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Turion CPU upgrade - Sager 4750V (D470K) - Page 2

post #21 of 197
3/20/06 at 10:50am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cubytus
Second thing, I have 2 batteries for the NP4750. Is anyone familiar with Li-Ion technology so I can link them together without harming any of the components ? Contrary to certain 'smart batteries' manufacturers, the NP4750 ones do deliver current even if the controller is not powered. However it may play a role while charging the battery. Not having any further information, I tought about some strategies:
First, just link the positive and negative leads in parallel, and, for recharging, a circuit that just flips the controller on on the "slave" battery
Second, let a more sophisticated circuit "sense" "master" battery level, then connects the second one to the motherboard whenever it reaches a predefined low level. The level could be sensed by detecting wether the battery LED starts flashing.
If this one seems the best solution to me as the function of the batteries are not altered, I don't have enough electronics knowledge to design a flip-flop circuit that would be able to let pass the numerous amperes from the batt. The kind of circuit I'm searching for is a kind of bi-stable relay that would draw only a negligible amount of energy to keep its state, different from a normal relay that needs to be fed electricity to keep on of its states.
Most LiIon batteries nowadays are manufactured with built-in circuitry that regulates the charging (maintenance) profile and offer the host components (mainboards, ect) a good level of instrumentation. I believe the ones on the D470K follow this pattern. According to most manucturers, you must deliver a steady and proper power feed to the battery in order to ensure proper operation and long life cycle.

Unfortunately... and from my experience, what you propose may involve alot more than just a collection of flip flops and op amps. All in all, it would perhaps be a good exercise from an academic perspective

Regards;


MS
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post #22 of 197
3/20/06 at 3:55pm
MS,

A new question came up in the Bios thread about hard disk speed after moving to 2.x bios. Can you check your Device manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary IDE channel properties -> Advanced settings to see what your Current Transfer Mode is? Mine is UDMA mode 2 with 2.02 bios.

Others have reported that theirs was mode 5 before upgrading the bios, and they used to have much higher burst transfer rates.

I am wondering if your 2.04 bios is giving you mode 2 or 5, and can you run HDTach and report your transfer speeds? You do have one other variable - the processor upgrade. But we can look into that later. Please reply in the bios thread if you can.

Thanks.

Steve
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post #23 of 197
3/20/06 at 4:18pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
I am wondering if your 2.04 bios is giving you mode 2 or 5, and can you run HDTach and report your transfer speeds? You do have one other variable - the processor upgrade. But we can look into that later. Please reply in the bios thread if you can.
I haven't been using HDTach lately to measure disk throughput because it does not measure external volumes very well.

Instead I use HDTune. Since last summer HDTune has not been reporting any significant changes in peak and average rates with the different BIOS upgrades. I upgraded from 1.04 -> 1.05-> 2.02 -> 2.04.

My primary IDE controller is also set to UDMA mode 2. In fact, because I barely use the internal drive that much I probably do not notice any changes in throughput when under normal operation. Hummm....

Maybe there's something fishy in here ?!?


MS
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post #24 of 197
3/20/06 at 6:28pm
MS,

Thanks for checking. So we see that your 2.04 does not fix the UDMA mode 2 problem that 2.02 has.
I don't know how significant this is in real life, such as how quickly a program launches, or how long a file copy takes. I just rechecked the benchmarks you posted. It doesn't look like any of them access the disk much.

I think I will have to leave this to others that want to try 1.0x vs 2.0x bios. My ML-44 will be here Wednesday, so I will be putting that in regardless. I assume I should have 2.02 or 2.04 for that. Too bad we don't have a vendor that cares. I was thinking of checking around for Eurocom forums and posting something there.

I too use external drives quite a bit. I have 3 USB and 3 Firewire drives. I have had most of them plugged in at the same time when reorganizing things. I have also seen problems with the system hanging or other drive failures when accessing chained firewire drives. I am looking forward to trying it again.

-Steve
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post #25 of 197
3/20/06 at 6:59pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
So we see that your 2.04 does not fix the UDMA mode 2 problem that 2.02 has.
You are right. Actually, this is pretty significant because UDMA 2 means a maximum of 33Mb/s as opposed to UDMA 5 which entitles us to 100mb/s. This would mean that the advantages of having a 7200 rpm drive are somewhat negated when compared to the slower drives.

I tried applying the registry hack to manually set the UDMA mode to 5 and 4 and after a reboot the system would always start on UDMA 2.

I even tried updating to the latest 4in1 from VIA - no go.
I tried removing the device and rebooting - no go.
I even reset the machine configuration - no go.

Typically manufacturers will force a lower UDMA in order to prevent instabilities and lock-ups.

