my gpu several times with cards which I have been told should work on an Acer. However, for all of them, all I get is the black screen, no POST, but the backlight definitely does come on and the machine will boot into windows as I can hear the windows start up sounds. Should I replace the LCD inverter? Would the backlight not work at all if this was the fault? Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and get a new motherboard?
     Thanks Morris – you and you’re website are excellent!!!

513. Morris Lee wrote, on August 10th, 2010:

     

     @Mike F,

     if th inverter is broken, the backlight should not work at all, it seems like the video card is simply incompatible with the 5920 for the ones you are trying.

     Have you tried purchasing a same HD3650 from the same buyer again see if that works?

     Morris Lee

514. Mike F wrote, on August 10th, 2010:

     

     Hi Morris,
     I’ve tried :
     3650 DDR2
     3650 DDR3
     9650M GT
     All gave me the same problem. I can’t be that unlucky can I? I did see some sparking from the MXM port once, have a horrible feeling it may be the motherboard. If you think there’s a cheaper solution i’ll be delighted =D
     Thanks once again for your time!

515. Morris Lee wrote, on August 11th, 2010:

     

     @Mike F,

     If you mail them to me, I can test if they are in working for you, to make sure it is not your laptop’s problem.

     Morris Lee

516. Mike F wrote, on August 11th, 2010:

     

     Thanks Morris.That’s very kind of you. My email is |||/?|mikefurness|||>>?<@|||<hotmail<>\com. Without the extra characters, of course =).

517. RedLine wrote, on August 11th, 2010:

     

     Hey Morris,

     First off, congrats on keeping this site alive, its a treasure full of info I’ve been trying to find for ages.

     Now if you could assist me I’d be grateful:

     I had my 5920G for almost 3 years now, last summer upgraded to 4gigs RAM, and this christmas my 8600m GT 256RAM died. I sent it to a local shop to replace it and got the 8600m GT 512RAM.

     Ever since, my screen would flicker from time to time, stips of snow would appear horizontally for what seems like 0.1 sec. This happens randomly and while I’m on windows interface (I have upgraded to windows 7, but have not upgraded bios – could that be the cause?)

     Also, while playing sometimes the screen gets stuck and like 2/3 of the screen from the left become blurry like not renderred properly while the rest 1/3 is fine. This is fixed only by quitting the game and restarting.

     Sometimes when I play, the laptop will “freeze”, the sound will go “bzzzt” and no action can be taken rather than force shutdown. This also happens sometimes when on windows interface.

     Finally, I tend to get blue screens with messages like “IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL” among others. This often happens AFTER I close a game and I’m back on windows, but has also happened in many other cases. The laptop will restart but sometimes keeps on restarting or getting stuck 2-3 times before it works fine again.

     Now after reading through your site I understand my card could be from the faulty g84 batch. After reading what happens to my laptop, what would you advise me to do?

518. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     Pretty much any other 8600m GT you get out there will have that similar problem, screen freeze, garbled images, all the results of the new material nvidia used in the chip. you can try downclocking the video card, or downvolt, change to copper plate for the core might help

     Morris Lee

519. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Morris,

     Thanks for your fast reply.

     I understand that downclocking or downvolting will have an impact on performance, am I right?
     And if done, how/what should I alter? Using GPU-z I found that it currently runs on 475MHz clock, 400MHz memory and 950MHz Shader @1.1500 V

     Copper plate for the core seems like a good solutions to prevent overheating, but if I choose to do that, should I be going for an HD 3650 as well? compared to what I have now, is the 3650 a better choise performance wise?

520. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     Downvolting does not impact performance, but it affects how much you can push your maximum clock speed and heat. Sometimes the vedors put slightly higher voltage so that there is room for the clock speed to be more stable across all quality of the chips. However, if you are lucky, you might be able to get away with lower voltage like I do. downclocking does affect performance directly.

     You should alter them like 1.15 to 1.10, and so on, and do try playing games with that voltage, see if it will hold. I recall you can downvolt it under 1v, but it haves been years since I had my 8600m GT

     Morris Lee

521. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Morris,

     Can you guide me on how to do this downvolting?

