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Turion CPU upgrade - Sager 4750V (D470K) - Page 3

post #41 of 197
3/24/06 at 12:55am
WFO, What bios version do you have? You got it from Sager? I haven't heard of a 1.0x bios that had the problem yet.
I had the idea that all versions of the bios come from Clevo. We were mentioning Eurocom because that 2.02 bios was easy to download.

Cheers,

Steve
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post #42 of 197
3/24/06 at 1:17am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by WFO
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?
Yes, you are right. Clevo provides the updates and the vendors will publish/supply them at their own discretion to the customers.

Eveytime I contacted Clevo they referred me to the vendor because according to them (Clevo) - its up to the vendor to determine if the BIOS update is justified. They also recommend that if we (customers) have any issues to contact the vendor and escalate the issue through the normal channels. This qualifies the issue as genuine and worthy of investigative effort by the Clevo remedy team.

I suggest that we ALL email Sager encouraging them to look into this issue. If there are many of us reporting this discrepancy I bet Sager will notice it and do the proper thing by escalating to Clevo.

regards;

MS
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post #43 of 197
3/25/06 at 4:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
WFO, What bios version do you have? You got it from Sager? I haven't heard of a 1.0x bios that had the problem yet.
I had the idea that all versions of the bios come from Clevo. We were mentioning Eurocom because that 2.02 bios was easy to download.

Cheers,

Steve
It says Phoenix 4.0 Release 6.0 R2.02BS

Based on the 2.02 number one would think it supported the ML44 like the Eurocom. When I e-mailed tech support, I got a terse "not on the supported processor list." If Sager won't help, I'll use the Eurocom bios and another vendor for my next laptop. Sheesh! My 4750 isn't even a year old and the won't support it anymore? Bleep 'em!!!!

I don't suppose you could lean on 'em for us...could you Luke? :-)
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post #44 of 197
3/25/06 at 10:22pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by WFO
If Sager won't help, I'll use the Eurocom bios and another vendor for my next laptop. Sheesh! My 4750 isn't even a year old and the won't support it anymore? Bleep 'em!!!!

I don't suppose you could lean on 'em for us...could you Luke? :-)
My laptop too is less than a year old.

I would be pleasantly surprised if PC Torque took any action now on our behalf. I've copied them on my emails to Sager. I've addressed them on this issue and no response yet. So I have little or no hope that either Luke or anyone else at PCT will come through.

But if they do, then PCT will be in my good books again.

MS
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post #45 of 197
3/26/06 at 3:36am
We have purchased 3 laptops through PcTorque, 2 of them in the last 4 months. We plan to buy another in about 6 months. We also will go elsewhere if Sager/PcTorque abandons us on this one.

Abandoning your customers is bad business.

My main complaints about Sager:
Drivers page has old drivers, and has been mostly unmaintained.
- Video drivers are terrible, and the ATI site just tells you to get drivers from your laptop vendor. I had to try to find some elsewhere, and finaly got Omega drivers. Sager really sucked on this one.
- The wireless software (Gigabyte Client Utility) was also an old version and buggy. I had to go to another vendor's site and get a better version.
- No BIOS available on drivers page. What a pain to try to get it another way.
- My screen has smudgy-looking dark places, and I have cracks near the hinges, and the machine was hanging (I fixed that myself with a BIOS upgrade I got elsewhere). I contacted Sager and they said I could send it back for repair. But I RELY on this machine for my daily work. I CAN'T send it off for a couple of weeks! I live less than an hour from their main office too. They should offer a loaner machine. You should be able to swap your hard drive into the loaner and send your machine back to be fixed. When I had a Dell that had screen problems THEY CAME TO MY HOUSE and replaced the LCD.

So it's not like they are just now abandoning us on the BIOS issue. They haven't really been supporting their products in the past. Sure, if it dies, you can send it back and wait a week or two. That's what Sager thinks is service. THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH .
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post #46 of 197
3/26/06 at 4:50am
Thread Starter 

New D470K BIOS available - Fix for UDMA 2 lock issue.

Hey fellow 4750 users. Rejoyce !!! We have a newly updated BIOS that will fix the low UDMA setting for the primary ATAPI controller. This Bios will restore the setting to its UDMA 5 former glory.



Anyhow, as I had mentioned in a previous message - I tried an alternate vendor's support line and they were gracefull enough to provide me with a BIOS that fixes the issue.

