Asus M51Ta Owners' Lounge

I get BSD almost every time I try to install or uninstall ATI drivers.

I hear that Driver Heaven is working with ATI on making 10.1+ drivers compatible with mobility modder. Maybe that will solve our problems.

 

Well, the 10.7s are out. Any brave soul willing to give them a try?

 

"Well, the 10.7s are out. Any brave soul willing to give them a try?"

No thanks!!! I'm happy with my buggy 9.9 ;-)

 

I need to replace the LCD on an Asus L50, which has the same design and structure as the M50 series. I can't find a service manual that shows how to disassemble it to replace the screen. Anyone here have a suggestion? Thanks!

 

Negative the 10.7's do not display on the LCD, they detect the 3650 as a TV output device and will only work on HDMI...

Lame that there isn't a way to set the display output device in an override setting somewhere.

All in all, the 10.x drivers do indeed work just fine, but as mentioned before they only display the 3650 via HDMI output.

I want a new laptop with the 5xxx series in it *drool* Starcraft 2 doesn't play so well on this lappy unless everything is set to low/medium

 

I'm using my M51Ta mostly as a media center nowadays. I bought the MSI GX640 and highly recommend it. It comes with a 5850 with 1GB GDDR5. In my opinion, it's the king of the best-bang-for-buck category at 1,099 USD. Plus if you're from North America and register within 30 days, your 2 year warranty gets upgraded into 3 years. It does run a little hot, though.

 

@bacon612 Currently in a long line of emails with the same guy, they're trying to pawn off a replacement laptop on me that is 1 grand less than what is being replaced. I also cannot get any answers from them, they never call back as they claim, and all inquiries into their Indiana repair facility are met with lies, or vague information. (IE: It will be fixed and shipped by next week; We can't change your shipping information; They'll have to call you back; and on)- Oh yeah, 1 month after ownership, dies won't start. 1yr later, graphics card now blew, W90VP-A1

 

Any luck resolving your issue? Are you saying that Asus is willing to replace your M51TA with a different model?

 

Hi all! I only have a short question for you, m51ta veterans!
If i install one of the new (10.*) catalysts, will the discrete 3650 shut down completely(so no power consumption persists), if i only use the notebook's lcd? I'm using win7 pro x64 atm, with mobility modded 9.9 catalyst, i think the power usage of the 2 gpus are added together because while idling in the least consuming power settings, my notebook eats up a minimum of 22-23 Wh-s... Normally, under factory vista it used only 15-16Wh-s, or so.

Thanks in advance for any answers you might provide:
Alex

 

@femturul
When you disable a device in the device manager, it will shut it off. So use the 9.12's for now and just disable the 3650.

@Everyone else
Just installed the 10.10e drivers, these also do not support the 3650 properly. So back down to the 9.12's I go. Although the 3200 does work with all of these driver sets so far.

 

I recently found out that the fan blaring at 100% all the time is not ASUS' fault. It is completely on the AMD Turion X2 ultra. It is a piece of crap processor and has plenty of problems overheating other systems.

 

Well in the case of the M51TA the 100% fan speed isn't due to a hot cpu, it's caused by a bios bug that doesn't reset the fan speeds properly and locks it at 100% after coming out of prolonged standby.

It's solved by adding checks in the bios for fan speed and adjust accordingly after resuming from standby mode.

[edit]"Correction here" see my latest post

We all need to let Asus know we want some support for this laptop model still.
Tho I doubt they would hear our plea.

 

How did you learn that a VGA bios update would allow 10.x drivers on the M51-TA? Makes perfect sense.

 

Hey All

I just tried the 10.11 mobility driver released today from AMD.com

As with every other driver after 9.12. Windows 7 boots to a blank screen.

I decided to do a little more research because I am really not happy with this machine but think its such a waste to buy a replacement laptop just because this one wont run Win7 properly.

Anyways, here's what I did....

At the office I have an old CRT so I hooked it up to see if perhaps it would show the windows login when the laptop lcd wouldn't. This didn't work. I did RDP into my laptop from another machine and noticed that device manager detected the monitor when plugged in and unplugging. Interesting.... I then blindly logged into the laptop and tried a few win-p combinations but couldn't get the laptop lcd or the crt to power on.

