HOW-TO: Upgrade your 9300 with the Ultra or 7800 "Photo Guide" - Page 13

seems very interesting.... I just got my 9300 for xmas and I'm loving it so far. My current configuration is the 1.73 gHz, 1 gig ram, 80 gig 5400 rpm, radeon 128 mb x300, and the 1440 X 900 WXGA+ Display. I would like to upgrade my x300 to the 256 mb nvidia go 6800 that can be purchased as an option for the 9300. 1) does anyone know the best way to get a hold of one and for what price, and 2) can I just "plug and play" after installing the drivers and uninstalling the x300 drivers without having to do the whole flash bios and power supply and battery changes that the 6800 ultra and 7800 upgraders have to do?

since 6800 go is a dell upgrade for the 9300, this will work perfectly. just unsinstall drivers and you'll be set.

i've got a 7800 on the way and need to sell my 6800go. send me a private messege and well talk.

Ok, someone please answer some questions. I been lurking on this website for about a year and been researching the hell out of my next laptop. So I finnaly came under the decision to get the 9300 as soon as the next big discount hits in january.

So someone help me answer these questions:

1. How much weight does the 9 cell add?
2. Does the normal cards declock when not plugged into the PSU?
3. What kind of battery life can you get with a 9300 with a 6800 ULTRA
4. Since its declocks when plugged in after the mod, can you still play games descently just on battery life allone?
5. You can do this upgrade with a ATI 64 meg RIGHT?
6. Is the 9300 portable enough for you?

Please answer theses. Im planning on buying a 2.0 pentium M 9300 with just basic video card and 512 megs of ram. Im going to upgrade it right away to a 6800 ultra that im buying tommorow and 4 gigs of memory (if it supports it). I need to have a powerfull labtop for engineering graphics programs and playing some games.

Ok, here's your answers:

1. Minimal weight is added, and the extra battery life is very nice. You'll need the 9-Cell for a 6800 Ultra anyway, so get it.

2. The stock X300s and 6800Go run at full power even on battery.

3. Probably horrible battery life. My 6800 Go NU went for about 3:30-4 with a nine cell and everything turned down or off. Gaming I could get up to 1:45. With my 7800Go I get about 2:30 of desktop life and ~1:10 gaming. The Ultra is evidently worse on power than the 7800Go, so probably a little less than that.

4. Games run alright on battery life on my 7800Go (7800Go on battery is still faster than the 6800Go I had). Again, cant help you here because I dont own a 6800Go Ultra.

5. Yup.

6. 9300 is great for me. Anything smaller would be a pain in the ass, I love the room and the size of the screen. The battery life is insane for such a big laptop. Also, the palm rests are big enough for me to even run my mouse on and do a little gaming (because thumbpadding it sucks ). I use my laptop to write labs and I get a good 3:30-4 hours in the library which is perfect.

I'm wondering why you went for the 6800Ultra instead of the 7800Go? The 7800 is much faster, especially in games, and it's pretty damn cheap atm at ~$250. Did you get a killer deal on the Ultra? Also, the laptop will only support 2GB of RAM, but I think that should be good for many engineering apps. Good luck

As the last person wanting my 6800go has backed out and went for the 7800hack himself... you've now got a PM with an offer.

And no, you don't have to go thru all the bios hack 'n flash that we did.

Well I went for the Go6800 Ultra because I scored it for $90 on ebay .

Guru

Good fetch

every time i decide on something for my new laptop I find more shit on this website that makes me change my mind. I guess Im going to get the lowest speed chip and do a 1.7 ghz pin mod'd to 2.26 ghz.

Am I crazy to be buying a brand new laptop and the first week tearing it down to do a upgraded GPU , memory, harddrive, and CPU haha

I think I got problems. But doing everything yourself is so much cheaper then buying a fully decked out XPS170 (2.26ghz, 100gig 7200, etc)

Maybe, but then I am too . Here's my laptop after owning it for 10 minutes:

It almost breaks my heart to see something like that

Took me a tad longer... about 2 weeks before I was prompted to spring for 7800 (it was such a good deal). I had it opened up and spread all over my bed also since there's not enough room on my desk for stripping this down far enough to install the graphics card.

It took me just over an hour to install it.

LOL... I need to find the pic I have off all the stuff sprawled out like that. It's kinda nuts looking because you would think there is 2 laptops because of the XPS2 conversion parts.

(Post #500... weeeee!)

did you ever get my reply?

Wow... I am new here and I guess this thread just stopped me from getting an XPS… Hello i9300!

thats what i am saying laptop in sig had cost me right at 1800!.

Best part is im higher than any XPS2 currently for PCMARK 05.

Got mine coming

Just ordered my 9300, specs as follow:
Pentium M 770 2.13GHZ/533MHZ FSB
17" Truelife WUXGA
512MB DDR2 533MHZ
64MB ATI mobility Radeon
60GB HDD
8Xdvd burner double layer
9-Cell LION PRIM BATT
plus all the included standard stuff
$1323 with a $750 cupon

Got 2GB of kingston DDR2 533 RAM coming from newegg $155.98
Got Nvidia 7800GTX go coming from Dell $280
Also a hitachi travelstar 80GB 7200 soon (got to wait to trick da wife )
So the total tab is $1758 for this rig!

What an awesome thread gang, no doubt, I been waiting to dive in for my first laptop, reading here was the final push I needed...
Btw, it seems I will have 2 sticks of 256 ram and 1 64 mobility radeon spare..I wonder what I can get for them?

To think that a similar powerhouse XPS would cost around $3200
Forgot to mention got 130 powerbrick fer $38 on ebay

Ok, just to make sure I understand what I am doing here, so if I read through this thread correctly, if I get a new i9300 and put the i9300 A05 BIOS on it, the 9 cell battery that I can add to my i9300 order and the 130 watt power supply I can add to my i9300 order:

1) The 7800 GTX will run without modifying to the XPS BIOS?

2) If I run on the 9 cell battery and the 90 watt power supply on the i9300 BIOS, the 7800 GTX will run, but slower than normal until I use the 130 watt power supply?

They said the 130 watt PS is back ordered so I wanted to see if I can run this thing with the 7800 without the PS, because I have to imagine, even a slower 7800 would be faster than the base 64mb x300 that ships with the i9300.

Thanks!

I just did this EXACT same thing. I'm running the 6800 Ultra with a 9300 Bios and the 90w power supply and have had NO issues. Playing Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 2 at highest resolutions and no lag.

I scored my card on ebay for $90.

Guru