Please, take note of a certain Clevo vendor that cares about customers !!!!
The vendor that came through for us Sager & PCT customers (once again) was:

Eurocom

Kudos to them !!!

If anyone is interested in obtaining this BIOS update please PM me and I will email it to you.



The new BIOS is 2.04a



Unless, there's a sincere change in attitude and actual support delivery that respects our hard earned money I will not buy Sager again, EVER. I will instead acknowledge the better Clevo vendors. In my view, they are worth the extra expense (if any).


Best regards;

MS
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post #47 of 197
3/26/06 at 6:04pm
msantos,

Quote
Anyhow, as I had mentioned in a previous message - I tried an alternate vendor's support line and they were gracefull enough to provide me with a BIOS that fixes the issue.
Unquote

When you find a free moment, would you please email your contact and see if he can confirm that the whole range of Turions (including mt- versions) will work in the 4750?

I have no problem going with the ml-44 as you did; and probably should, but, I am curious about the mt-40.

One last thing, is cool'n'quiet working with your Turion ml-44 install with the 2.04a BIOS?
Im running SuSE 10 x86-64 as my OS & everything works including powernow. It idles @ 800Mhz & ramps right up to 3700+ @ load. I would hate to lose that capability. I didn't get that feature until the 1.05 BIOS & a fix of the DSDT which can be read here: http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=13893&hl=

Thanks again for the BIOS!

Snakedriver
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post #48 of 197
3/26/06 at 8:04pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by snakedriver
When you find a free moment, would you please email your contact and see if he can confirm that the whole range of Turions (including mt- versions) will work in the 4750?
I will certainly ask that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by snakedriver
One last thing, is cool'n'quiet working with your Turion ml-44 install with the 2.04a BIOS?
Snakedriver
As far as I can tell the "CoolnQuiet" feature is working flawlessly with the 2.04a as it did for the few preceeding it. You can check the RightMark CPU util photos on the first page to confirm.

With the Turion CPU upgrade and this BIOS, the 4750 is a heavenly machine where everything absolutely works. Whisper quiet, cool, fast and perfect. this is the way it was meant to operate.


Regards;

MS
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post #49 of 197
3/27/06 at 12:59pm
My ML-44 arrives tomorrow! Wooot!!!
Msantos, are you still there? I have PM'd you a few times (sorry). I don't know what is wrong.
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post #50 of 197
3/27/06 at 2:02pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
My ML-44 arrives tomorrow! Wooot!!!
Msantos, are you still there? I have PM'd you a few times (sorry). I don't know what is wrong.
Sorry Stevew, I've emailed you the BIOS twice. Perhaps you can provide me with an alternate email account.

Regards
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post #51 of 197
3/27/06 at 10:01pm
My ML-44 has arrived!
I am going to do some benchmarks of things I use before I install it.

Msantos. I am really sorry to ask, but I never got the email. I hope you got the new email addr. I sent. It is crazy that it isn't working. (Again I hate to ask this) Can you PM me after you send it? Thanks.
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post #52 of 197
3/28/06 at 1:17am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
My ML-44 has arrived!
I am going to do some benchmarks of things I use before I install it.

Msantos. I am really sorry to ask, but I never got the email. I hope you got the new email addr. I sent. It is crazy that it isn't working. (Again I hate to ask this) Can you PM me after you send it? Thanks.

Congratulations !!

Please let us know how it goes. More importantly - what do you think of your notebook after the upgrade.

I re-sent the BIOS from another email account of mine. You should have it now.

Regards;

MS
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post #53 of 197
3/28/06 at 2:24am
Does anyone have this bios in a bootable iso image?

I tried to make one, but it wouldn't boot no matter what I did...

I run linux, so I can't flash it from windows.
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post #54 of 197
3/28/06 at 3:19am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sw7272
Does anyone have this bios in a bootable iso image?

I tried to make one, but it wouldn't boot no matter what I did...

I run linux, so I can't flash it from windows.


I would suggest you download the BARTPE image builder and add the Windows flash utility along with the new BIOS to the build image. Burn the ISO onto the CD. Once you boot into Windows with the BARTPE CD then flash the BIOS.

You could also just boot into Windows from the standard BartPE CD and then run the flash utlity from a USB pen/stick. The just reboot and you're done.

regards;

MS
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post #55 of 197
3/28/06 at 4:31am
Success
I have the ML-44 installed with the 2.04a bios. It's working well. Many thanks to msantos.
The fan is much slower than it was, although still throttles up and down when idle. I am going to have to pull the heat sink off again and check to see if it was well seated on the processor.