     Thanks again,
     Red.

522. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     Well, you first need to find an application that can extract the BIOS/Firmware of the card and open it with NiBitor(nvidia bios editor) and you can change the voltage, clock speed there. After you are done, save it, and the same application that can extract the BIOS should be able to flash it back in to over write the original BIOS giving it the new values you have entered.

     However, I got to say, flashing BIOS is the most delicate part of the process, let it finish even if it seems to be froze, you might just need to wait it out, after few times, you will get used to the timings.

     Morris Lee

523. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Morris,

     Ok so I went through what you said, downloaded nvflash, saved the original BIOS, used NiBiTor and altered the 3D volt usage, but could get it as low as 1.15 V from 1.2 V. I couldn’t use the extend voltage tables option for some reason, and to be frank, I thought I was waaaaayyy over my league in there so I didn’t bother.

     Loaded the new BIOS using nvflash and now I can only hope that things will improve.

     One last question I have for you:

     I stated earlier that I hadn’t updated my normal BIOS to the newest version before installing win7. I went to Acer’s webpage and downloaded the newest version (v 1.3813) and saw that their upgrade program SWinFlash as well as their whole upgrade process is designed for Windows Vista (as stated in their website). Should I continue with the update or are there any possible compatibility errors that could happen and my laptop and eventually me explode?

     Your help has been invaluable, keep up the good work,

     Cheers,
     Red.

524. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     If you have 64bit OS, the one on the website won’t work, you need to find a 64bit version of swinflash. If you are not sure if it will work with 7 or have a 32 bit vista installed, have the Swinflash somewhere in C:\ that you can remember, use the vista’s installation disk to boot the laptop(where you seem to be about to install vista but go under the repair or something like that), launch the cmd and launch the swinflash to do so. I have tried this and it works, I had to recover my BIOS once when I revert my BIOS and my Windows 7 won’t boot.

     Morris Lee

525. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Morris,

     I have the win7 32bit. Does that mean it is safe to update the BIOS, or do I still need to update with a vista disk?

     Just wanted to clarify this before I go and do something stupid

     Cheers,
     Red.

526. Morris wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Morris,

     I have an acer 7720g (bios V1.45) with an 8400m gs card. I recently purchased an acer 9600m gt ddr3 (VG.9PG06.006) with Qimonda memory. After installing the new card I just get a black screen but can hear windows boot as normal.

     I cannot boot to a usb flash as the motherboard seems to bypass usb boot selection with the 9600 installed.

     I was under the impression that an acer vbios 9600 would work in a 7720?

     Thanks.

527. KB wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine: Download this flash utility for dos: phlash17 http://www.sendspace.com/file/n4j3uz

     Make sure you can boot from usb, go into menu, turn boot menu on. then f12 when you boot to choose usb.

     For the rest use this guide:
     http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/440088-creating-bios-flashing-boot-disk.html

     With phlash17 & I did it without the extra parameters

528. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     Technically, it should work just fine, but if you are not very confident about that idea, use the Vista disk to load that application to be sure.

     @Morris?

     The XX20 series doesn’t seem to be very compatible with the 9600m GT, I am afraid it is just compatibility problem.

     @KB,

     Thank you for the input!

     Morris Lee

529. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     Ok so I tried going through KB’s method, but it I had trouble gettin my hands on phlash17 so I just went through with Acer’s way. Everything worked properly so I’m done with that.

     In other news, the downvolting either didn’t improve things or didn’t work at all.

     First off I managed to play a game of Starcraft II with no issues. Quitting the game to check GPU-z (which I had left working in the background), I found that even though I put 1.15V as the voltage to use in 3D, it still went on with 1.2V (as was the default). However, the temperature was indeed lower than usual (feeling the top left part with my hand was too hot before, now it was fine (temp reading in GPU-z showed 82-83 C – when my idle temp is 60-62 C).