Windows XP will also choose a lower UDMA if it finds a problem with the maximum supported mode. But in this case we're emplying that it must be the BIOS upgrade that did it. Perhaps, Clevo chose to force the setting to apease the vendors and to lower the reported incidents of instabilities and lockups. Clevo is the one that presumably produces and releases the BIOS updates. The vendors simply offer the updates at their own discretion.
In this case there must be an easier way to override this setting- at least for those of us who were not experiencing problems.

Regards;

MS
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post #26 of 197
3/20/06 at 8:23pm

BIOS vers. and HD performance

First of all, I assume the setting were changed to get the HD cooler when running at DMA 2.

The Medion BIOS 105 is the BIOS with the huge AMD64 screen at start up. Eurocom's 1.05 might be different, but I haven't tested it yet re. DMA modi.
Please note that my Keyboard BIOS hasn't been changed with the BIOS, so I'm running an older one (1.00.01) as others have reported here:
http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...=105448&page=2

Is there a Win prog. that reads the used DMA state correctly under all circumstances, e.g. by accessing the HD directly - SiSoft Sandra ?

In any case, the "105" BIOS seems to have disappeared from Medion's support side for CAD2000 = MD95074 model.

For further readings, here are some links re. hardware:
http://tebl.homelinux.com/laptop/
http://pantagruelon.free.fr/md42284.html

and here is the MS article mentioning the problem switching from a higher DMA mode to a lower one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/EN-US/
for Windows XP they mention a Hotfix only available on request. Anybody out there who has it and can test?
-- update -- I had success and found it - look here: http://rapidshare.de/files/14108117/KB842520.exe.html
it's for US / english version of XP only, so I can't test it on my German language system.

I've found more help here, but haven't tested yet:
http://dvdxcopy.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/276642
and
http://erpman1.tripod.com/current/atapi-xp.html

BTW, my atapi.sys (from windows\system32\drivers) is version 5.1.2600.2180
No change in DMA mode when changing to atapi.sys v5.1.2600.1106 from SP1, but keeping the same viaide.sys, v1.00.01.01.
FYI, my storprop.dll is v5.1.2600.2180, my pciidex.sys is also v5.1.2600.2180.
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post #27 of 197
3/20/06 at 9:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by steve byte
Please note that my Keyboard BIOS hasn't been changed with the BIOS, so I'm running an older one (1.01 ? - haven't checked yet) as some others
I have the same 1.01

Quote:
Originally Posted by steve byte
and here is the MS article mentioning the problem switching from a higher DMA mode to a lower one:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/EN-US/
for Windows XP they mention a Hotfix only available on request. Anybody out there who has it and can test?
-- update -- I had success and found it - look here: http://rapidshare.de/files/14108117/KB842520.exe.html

I've found more help here, but haven't tested yet:
http://dvdxcopy.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/276642
and
http://erpman1.tripod.com/current/atapi-xp.html

BTW, my atapi.sys (from windows\system32\drivers) is version 5.1.2600.2180
It looks to me that the hotfix is included in windows XP but requires the registry fix to activate it. I tried the registry fix and it didn't help. I then uninstalled the primary IDE and (after 3 reboots to reinstall it), it also didn't help.
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post #28 of 197
3/21/06 at 8:09am
Haven't found any way to change it yet.
Just a minor update for now.
The Eurobooks BIOS v1.05 seems to be similar to the Medion BIOS, it also set IDE to DMA 5 and show again a burst speed with HDTach of ~90 MB/s.
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post #29 of 197
3/21/06 at 11:14am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by steve byte
Haven't found any way to change it yet.
Just a minor update for now.
The Eurobooks BIOS v1.05 seems to be similar to the Medion BIOS, it also set IDE to DMA 5 and show again a burst speed with HDTach of ~90 MB/s.
By now we all tried roughly similar approaches with no results, I've decided to try the "direct route" by contacting the vendors. Stay tuned, maybe we'll get a good answer on this and perhaps even a solution.

regards;

MS
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post #30 of 197
3/21/06 at 1:27pm
Any word on the 25 watt turions? I'm thinking of grabbing the MT-40 (2.2GHz/1MB) to replace my 3400+

Thanks!
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post #31 of 197
3/21/06 at 1:37pm
I also tried various bios hacks to force the dma mode, and tried other Via chipset drivers. I only succeeded in getting it to boot in PIO mode. I sent an email to support.clevo.com.tw last night. I am holding my breath now waiting for the reply. I also looked around unsuccessfully for a Eurocom forum.

We sure could use some help from anyone that has a D470k from a vendor that is supplying the 2.0x bios.

