* laptop and mxm graphics adapter
Posted on February 10th, 2010 by Alex. Filed under Projects.
From time to time I find some time to work a little bit on my broken laptop from Bullman. I would like to publish my research results here from time to time so that maybe someone benefits from the information. Since the price of a replacement of EUR 242 is too much, I bought a graphics adapter from a seller in China through eBay. It is exactly the same model (nVidia GT8600M with 512MB RAM), but it does not work in my machine. Even the lamp for the screen is not powered up and the laptop switches itself off after around 10 seconds after turning it on.
A little bit more digging revealed that there are mainly 3 manufactures for laptops: Compal, Quanta and Wistron. Acer, Asus, Dell and Bullman just buy the laptop from them and re-brand them with their own logo. For instance the Bullman V-Klasse 8 is an IFL90. If you search for IFL90 in Google you will find many entries related but from different manufactures. Have a look of the specifications of the V-Klasse 8 and IFL90. Finding any similarities?
I have to speculate, but my guessing is that graphics cards with an MXM II interface are only produced for one of the manufactures and hence is incompatible to the others. So the new GT8600M does not work in IFL90, but it will work in Acer. But that is just a guess, since I do not have any Acer here. I think, I will spend some more money to buy also an ATI RadeonHD 3650 and try it out in my IFL90. I found someone who actually succeeded in upgrading his laptop with this adapter. I will let you know. Currently there is the Chinese New Year going on till 18th of February and I have to wait till it is over.
[Update 17/02/2010]
I strongly suspect the Video BIOS to be incompatible to the BIOS of the main board. To get it to work, both BIOS need to be flashed even before any of them gets executed. The IFL90 provides a routine for that. However it involves the need of an external USB Floppy Drive (for those from the post-floppy-era: It is a device able to read/write a plastic disc holding something like 1.44MB per disc. 
), which are rarely seen these days. Btw, a pen drive does not work (at least not in my machine). For details how to do flash the BIOS or in case you bricked your BIOS have a look at this post number 184. I will try it out as soon as the old graphics adapter shows its faulty behavior again, since I just got an USB FDD. Unfortunately (for you) it seems to work currently. I recently replaced all thermal pads of the memory. If it was the case that over the time the thermal pads shrink and did not make contact with either the memory chip or the heat sink, then I have a working adapter again. Anyhow the Radeon is on its way and I will try that one too. It seems a little bit more powerful than the GT8600M and the driver development by ATI goes in a very much appreciated direction (hint: open source).
[Update 07/03/2010]
The Radeon has arrived and I can confirm that it is working in my Compal FL90 machine. I had the problem that the thermal pads for the memory where to big and the copper of the heat sink did not touch the die properly resulting in a nice crash and white screen after something like a minute after boot. Do ensure that all memory chips and the die have proper contact. The card is up and running now. However the installation of the same was a complete mess.
March 11th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I´ve got an Compal IFL90, with a broken 8600mGT, i already order a ATI HD 3650 and i intent to replace the GPU. I was wandering what happens when you boot the system with the nvidia software driver still installed in the windows, how do you change it to the correct AMD software driver?
[REPLY]
jitu Reply:
March 11th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Hey,
to get rid of the nVidia drivers, boot windows in safe mode. The VGA driver in safe mode runs with every graphics adapter. Then go to Software and deinstall the nvidia driver. it is listed there. after that, you try to install the ATI drivers. In my case i did not figure out early enough that ATI HD3650 differs from ATI Mobility HD3650 so the Catalyst drivers from the ATI web page do not work. I reinstalled windows. But that is not necessary. Follow the instructions given here: http://www.fell.it/2010/03/09/mobility-radeon-catalyst-driver-in-windows/
Good luck! Is the new ATI Radeon already on its way?
Jitu
[REPLY]
March 11th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Thanks. I expect to receive the new GPU in a few days.
[REPLY]
July 14th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Hey Guys,
i have the same problem and i was wondering where I can find fitting graphic cards for the FL90. DO you have any recomendations? I’m from Germany by the way, hopefully the shipping is not killing my budget :S
Regards,
René
[REPLY]
jitu Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 4:09 am
I ordered an ATI and a nVidia card from ebay in China. I think all the card come from the same guy. NVidia does not work, but the ATI card does.
Although the same guy sell the card, there is a huge difference in the prices varying between EUR35 and EUR50. Shipping charges were already included and it took something like 2 weeks to reach. Otherwise it was very easy and simple. I did not experienced any problems.
[REPLY]
July 24th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Hi!
Is your Radeon HD3650 with ddr2 or ddr3?
Regards,
[REPLY]
jitu Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
It has only DDR2.
But in the end it does not matter so much. At least I do not see any difference between the old nVidia and the new ATI.
[REPLY]
August 18th, 2011 at 3:07 am
Hello,
I have an amilo pi 1556 laptop and i bought a 4670 ati card. The card was working but i tried to upadate the video bios and now nothing is working. The laptop doesnt open. Do you have any idea of how can i reflash my card?
[REPLY]
Alex Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Hey, I had the same problem though with a different laptop and different card. Fortunately I could again flash the card, since only the screen output was not working. I could remember the steps to flash the BIOS of the card blindly and revived it. If the laptop does not come up anymore and/or you do not remember the steps and can repeat them with another (the original) BIOS, then this is a problem, I cannot help you out with. Sorry.
[REPLY]
December 9th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Hey, I was wondering if you might be of some assistance to me.
I have an Alienware m15x laptop and of course, like most m15x’s the graphics card died on me. Without realizing that I have an MXM 2.1 gpu connector on my motherboard I bought an Nvidia Geforce GTX 560m MXM 3.0b off ebay. Once I got the card and took apart my laptop to install it is when i noticed that my MXM module was an older version. i was wondering if you knew of any kind of adapter or maybe a way i can get the old module changed to the newer version without harming my laptop? I’m scared that if someone tries to solder on an updated module my computer won’t work anymore.
PLEASE HELP ME!
At this point i don’t know if it would be better to just resell the card on ebay or to spend just a bit more to find a way to get it to work somehoe on my laptop.
[REPLY]
Alex Reply:
December 9th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
If I remember correctly the interface always looked the same when I saw photos of MXM3 and MXM2 cards. The only difference is the size. An here is the problem. How are you going to fix the bigger card into a smaller slot without disrupting the cooling system or touching other parts? I think you are better off buying another one in the right format. At least you learned to have a look BEFORE you buy something.
[REPLY]
December 9th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Both cards are the same size, the only problem is the pci express module is different.
My old nvidia card looks identical to this:
http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Pictures/D900_10.JPG
where as here is the one i bought:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1397/dsc00351hd.jpg
I have takingthe cooling into consideration and was thinking of going with an after market cooling system purchased through new egg. which will most likely be this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834980009
thank you for the quick reply.
[REPLY]
Alex Reply:
December 9th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Well at least the form factor is fitting (at least form the pics) what happens, if you insert it and power up the laptop? Please be advised that every time, when you power up your laptop, the cooling system of the laptop must be properly installed. The chips heat up so fast that within 10 seconds the card will be gone without it.
The fans can only be considered as a supplement, but not as the main cooling. The common problem of laptops is that due to the compact size, there is not much space to ensure that the heat is transported away. So any fan outside will not be sufficient to increase the overall cooling efficiency beyond satisfactory results.
[REPLY]