     So there I was looking at GPU-z and I got the classic BSOD with the IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL. Although that was before the BIOS update and I’ll give it another go later today and see if it happens, I have the feeling my issues haven’t been resolved yet..

     Anyways, thanks for the awesome help, sometime soon I’ll get an HD3650, and I am currently looking into getting a copper plate for the copper mod.

     Wish you all the best,
     Red.

530. KB wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine
     I had bsod’s when I upgraded to 4gb ram, it seems there was something wrong with it, because when I got Kingston specific ram 4gb it never bsod’d again.

531. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @KB
     I think my case is different because I had upgraded to 4GB RAM for almost 6 months and no BSOD’s, then after the new gfx card I started getting them regularly. Its not a driver issue either since I removed all existing files and put the newest ones on.

     Besides, I believe I have the Kingston RAMs installed already..

     Anyways thanks for the input

     Red.

532. Morris Lee wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @Redline,

     I forgot to mention, for mobile cards, there are different profiles, 3D , 2D, and other stuff, make sure you change the values for the 3D one especially.

     Are you saying that it could be your RAM?

     Morris Lee

533. RedLine wrote, on August 12th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     The 3D value is the one I changed. It was 1.2V and the lowest I could get it was 1.15V, which is the same as the 2D and others. However, I still get readings of 1.2V from the GPU-z monitor utility. (Any idea how to use the “extend voltage tables” on NiBiTor? It’s grayed out – You said I should lower to 1.1 V or even 1.050 V)

     In regards to RAM, I said that the BSODs are not related to RAM because:

     I upgraded to 4GB RAM on Sept 09. No issues.
     GFX burned out on Dec 09, replaced on Jan 10.
     Then laptop started to “freeze” and after a little while BSOD’s started happening.

     It is not a gfx driver related issue either because on Easter I made a clean format of the laptop, installed win7 and put the new gfx drivers from safe mode.

534. Morris Lee wrote, on August 13th, 2010:

     

     @RedLine,

     Maybe your revision of the 8600m GT is different, so it allows fewer options. Can you email me your BIOS so I can take a look at it?

     I think it reads as 1.2 because it is rounding the .05 to one decimal therefore 1.15 will read 1.2

     Morris Lee

535. RedLine wrote, on August 13th, 2010:

     

     @Morris

     I’ll e-mail the BIOS to you now, as for the reading being rounded, that is not the case because it shows 1.15V and sometimes 1.2V when in 3D environments etc.

536. Padders wrote, on August 13th, 2010:

     

     Hi,

     my son’s 5920g has been malfunctioning for a while. Intermittently there would be no display, but he was able to connect to an external monitor. Now it wont display on the external monitor either.

     The fact that it was intermittent would lead me to believe it is more likely to be loose wiring than the GPU. I have opened it up but cannot find anything lose.

     What wires should I be checking, is there anything behind the screen i should be checking?

537. yaveaina wrote, on August 13th, 2010:

     

     hi!
     I´ve reades all the post in this page, looking for the size that I nedd to do the copper trick on my Acer Aspire 5920G, My 8600m died, after a couple of years of light use :S, I dont want to play!, only use to navigate the web, read docs, use word processor, or thigs like that, I´ve tried the oven trick, and works!!!!!! thanks to all the people that work for help other people, but… I´m worried because I dont know the time I´ve until the graphics cards died another time… The correct size to do my copper mod mybe 20X20mm and thick 0.8 ?? I hope, so I´ve already order one, I want to reduce the clock speed too, but there is some strange in the NiBiTor.v5.7.exe, because I change the speed and save, and later the changer are not present!, Anybody can send me a bios with the clock rates already slowdered? or tell me how to change the speed or voltages and when I save the file the changes be salved?
     Excuse my english, too
     Thanks to all the people that helps people like me with an died laptop ^^ ( can email me at yaveaina@hotmail.com)

538. Tberg wrote, on August 16th, 2010:

     

     A sidenote to Anyone considering getting the 9650M MT

     When in doubt leave it out, really

     This Specific card has poor driver support, also not too many who have expirence with it, so getting info and tips from others is not easy.