Then I booted the laptop in safe mode, went into device manager and disabled the 3650. Upon rebooting, i noticed that the CRT worked but my laptop screen didn't. I went into the windows display manger and noticed that it was detecting both the laptop lcd as well as the CRT. It allowed me to force the primary monitor to be the lcd and not the CRT.

So, now with my LCD working, i was able to use win-p to switch between the laptop LCD and the CRT (both driven by the 3200).

I then tested rebooting and the laptop booted fine and the lcd display worked. Same results with standby. Same results closing the lid to the laptop and reopening it, everything works.

So, here's the deal, the laptop seems to work fine with 10.11 but only using the 3200. Perhaps this is better than the odd bluescreen that I would encounter with the 9.12 drivers and the haphazard switching between the 3200 and the 3650. Honestly, I don't game on this machine at all so im going to try using it like this for awhile and report back soon. The only disadvantage to this setup (other than the 3200 being a weak gaming GPU) is that the HDMI out will likely not work. HDMI out is driven exclusively by the 3650. I carry an HDMI cable in my laptop bag and use it to play HD movies on LCD tvs when I travel from time to time. I guess I will just have to boot safe mode, re-enable the 3650, reboot, and use hdmi out to get display. I'm pretty sure that the only way to use the 3650 with any driver that's newer is to use HDMI out with an LCD.

I battled so hard with ASUS to get that fan issue resolved when I first purchased this laptop and i don't think i have it in me to go after them again for an updated bios that would likely fix this issue. I have read that there are a few other puma based laptops that also have this issue. There's a Fujitsu and surprisingly a lenovo model. Fortunately for the fujitsu and lenovo owners, they can actually disable the 3650 in their bios so this issue is more liveable for them.


Anyways, enough ranting for today. If anyone wants to try this with me and post their findings, perhaps someday we will have a solution that doesn't involve going back to vista.

 

Well I've actually done everything you've gone through and more, even went as far as hacking the drivers themselves getting into the nitty gritty as to why they stopped working on 10.x forward.

Simple answer is that they introduced a proxy driver in the 10.x drivers which handle Multi-gpu setups differently. The new initialization driver of the chipset doesn't talk correctly to our 3650's due to outdated VGA bios codes. These need updated in order for the driver to initialize both GPU's at the same time.

The 10.x are still using the same code path for the 780GM chipset and thus is why the 3200 works just fine, however they completely changed the code path for the R630 mobility line and broke ours in the process.

The only solution is to have Asus update our BIOS with the new VGA changes.

[edit] While what I say here is true, it can still be worked around to get the new 10.x series working, see my latest post.

 

So basically the only solution is to go after ASUS for a fix. The last time I tried this actually went nowhere until another member here found an updated bios on a german website. Strange, I know. That update was the 207 bios and it eventually made it on to the ASUS support site. Would it be possible to modify the bios ourselves perhaps by looking at a mobility 4xxx series vga bios?

If not what is your best solution running Win7 x64? Catalyst 9.9 or 9.12?

I have noticed two things by disabling the 3650 and using 10.11 drivers.

1) The laptop runs cooler and is quieter. I can feel that it is cooler under my right hand in the area to the right of the trackpad. I'm assuming this is where the 3650 resides. Also the cpu temp is down about 10C at idle. This has also improved my battery life as well. Would be wonderful is this worked as it should because I had forgotten about the cool quiet operation and extended battery life i once had. I'm pretty certain that when using both 9.9 or 9.12 drivers the GPU switching doesn't really disable the 3650 when you win-P to the 3200. This drives me nuts. Whats the point of switching to the 3200 if the laptop stays at hot?

2) After a prolonged standby using the 3200 under 10.11 drivers, resuming the laptop results in the fan running 100% again. Boo!

I don't understand this one though. Why? Hibernation works fine so I've been doing this.


I truly don't know where to go with this. I've stated before that I think its a shame to replace this machine because of these issues especially because they could be software fixes. Also, going back to vista makes me cringe. I'm assuming that even vista wont let us use the latest Catalyst drivers either. What a mess. I've even looked at other M51 series motherboards, thinking that they would perhaps fit my chassis and play nice with my screen.

 

I cringe when thinking about bricking my laptop, so bios mods scare me.