What is the lowest-numbered bios that will support the ML-44? If it's a 1.0x, then I could just go with that.
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post #32 of 197
3/21/06 at 5:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Poobah
Any word on the 25 watt turions? I'm thinking of grabbing the MT-40 (2.2GHz/1MB) to replace my 3400+

Thanks!
Hummm... good question.

On the other hand, I was only assured that the BIOS support holds for the ML (35 watt) parts. In fact, the supported processor list I received did not reference a single MT CPU.
This is not to say that they will not work. It is just that I have not been assured that they do.

I would have to leave that to someone to gamble on and prove that it works.

At the moment, my view is that the Turion processor is one of many parts on our D470K's responsible for the power/heat signature. With my 3700+ the biggest heat source was the CPU - eliminating this power liability was great as it shrunk from 89 to 35 watts. Now after the upgrade the biggest heat source is the GPU, video signal driver and the Hard drive (among other circuitry that may be enabled such as Wifi, serial and parallel ports etc.)

Would a savings of at most 10 watts on the CPU alone make much of a difference when comparing an ML to an MT. Yes, but perhaps only on a thin and lite notebook. Unfortunately for me, the MT is not available at the same speeds, carries a higher premium, uncertainty of support and finally - diminishing returns on expenditure. Maybe this perpective applies to the rest of us 4750 users. Maybe not.

Regards;

MS
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post #33 of 197
3/21/06 at 7:07pm
According to the specs found here,
http://fab51.com/cpu/guide/opn-s754-e.html
the MT's need a different voltage (1.20) as the ML's (1.35).
I don't know if the BIOS or motherboard automatically switches to the correct voltage according to the CPU ID.
From my understanding, all previous CPUs for the 4750 model were 1.50-1.4V types, with the ML lowest at 1.35V.
Prob. 1.20V isn't possible at all, unless some components are changed on the board itself.
It's a question only the manufacturer or OEM can answer. In the worst case, you might fry your MT CPU.
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post #34 of 197
3/21/06 at 8:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
What is the lowest-numbered bios that will support the ML-44? If it's a 1.0x, then I could just go with that.
Stevew, I've contacted a "vendor" and they are also looking into the issue. I expect a specific answer on this issue soon. I also got assurances from my source that anything prior to 2.02 does not support the Turion series of cpu's. This is because of the differences between the PowerNow! and CoolnQuiet CPU powerup sequences. They achieve the same objective but they initialize differently. That's why a D470K will not even post at powerup without the 2.02 or newer.

Regards;

MS
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post #35 of 197
3/22/06 at 12:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by msantos
Stevew, I've contacted a "vendor" and they are also looking into the issue. I expect a specific answer on this issue soon. I also got assurances from my source that anything prior to 2.02 does not support the Turion series of cpu's. This is because of the differences between the PowerNow! and CoolnQuiet CPU powerup sequences. They achieve the same objective but they initialize differently. That's why a D470K will not even post at powerup without the 2.02 or newer.

Regards;

MS
Its great to see that this could get resolved. Thanks.
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post #36 of 197
3/22/06 at 7:51am
Nice upgrade. The pics actually made me jealous because your 4750 looks just like my 8790, but you're getting fantastic heat savings. I know all too well the damage of heat

for a job well-done.
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post #37 of 197
3/22/06 at 11:14am
From the MS Knowledgebase article, it looks like XP SP2 should fix this problem. However, do you need to reset the CRC counter error still? According to the article, this means uninstalling the ATA/ATAPI driver... anyone try this?
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post #38 of 197
3/22/06 at 12:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spookymonster
From the MS Knowledgebase article, it looks like XP SP2 should fix this problem. However, do you need to reset the CRC counter error still? According to the article, this means uninstalling the ATA/ATAPI driver... anyone try this?
I think I have done this. I did the registry fix to require 6 crc errors in a row. I subsequently updated the VIA 4in1 drivers with a version that contains a new ATA miniport driver (Hyperion 5.04a). It made not difference. I also don't think the error is CRC's because there is nothing in the system log.
-Stevew
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post #39 of 197
3/23/06 at 11:17pm
About the question wether a 1.2 V CPU would work, the answer is probably yes. Indeed, when manually downclocking my AMD64 3000+, I was able to lower the voltage to 0.8V. The startup voltage is something like 1.20, as far as I remember. However, I don't know if the limitation is in the BIOS or the chipset.
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post #40 of 197
3/23/06 at 11:49pm
The latest Sager bios as of Oct. 2005 has my 7200rpm 100GB Seagate HD running in UDMA2. My guess is there is nothing what so ever wrong with the Eurocom bios. It must be a Clevo issue. Are you chasing ghosts?
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