compaq presario c301nr core2duo upgrade possibly? - Page 3

A New BIOS Is Not The Whole Story

A BIOS is often designed for use across multiple chipsets and mainboards. Not all mainboards and chipsets are able to use all the features written into a BIOS designed for multiple chipsets. The Compaq C300 series incorporates the 940GML chipset, which, when running the BIOS's being supplied by Compaq, supports only a 533-MHz front-side bus, as the chipset was designed to do. According to Intel, the 940GML chipset is "optimized for the Intel Celeron M" CPU. In months of researching this, I have yet to find a reliable account of a successful upgrade to a CPU other than a Celeron M, except for post #39, above, who gives a brief report of successfully installing a T1350, which is a Core Solo CPU with the required 533-MHz FSB. The poster of that message, "dtlzm," states that Speedstep works with the T1350 but doesn't mention any increased performance or other features such as hardware virtualization capability. I am running Vista Ultimate 64-Bit on my C301nr after upgrading the CPU to a Celeron 520, which provides no extra functionality or increased performance other than 64-bit computing. I think we all got what we paid for -- an entry-level notebook -- and although it seems a little flimsy to me, I haven't had any problems with mine, and will keep it a while. Readers, PLEASE let us know of any other successful CPU upgrades. Thanks!

After reading this forum for about a year, I've gone ahead and took the chance to buy/install a T1350 in my laptop. Good news, people! I can confirm (along with dtlzm's findings) that the T1350 DOES work in our C301NR notebooks. I decided to put it in today and am typing this right now using my C301NR. I have noticed in CPU-Z that Speedstep DOES indeed work (CPU throttles down to ~800 MHz) but I had to manually edit the Power Schemes w/POWERCFG.EXE since the Portable/Laptop profile had Speedstep enabled when the laptop was plugged into AC and disabled when on battery, strangely. There is no icon in the system tray for Speedstep as some users reported on other forums I've read.

Although I have not run any benchmarks, I can tell you that my lappy does seem to run a bit faster and the fan doesn't come on nearly half as often as it did with the Celeron 430 CPU. I haven't had a chance to test battery life yet either, but will keep y'all posted.

So I decided to test the battery life of my 301NR last night. On a full charge, I got about 3 hrs. and 15 min. of time (w/about 9% of battery charge left) doing non-CPU intensive work, like web surfing. With the original Celeron 430 CPU, I could barely get a little more than 2 hrs. out of the battery. I'm glad I made the upgrade.

Thanks, Big Jay, for the good info. I'm sure I'm not the only one watching for news on this topic.

What about PERFORMANCE? Did you do any benchmark comparisons? I like PC Pitstop's tests. Could you run those and let us know the score? Are you running Vista? If so, did your Experience Index increase?

Or maybe you just can tell that it runs "faster?"

Longer battery life is great, but I'm rarely mobile. I just want to squeeze more horsepower out of this CN301nr.

For anybody interested, I am very happy with the rock-solid stability of Vista x64 (Ultimate) (with SP1 RC) on this machine. See my post #36 if interested, but note that there was no real performance increase -- and the known bug of mcirophone input not working under x64. (For that I tried some strange fixes found elsewhere for the Conexant 64-bit audio, including the popular one where you install some drivers, let it fail, then immediately update the driver by pointing to the extracted but failed drivers, but that didn't work.)

Now that Vista SP1 is here and working well, I think I"ll try the T1350 CPU and revert to Vista 32.

QUESTION: If a Core Solo started out life as a Core Duo but has one failed or intentionally disabled core, will a 533-MHz Core Duo work? If not, why not? (BIOS?) Has anyone upgraded to a Core Duo?

I'm not familiar w/PC Pitstop and not too excited about installing ActiveX programs form sites not familiar to me. Are there any other more well-known free benchmark programs out there, preferably ones you don't need to install? Sorry about the inconvenience.

That's fine. Thanks for replying. I'm just not very familiar with other benchmark apps, nor do I own any. But I've used PCPitstop for years, and I have a real feel for the simple, single number it returns (and the related in-depth info). I refurbish and repair PCs on the side, and I always run PCPitstop's tests before (if possible) and after I do my magic, and create a printout for the customer or friend. It's an ad-based service, but when you're done, you're done with the ads. And yes it's an Active X control, but I've had nothing but great experiences with it. What benchmark tool would you recommend? I should probably be using a standalone, nonivasive, bootable tool, and I am open to recommendations. I think I'll start looking around tonight.