Once I have a new laptop and this one isn't my primary PC, I will start tinkering around with it. Until then I need it to work

[edit] I love these old posts, it's good history to follow. As of today [6/16/2012] I have probably flashed the bios more than 30+ times and never encountered any issues while doing my gpu clock/voltage mods. Just make sure mmtool opens the bios after it's saved, and the file sizes match that of the original. man what a scardy cat

 

So I have begun my quest of persistently messaging ASUS until maybe we get lucky on a BIOS update...

Here is my message....

"I am emailing to request a BIOS update for the M51TA-X2.

The M51 TA does not have proper video support for Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit) and I believe it should. I am currently running BIOS 207 and the issue is that Windows 7 cannot switch between the power saving HD3200 GPU and the Performance HD3650 properly.

Microsoft has openly admitted that Vista was a failure and I don't think M51-ta users should be forced to use it.

While I realize that this model is only supported by windows vista, I believe that Asus should assist in providing support for windows 7 to its customers. The hardware in the m51TA is more than adequate for supporting windows 7, it just needs some help from ASUS.

I have tried every version of ATI catalyst software from 9.9 on the asus site through 10.11 and there isn't a version that supports it properly. After some research, it seems that the issue is in the VGA bios of this model. I am kindly asking someone at ASUS to investigate this for us m51ta users. I am not the only one that would like this upgrade.

Thank You"

Thoughts guys? Do i need to say more? Does anyone else want to email asus?

 

I have already emailed them multiple times last year about the gpu and fan problems. No one responds or they say to scour the forums and ask other users how they have gotten things to work. Some help! I just emailed asus tech support again politely asking them to update the ATI drivers at least, because it is a known fact that it is the computer manufacturers job to provide these updates. I'm unhappy with how my fan is constantly running hot even with the newest bios update and the lack of graphic support. I will never buy anything from ASUS again. It is wayyyyyy past inconvenience at this point...

 

Im telling you, the only way to run the 3200 and power off the 3650 is to disable it and reboot. Although I can only use hibernate now and have to reboot to get my 3650 and HDMI working, my laptop is lasting twice as long on battery power and runs cooler and consequently quieter. Since the majority of the time, I am not running 3d applications or using an external HDMI panel, I leave the 3650 disabled in control panel. It sucks but seems to be the lesser of two evils.

 

If you use modded ati drivers from driver heaven you can use win+P to switch from the 3200 to the 3650.

 

I'm a little unclear, are you saying using mobility modder from hardwareheaven to mod Catalyst 10.11 from last week works for you?

 

"I'm unhappy with how my fan is constantly running hot even with the newest bios update"

Zildjian52886, you must certainly have a hardware problem if that happens when the computer is idle. My laptop runs hot if I load it heavely but never with light load. However I have other problems these days. It seems that my laptop is singing its last song. When booting it will not start up. I have to bend and twist the laptop to get it to start. I guess it is some loose soldering in the power part of the computer. However, when booted up it runs just fine.

 

I have not tried the newer drivers, but I have the version 9 modded drivers.

 

I don't know if it is a hardware problem or not. My computer shut down the first few weeks of buying the computer because of a faulty power supply, which ASUS replaced. I complained later about the fan and they said dust had probably accumulated in it. Rather than send it all the way to the facility I cleaned it myself. It seemed to fix the problem, but only a few days. I have monitored my cpu temp and it is pretty high, but not in the danger zone. It is just annoying that even when the cpu is not under high stress the fan is always on and the air comes out pretty hot. I did some research on the turion ultra series processors and they are known to run very hot. Under clocking has fixed the problem but I can't find the correct voltages, so when I put the computer under high stress (like a game) it eventually has a blue screen of death.

 

9.9 or 10.9?

 

the latest modded version I have is 9.7, thats what catalyst control center says anyways. I tried a regular install of version 10.11 on amd's site. It doesn't work. It still only recognizes the 3200 graphics card.

 

Zildjian, I sent in my computer for repair two times because of the fan issue. The second time they replaced the motherboard to no avail. As you sure know the bios update fixed that problem. I'm almost sure you must have a faulty motherboard or a faulty attached heat sink. It should not run that warm even if the Turions runs warmer than their Intel counterparts. I would recommend you to send it back for repair again if you have time left of the warranty. You should not have blue screens because of some playing, that I'm sure of.