     It Gets hot! So if i figure out how to undervolt/underclock it, i will tell wether if it worked or not.

     For games, i suggest turning on Vertical Sync, since that reduces the heat. (Yeah i think it is really odd, but i googled it :http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100705080957AAKZCmo)

     Im am considering getting hd 3650 instead, i think its more suited the 5920.

     Tberg.

539. Igor wrote, on August 16th, 2010:

     

     Hello/Morris Lee.Please help me.I have 5920g-602g-25mi.My video card had been crashed(Nvidea geforce 8600m-gs(256-up to 512).Please help me to chose new video card/

540. Morris Lee wrote, on August 16th, 2010:

     

     @Igor,

     You can go for HD3650, or 8600m GS or GT, just make sure they are acer BIOS loaded, you can find them on ebay. But i am not the supplier, I can’t guaranty which will work and which will not.

     Morris Lee

541. Igor wrote, on August 16th, 2010:

     

     Thank you!!But how to sure that they loaded to bios?

542. Morris Lee wrote, on August 16th, 2010:

     

     @Igor,

     Well, usually they will state if it is Acer, Asus or HP BIOS based, they are usually in the title if not, they will be in the details page.

     Morris Lee

543. kslack wrote, on August 17th, 2010:

     

     Hello Morris Lee,

     I have an Acer 5920, it seems my video card has completely stopped working. I bought a new ATI 3650 which said it has the acer bios installed.

     Here’s the problem, I turn the laptop on and the display only will work for about 30sec.

     Could this be that I don’t have enough heat paste on the new card?

     Any ideas?

544. yaveaina wrote, on August 17th, 2010:

     

     wow!, I just bought a hd3650 too, I think we will must put an copper pad between heatsink and the gpu, i think the sizes must be 15×15x0,7mm isn´t it?, that you says sounds like the gpu stops himself because the heat is too much, i´mm planning underclocking my hd3650, any ideas?, only slow the clocks is enought? anyone can send an bios for this kind of laptop+graphic card already underclocked¿?
     thanks

545. AcerLOVER wrote, on August 17th, 2010:

     

     heyy
     ive got an acer 5741g with an ati hd 5470 graphiccard =D

     at first how can i get the hd 5470 out of my laptop?

     and as second which graphiccard should i buy?

     thanks for answering ;D!

546. Morris Lee wrote, on August 18th, 2010:

     

     @kslack,

     I think your video card maybe overheating, you might need a copper mod

     @yaveaina,

     Yes, that should be the right dimensions. I don’t think sending the BIOS could be a good idea as the cards itself might be different from the other ones, chance it is that they might result in a dead card.

     @AcerLOVER,

     I don’t have the service manual for that laptop as it is newer design, you might have to open it yourself to find out.

     Morris Lee

547. James Rowe wrote, on August 19th, 2010:

     

     Hey Morris,

     I’ve just installed a copper modded gddr3 HD3650 on my 5920G to replace my HD3470. I must say I’m noticing the speed difference in games and, although I’ve not tested with a proper gaming session yet, my temps are much lower. The copper mod and heat pads on the ram seem to have made the difference, though cleaning out the fan/heatsink probably helped too.

     Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for the guide, and when I upgrade to 64bit windows 7 next week, I can’t wait to try out your touchpad drivers.

     Thanks Again.
     James

548. BodeaDaniel wrote, on August 21st, 2010:

     

     Hy, guys i have a problem with my laptop an acer 5920g, my nvidia ge force 8600M gs is ”fried” i think , i want to upgrade my card ,i have found i NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600M GT MXM 512MB on e bay and i want to buy it ,they say the card is compatible with my laptop…..please give me some advise, shoud i buy it or buy another tipe.thanks

549. Marcoboyle wrote, on August 25th, 2010:

     

     Hi guys, i have the dreaded screen problems so many seem to have on my 5920g.
     Sent it away for repair as i thought it was the mobo at first as the battery wasnt charging and i also wasnt getting error beeps from the post even with no gpu ram or hd in the machine. (must be the mobo i thought) aparently not though, so im going to try the heat fix first see if i can get it working again and if i do then i plan on gettin the HD4670.

