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Over the last year many of us have wondered whether Sager would ever publicly announce support for the Turion CPUs for their 4750 platforms (D470K). Well, so far Sager has ignored much of our enquiries on this subject. I personally take my example as a warning in any future purchases. In fact I will be watching if similar support issues persist and if they do, any future purchases (personal & corporate) will awarded to the right vendor.

This review aims at detailing the CPU upgrade of my NP-4750V (Clevo D470K) DTR notebook. This unit was purchased on June 2005 through PCT with a 3700+ Clawhammer CPU and 2GB of RAM. This CPU runs at 2.4 GHz when under load and idles at 800 MHz. All in all, this is a very powerful machine in its original configuration.

However, for those of you who read my original review you will recall that I made several comments about the computer in regards to the heat it generated and the hovercraft like noise it produced. Even back then my eyes were set on a Turion CPU.

Over the subsequent months we discussed the 4750’s ability to run a Turion and several of us tried without success. Thankfully, several vendors (Eurocom at least) began selling the same machines with Turions and it became clear that a new BIOS (newer than 1.05) was needed in order to properly detect and initialize a Turion CPU (Cool and Quiet versus Powernow! issue). Since I had failed to get Sager’s attention, I was particularly pleased when Eurocom replied to my email enquiry (and I am not a customer!!!) and confirmed that the updated BIOS was available for download from their site.

So recently the ML-44 CPU became available and I purchased one. I wanted the ML-44 because whatever the new CPU is, it had to be at least as fast as the Clawhammer it replaced. Also, unlike the ML-42 it needed to have 1MB L2 Cache.

The BIOS upgrade: I confirmed that BIOS 2.02 or 2.04 will be able to detect and use the newer Turions. Obviously, I have not tried the lower TDP MT series of CPU’s since none are yet available that reached the speeds I wanted.

At this point many of you are wondering about my endless chatter and you want the goods on this Turion upgrade. Well here they are:

CPU temperatures:

A64 3700+ ------->Idle=49......Load=68 (89 Watts & loud CPU fan)
Turion ML-44 ----->Idle=30......Load=48 (35 Watts and a very quiet CPU Fan)


Clock speeds:

A64 3700+ CPU=2.4 GHz HT FSB=200 RAM=166 MHz
Turion ML-44 CPU=2.4 GHz HT FSB=200 RAM=200 MHz

Benchmark scores:

A64 3700+ SuperPI – 38 seconds
A64 3700+ Aquamark – 38162
A64 3700+ 3DMark 2001 – 15102
A64 3700+ 3DMark 2003 – 4399
A64 3700+ 3DMark 2005 – 2097
A64 3700+ POV Ray 32 bit- 27 minutes 11 seconds
A64 3700+ POV Ray 64 bit- 21 minutes 41 seconds

Turion ML-44 SuperPI – 36 seconds
Turion ML-44 Aquamark – 39400
Turion ML-44 3DMark 2001 – 16240
Turion ML-44 3DMark 2003 – 4530
Turion ML-44 3DMark 2005 – 2210
Turion ML-44 POV Ray 32 bit- 26 minutes 34 seconds
Turion ML-44 POV Ray 64 bit- 20 minutes 45 seconds


As you can see - performance improved a little with this upgrade. Not a whole lot but the improvements are measurable nevertheless on all benchmarks.
Now, the improved performance is not what I really was looking for. Nor was the lower temperature the most important reason for the upgrade.
In fact I have a very pressing need for the upgrade because I could not virtualize any 64 bit VMWare clients in either Windows XP 64 or 32. This is because the Clawhammer 3700+ is a rev C CPU core and only the newer core revisions support this. Needless to say, this frustrated me a lot and was totally unacceptable.



<<<UPDATED>>>
Other Issues:
A64 3700+ Daisy chaining 2 external firewire hard drives would cause the computer to blue screen under heavy usage. That's why I always had one drive connected to USB and the other to the firewire port. Not too bad a setup but defintely not as fast as I knew it could get.

Turion ML-44 I can Daisy chain the two firewire drives and it does not blue screen over extended periods of usage. This is disk access as fast as it gets with a big smile.

Food for thought... Here's a throughput breakdown for the different hard disk accesses (by interface):
Internal HD (60GB 7200rpm Hitachi) -...... 42 MB/s (with BIOS 2.04a)
USB 2.0 (250 GB 7200rpm WD)- ............ 21 MB/s
Firewire (250 GB 7200rpm WD)- ............ 36 MB/s

Much better indeed.


The upgrade process:

The upgrade took less than 10 minutes and it mainly consisted of removing the bottom cover and carefully swapping the CPU. As I demonstrate in the following pictures, you should be prepared to perform this task in a variety of aspects. I do not assume any responsibility if you decide to undertake this upgrade after reading this review. Please exercise caution at every instance if you do.

Warning: My 3700 is lidless (exposed core) so the following steps are valid. Please note that your CPU may not be and as a result you may require another heat sink (or spacer) unless you wish to destroy your brand new Turion.

- Apply an updated BIOS (2.02, 2.04 or 2.04a)
- Ground yourself with a good static wrist strap.
- Remove the screws and remove the bottom panel.
- Carefully examine the heat sink and remove the screws slowly, gently and in the reverse order indicated in the heat sink label.
- Lift the CPU ZIF socket handle.
- Grab the Clawhammer CPU carefully without touching any of the pins. Place in a CPU plastic jacket or on static safe surface.
- Carefully insert the new CPU following the orientation indicated on the socket and the CPU’s substrate surface.
- Apply a good thermal compound in a thin even layer. I used Artic Silver but any other will also do well (albeit a few degrees less effective).
- Carefully apply the heat sink and tighten the screws in the order indicated by the label.
- Attach the bottom cover and you are done.


If you succeed in this upgrade then congratulations. Here are some pictures to help visualize the above steps (please note the newer CPU has a smaller core !).










How happy am I with this upgrade?? Lots. I honestly believe I upgraded from a 3700 to a 4000 and the benchmarks almost seem to indicate that. It is cooler, quieter and somewhat snappier because the memory runs faster at 200 MHz instead of 166 MHz.

… And I suspect this machine will last longer and run better with this upgrade because of the lower temps.

By the way, if you upgrade your BIOS to 2.02 or 2.04 your HD performance will fall to UDMA 2 rates. Instead, Flash with BIOS 2.04a in order to restore UDMA 5 setting for faster HD performance. Many thanks to several other 4750 users who discovered this issue.


Thank you for reading.


Regards;

MS