Hmmmm none come to mind right now but I'll keep looking as well.

This is off topic but I was just wondering if anyone knows where to get DDR (not DDR2) SODIMM for cheap - everywhere I look DDR SODIMMs are a minimum of two times what the price for DDR2 SODIMMs! It's driving me nutty.

Hope you guys have a Happy New Year!

That is the result of oversupply from one RAM manufacturer, and the others to remain competitive also drop their prices to compete (DDR2 that is). It's common to see DDR2 far cheaper, with AUD$56 for Transcend/Apacer DDR2-667 2GB and AUD$28 for DDR2-667 1GB modules. DDR400 1GB modules are three to four times the price here!

Back on-topic, I've also bought a C302TU laptop for some good ol' fashioned tinkering second-hand from the Overclockers Australia forums for AUD$330 (with Crumpler laptop bag to boot!)

Here are the plans/upgrades:

-T2250 bought off eBay this week. Should arrive next week and will see if it's recognised by my motherboard chipset (940GML). Pentium-M 1.6GHz also on its way. T1350 being watched on eBay as well.

-F.24A BIOS upgraded

-3GB of ram installed. (2GB, 1GB Transcend DDR2-667 modules 5-5-5-18 RAM timings). 3GB appears in the BIOS. However, XP Home only sees 2GB and Vista Ultimate 32bit also sees 2GB (installed on separate SATA drives). The C302TU sees the 2GB module on its own as, well, 2GB. This is good to know since that with some BIOSes on other laptops, 2GB modules appear as only 1GB or not even at all!

So I'll keep y'all posted on the CPU upgrade.

Also, silly question but has anyone upgraded to a HDD bigger than 120GB? (to bypass the 40bit/137.6GB HDD BIOS limitation that some laptops have).

Cheers!

[edit] Synthetic benchmark results for the Celeron-M 420 (1.6GHz Yonah)...

Super Pi 1.5 (1 million places) @ 51 seconds.

3 CPUs being looked at -- cool.

BuzzPuppy,

I'm really looking forward to your findings on the thee CPUs. I am still considering them all as replacements, but I've sure got nothing but good things to say about the Celeron M 520 that I popped into this C301nr.

I had no joy with the T2250, but that was with the original BIOS, and I didn't keep the T2250.

So please come back soon and tell us what you found out for the 3 CPUs you're gonna try.

Super Pi: This C301nr with a Celeron M 520 and 2GB RAM, I get to the one million places in 41.8 seconds. The M 520 clocks at 1.6 GHz (same as the M-420) and has the same L2 cache (1 MB), but is 64-bit, so I wonder if this is a general confirmation of my seat-of-the-pants feeling that Vista 64 is not only more stable than but also faster than its 32-bit siblings.


And I'm picking myself off the floor because I was totally surprised that your BIOS and OS are "seeing" 3 GB of RAM. That could be good news. But I'm not sure that simply recognizing the presence of and the capacity of RAM modules is a sure bet that the OS can actually utilize it. Can you or any other readers comment?


Brian

Well Brian, I think a number of people are waiting on my results. I haven't forgotten about this thread and as you can tell, I've been lurking for a long time now *hehehe*. To those who've added to my "credits",thank you!

Anyhoo.

Let's look at the RAM for one moment. The BIOS sees 3GB but the OS only sees 2GB. To confirm this, I installed Vista Ultimate (x86), Vista Home Edition (came with the laptop) and ran Ubuntu 7.04 and Knoppix STD off the DVDs. Same result. 2GB. WTF?

The T2250 has been paid for and awaiting delivery *paces up and down the hallway*, the Pentium-M 1.6GHz is en route whereas I'm a shoe-in for the only T1350 in the country at the moment. By the way, if anyone else is reading this, please don't bid on that CPU

[edit] Brian, I was wondering about that... I remember earlier on in this thread you had a T2250 but with an older BIOS. I'll happily carry on the task to find out!

So I'm down to 2x1GB DDR2-667 Transcend modules, a Lightscribe DVD dual-layer burner on the way to replace the DVD/CD-RW combo.