Here is a rundown:
I ran speed tests with 2.02, then installed 2.04a and tested again. Then I installed the new processor, and tested again.

The fins on the heat sink were about 70% covered by dust! I agree with msantos that you should clean that if you have had your machine for a while.


The heat sink had a piece of foil on it in the center with lots of thermal compound gunked around it. I ended up pulling off the foil, and scraping off the gunk with a credit card.


I then cleaned the heat sink with a kleenex. Next I put a tiny dab of Arctic Silver 3 in the center of the heat sink, and spread it around with a plastic bag over my finger. I took what was left on the bag and spread it on the processor.


I then put the heat sink back on and screwed it down with the 4 screws. I was really nervous about this! The machine powered up fine, and I saw the ML-44 on the boot screen. I then re-ran the speed tests.

Quote:
Originally Posted by

It looks like about an 8% speedup, with much lower speed fans.

What's next?
  • I need to find a thermal monitoring program to determine if I need to do anything more to the heat sink. Please post a link if you have one that you like.
  • I would like to try overclocking the RAM. to 200Mhz. Can you post a link to your utility (clockgen?)
  • I want to under-clock the video. My ATI tools stopped working, so I will re-install them.

That's it for tonight. Thanks for the help!
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post #56 of 197
3/28/06 at 9:48am
Congrats on a successful upgrade Stevew. Next time around you should use coffee filters for the cleaning process. They don't leave microscopic fibers behind like kleenex would.

You can monitor temps with Everest Home available free at Major Geeks.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

ClockGen is available with instructions here...

http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php
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post #57 of 197
3/28/06 at 11:52am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
Success [*]I would like to try overclocking the RAM. to 200Mhz. Can you post a link to your utility (clockgen?)[*]I want to under-clock the video. My ATI tools stopped working, so I will re-install them.

Awesome pics SteveW !!!

I am glad you actually noticed a small but very measurable increase in performance. One other aspect of the upgrade is that we now have all SIMD optimizations sets including the latest SSE3 which on some benchmarks (and games) should be very helpful. Anyhow, great work !!!

Your ram should be running at 200 Mhz already. Try CPUZ (as I did in my pics) and you should verify that. The clawhammer CPU would automatically force the RAM to 166 MHz if you had more than 1 GB. That was a design flaw of the original Athlon64 design. With the newer cores, that behavior is no longer present so you RAM should work at max speed all the time.

WFO's link for Clockgen should work. I was able to operate reasonably well at 2.56 Ghz but even at this point the AGP bus is getting a little stretched at 71MHz so I ventured no further. Its a pitty that we cannot run the HT asynchronously like the nForce platforms can. Oh well.
In any case, overclocking is probably not worth it especially if we only gain a couple hundred MHz. Besides the Turions are not considered as good OC anyway and their "transistors: switch more slowly.

I am using ATITool .25 (build 10) quite successfully.

Regards;

MS
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post #58 of 197
3/28/06 at 12:48pm
Thanks for the links. I just checked my CPU temp, and it is 54-56c at idle. 56c gives the slightly higher fan. Too hot. I will be taking the heat sink off again and checking it. This time I won't use kleenex.
First, I am going to the Westech show. I will take a look at this tonight.



Steve
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post #59 of 197
3/28/06 at 1:28pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stevew
Thanks for the links. I just checked my CPU temp, and it is 54-56c at idle. 56c gives the slightly higher fan. Too hot. I will be taking the heat sink off again and checking it. This time I won't use kleenex.
First, I am going to the Westech show. I will take a look at this tonight.



Steve

Yes, that is too hot.

My regular max temp under load is 47 C. My lowest temp (idle)is 27. Even with my home made notebook cooler, the CPU temp is always lower than that of the HD.

Actually, the CPU fan on my notebook actually stops until the temps reach 40C and is barelly audible at 47. I would expect you to have similar results.

Regards;
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post #60 of 197
3/28/06 at 9:35pm
You know, kudos to Eurocomm. they are the only ones I have ever found a current bios or drivers from. Infact when I reloaded to XP64 they were the first place i checked. I'm not sure if they have the drivers but they are the only one who responded to me when I asked about a turion in the D470K/N4750/othervariations.
Send me that bios!!! PM sent.
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