Squeezing another year out of my m9700i =)

Hullo all!

What a great forum find to ask about my m9700i R1 series!

Basically, I have an upgrade question. As in, how much beefier (if at all) can I make this little machine. Even tho it's been a wonderful machine and I've been able to get 5 years out of it, I'd like to see if an upgrade or two will extend the life for another year at least.

--

Quick question, is the m9700i R1 series also the m9750? I ask because after downloading a utility, the "summary" portion called my model motherboard an Area-51 m9750.

Yes, that noobish...come at me with the jokes! =)


Graphic Cards - Currently Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
I see that rsgeiger posted here that some may have gotten the ATI 3870m to work in a m9750. Does anyone have any knowledge and/or can point me the way to finding out what is the max dual video cards I can place in my machine?

I'm really looking hard at this question as it seems my daughter card is on the fritz. I'll have that nailed down on Wed., and if it is done, I look forward to trying out the baking method!


CPU - Intel Core 2 CPU / t7600 @ 2.33GHz
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything specific to upgrading this machine's processor. Any help here? I did read a bit about AMD's cousin and was wondering if anyone has/had that installed in their m9700i? Personally, I'm a big fan of keeping the little guy (AMD) afloat. However, I'm down for simply finding an upgrade...Intel or AMD. Lastly, I see that eightd found a tool to over-clock, but that it give only a minimal amount of improvement. This was posted back in 2007, so I'm curious to know if anything new has come around?


OS - Vista Ultimate
This is practically a no-brainer. I know that I can upgrade to Windows 7; however, the real question is 32 or 64? I did read (somewhere on the interwebz) that the m9700i's ChipSet cannot use 64 and therefore, will never be able to use more than 4Gbs of RAM. Is this is also true of the m9700i? If so, then it's clear to go with W7-32.


RAM - 4Gbs, 2 sticks of Qimonda, DDR2 (PC2-5300) @ 333MHz
Again, didn't find much here (please point me to a post if you know of one). Does anyone know what the max type of memory I can place in this machine? Max type meaning DDR3 or 4 and speed?


Well, other than you guys/gals mentioning anything else that I could possibly improve, I look forward to a response.

Thank you for your time!

--
.:d:.

"Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome and charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one tiny corner of the globe."
-- Mark Twain

 

you can get 3870s regularly, 4850s and 4870s are much more rare(check with table21 on here) driver support is ify at best, and be sure to buy the CF cable WITH the cards, they are unavailable elsewhere....

the best CPU is the t7600g which is your CPU except with an unlocked multiplier. I sold one for $200+ back in june.

 

Thanks for the 411 Whitrzac!

I'll be looking for those cards and the cable.

Any knowledge regarding RAM? I found on Crucial.com that I can run (or at least it's telling me I can) DDR2 PC2-6400 @ 800MHz.

Which sounds like a definite upgrade for only $50.00.

I'm simply not sure if the motherboard would bottleneck it. Like I said not that computer savvy. =)

Thanks tho!

 

the mobo will only run at 667mhz, and has a 4gb limit.

 

As for the OS, a 32-bit windows handles only 3.2 (I think) gigs of RAM so if you want to use the full 4 you have, you'll need a 64-bit os... I don't think you'd have trouble with it but the easiest way to find out is to try it.