And besides, "Pimp my Rig" C302TU Laptop for the same price as an Asus EEEPC? I get the joy to tinker with it at least.

Must.... Resist.... Riceboy.... Vinyl.... "Carbonfibre".... Lid.... Mod....

It's here.



Just arrived at work, and moments ago I just won the T1350 for AUD$10.35 (but I was watching the SuperBowl here in Oz, gg to both Patriots and Giants).

Ladies and Gents, this will have to wait 'til I get home and strip this laptop out to see how it all works.

Sit tight!

Well...

Hate to announce it, but the T2250 so far is NOT working with the F.24A BIOS

I popped it in and am getting complete black screen. I even pulled out the battery to reset the CMOS settings and still getting nothing at all.

Sorry Everyone.

Hey guys, I ran the Super Pi benchmark on my C301NR upgraded with T1350 (1.86GHz) CPU: 1 million places in 34.235 seconds. So 7632416, (I haven't forgotten about you!) now you have something to compare it to.

Oh I have 2 GB DDR2 RAM onboard.

Sweet! I'm awaiting for my T1350 to arrive... only the 4 keyboard and one chassis screw is in at the moment in my C302TU

[edit] The T2250 CPU is now being offered up for sale on the "overclockers australia" forums

After a LONG wait (seller was on holiday), the T1350 CPU is here

[edit] When it arrived, a few pins were bent from delivery (foam/bubblewrap in a soft pack envelope) but nothing some patience and a steady hand couldn't fix! I believe however, the next picture will speak for itself.



Compaq C302TU with F24 BIOS and upgraded T1350 CPU is a complete success!

I have bought a T2250 (1.73 GHz/ 533MHz FSB/ 13x multiplier) to replace the Celeron M 420 (Yonah 65nm 1.0V - 1.3V) and... nothing. Machine starts but no POST. This is consistent with the experiences of others with laptops based on the Compaq C300/G3000 designs. YES the bios does cover machines that have Core Duos in it (the maintenance manual makes that clear).
There are two different mainboards they put in these laptops, the one is built around the intel 945 chipset, the other around the intel 940GML chipset. The laptops that are Celeron M 4xx all have the intel 940GML board. I believe that the laptops that come with chips other than Celeron M 4xx, like those with "Merom" Celeron M 5xx, have the intel 945 mainboard in them. I have scoured the internet, far and wide, and NO ONE has been able to run a dual core CPU in place of the Celeron M 4xx in a 940GML board... BUT quite a few of success stories with Core Solo's, specifically the T1350 (1.86 GHz/ 533 MHz). People have tried all sorts of stuff: Core Duo T2050 (same speed and multiplier as the Celeron M 420), Core Duo T2250 (1.73GHz/ 533) and also Pentium Dual-Core T2060. None of those worked for anybody in 940GML based computers, it seems. The T5200 Core 2 Duo, while physically compatible and 533 MHz FSB, doesn't work either (needs intel 943GML or intel 945).

I could be wrong, but perhaps the intel 940GML chipset does not allow for two cores to connect to the front side bus? Or it could be HP/Compaq blocking the use of dual-core CPU's in their 940GML laptops?
At any rate, I'll have to sell the Core Duo T2250 and get a Core Solo T1350. I am interested in the speed throttling to save battery power.

If you go to the Intel website, the 940GML chipset does not support the CoreDuos (T2xxx series), only the celeron 4xx and 5xx series. However, the CoreSolo works with these so be thankful! I'm typing on the above laptop as we speak. 3hours+ battery life, no complaints here.

c302nr

Hi guys,
I wish had seen your posts earlier. I just put a t2400 in my c302nr thinking it's should work because it takes 667 memory chip, and must be 945gma. It came out black screen. I was trouble shooting all night, and then I realize the t2400 doesn't work with c302. Not like my dv8333, which i swap it a t7200. Now i have to find a core solo in order to save some battery life.

It is very strange:
The c302nr manual do say 945gml, and cpu list does have t2250 on it (the c300 service manual), buy how come it doesn't work?
The only possible answer is the bios limited the cpu no over 1.8ghz! The highest in cpu list is 1.73ghz in the manual. And another evidence is the new bios f24a says it added support to m530 which is also 1.73ghz, even m530 is 965gml family. So teh answer is HP does not want you to run any higher than 1.73ghz period. Am i right?