     If anyone is interested i found a website based in belgium who does the HD4670 for 200 euros and they recommend it for the machine

     http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/5920G.html

     hope this helps anyone who needs a new one or fancies an upgrade!

     Marcoboyle

550. Marcoboyle wrote, on August 25th, 2010:

     

     Or there is a HD4570 for 120 euros as well btw, in case 200 is a bit out of your price range for a 3 year old machine upgrade! (maybe not worth it though as the 8600gt HD3650 and HD4570 ar are very similar performance wise – but worth it for the HD 4670 though as there is a significant improvement in graphics performance according to this list of cards that you can get for the 5920.

     http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

     hope this is useful to some.

551. Streamline wrote, on August 29th, 2010:

     

     Just finished my 5920g gpu upgade from radeon HD3650 to 9650m gt ddr2. The reason for upgrade was that HD3650 had some issues.I wasnt hoping for a noticable perfomance boost from upgade. Got it from ebay for 110$.

     3Dmark06 score went from 3950(HD3650) to 4800.
     So slightly for the better.

     And now some words about the heat and temperatures. I had to use copper sheet with thickess about 0.6 mm. But even then it was going over 90C after some time of gaming. Idle temps were normal (45-50C) because of the auto downclock. So I risked modifying the bios and undervolting it. I set voltage in performance mode to 1.0 V instead of 1.1 V. And it helped! Load temperatures reduced about 10 degrees. Now its stays around 80C while gaming.

     Other laptop specs. core2Duo t9300, 3G ram, XP

552. boko wrote, on August 30th, 2010:

     

     @Morris Lee
     Hi Morris,

     Just finished reading your great guide and all comments in this page. After reading your guide, I finally made an order for a HD3650. I’ll let you know with the upgrade process once the card arrives. I’m doing this upgrade for my friend’s 5920G since his 2nd 8600M GT has started to flick frequently even when he’s not gaming (aero turned off), and his card tends to fail after 2 or 3 minutes of gaming.

     I am amazed that this blog is still alive until today! So I’ll keep you updated after my card arrives, and thanks for the guide!

     ps: congrats for the cpu & wireless card upgrade!

553. U6b36ef wrote, on September 3rd, 2010:

     

     @Tberg,

     About your posts on 24th July and 16th August, about your 9650M GT. I don’t have any immediate suggestions but am suprised by your temperature issues.

     1. Did you for sure paste both sides of your copper mod. I guess you must have. If the paste is too thin or too thick it doesn’t work as well.
     2. I have read in forums of people needing to make adjustments to their GPU card mount. I think you have done some of the modding, like you have found longer screws.
     I think some people have altered the frome that the GPU cards sits in. I think they have shortened the stems that the screws fix into. I guess the idea is to bring the card clser to the cooling. Or maybe a thicker copper mod would work better.

     When you mounted the GPU, did you think there was any pressure on the GPU ‘core’ caused by the copper mod. The thermal pad was removed from this 5920 and the copper mod put in. It was clear the copper mod was a tiny but thicker than it needed to be. It caused a slight bend in the GPU card. Morris and I talked about this, here in a much earlier post.
     I imagine the core of the 9650M GT to be quite thin, with reduced CMOS technology size. Maybe a 0.1mm or 0.2mm thicker copper mod will help. It all depends on how the 9650 core is fiiting over the mod.

     I can’t think of any other ideas at the moment. Remember though the 9650M GT is very similar to the 9600M GT, ‘BUT’ it is in a smaller technology design proccess. Therefore naturally it should be cooler. I have not heard of 9600M GT’s in other machines – running too hot. Maybe they do.
     Other than that, you may have an unlucky buy, meaning you card is a reject.

     The result for at the moment is not too good, and I wish you a successful remedy, and cooler temperatures. If I read any other ideas I will post to you. Good luck.

     U6b36ef.

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