I also do some undervolting using K10stat. I have this figures set on my computer although I know the settings can differ from cpu to cpu. P0-1,075V P1-0,8V P2-0,75V. I only gain 4-5 degrees when stressing it out with orthos. I hope the problems will be fixed for you. Cheers

 

Thank you Maus. I may try the settings out. I'll have to check on my warranty. I registered for the extended warranty which I think is 2 years and I bought it in march of 2009. As for driver updates I actually received and email back from ASUS tech support. Here is a copy of the response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.

Sincerely sorry for the inconvenience!
I've passed this case to the correlative dept and they will deal with it. Once the drivers are released, we'll put them on ASUS support website. Thanks for your understanding!


If having any problems, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,
May
ASUS Customer Service Center

---------- Original Message ----------
Sent : 2010-11-27 4:18:06
To : "[email protected]"
Subject : <TSD> Notebook M51Ta

[CASEID=WTM20101127121014468]

Apply date : 11/27/2010 4:10:01 AM(UTC Time)


[Product Information]
*Product Type : Notebook
*Product Model : M51Ta
Place of Purchase : Newegg.com
*Date of Purchase : 2009/3/9

*Operating System : Windows 7 64bit

[Problem Description]
This is a plea from all of the M51Ta notebook users. Please make this laptop fully compatible with windows 7 and the ATI software updates. We are lacking ATI HD3650 graphics card support and it is the job of the computer manufacturer to provide these updates. People have been having to modify graphics card drivers just to get support for the multiple gpu. I want to make you aware that there are many unhappy customers out there that are looking for some reasonable updates.

The ASUS member forum for the M51Ta seems to have disappeared or the link has changed, but take a look at the complaints:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-reviews-owners-lounges/284429-asus-m51ta-owners-lounge-52.html

future updates would be nice,

thank you

 

I guess I'm not too worried about the fan because speedfan reads out that my processor core temp is 52 degrees celcius when I am doing normal things like email and web browsing. I think the one time the computer was sent in for work they re-applied the cpu thermal paste anyway.

 

Thanks Zildjian, let's hope we can get some decent drivers to this notebook at last. ASUS should listen to their customers if they want us to buy more from them. I haven't written to them yet but as I see you got an answer maybe I should drop them a letter as well.

 

Here is the response that I just received from Asus. They are pretty much trying to politely blow me off...

"Dear Valued Customer,Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.For this issue, the drivers for M51Ta in Win7 operating system haven't been released. I suggest you to keep using vista. Thanks for your understanding!If you really want to use Win7, I suggest you to use some common driver for a try. But some of them may not work properly. Once the drivers are released, we'll put them on ASUS support website. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding!For this status, here's the link to the latest VGA driver for your ATI graphic card in Win7 OS. Please download and install it for a try. ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver having any problems, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,
MayASUS Customer Service Center"

Did they even read that I told them that I had tried every version of the catalyst driver from 9.9 to 10.11?

 

At least they took the time to fetch a HyperLink

"So sorry, buy our new laptops" is the typical reply most vendors will give you.

Are there any laptop vendors that have a 3650m in them that "work" the 10.x series? If so I'll look at their drivers and see if there were any major changes to them for compatibility reasons, and see if they could be tweaked into working with our Hybrid system.

 

Agreed but this is making me not want to buy another Asus product because their support is washed up.

 

I a similar response about a year ago Bacon. I've contacted them probably 5 or 6 times about drivers and I get a different answer every time. The first time they just said sorry for the inconvenience, your laptop only works with vista right now. The second response was to talk to moderators on the official ASUS forum and see if they have discovered workarounds because windows 7 drivers had not been released. The most recent email I received a few days ago makes it seem like maybe they are trying to do something, but I doubt it. Reason being, the M51ta is not really designed for hardcore gaming so they probably don't think they're letting a lot of people down.

Not just ASUS, but laptop manufacturers support departments really need to be forwarding this stuff to the proper management. I don't know how they expect to retain customers. It's not just ASUS, official support by many manufacturers for laptop graphics support is bad. They really need to collaborate better with the graphics card manufacturers. The models come and go so fast you hardly have the time to do research as to whether you're making the right decision.

 

I have found another model with similar hardware to the M51TA.

Its the Fujitsu Amilo Xa 3530. I am looking for more models and also going to read a little about this fujitsu.

 

There is also Acer Aspire 8530G. Seems like they got it to work with latest drivers from ATI.

ATI Radeon HD 3650/3200 - Tech Support Forum

 

Ah well...
it appears that none of the other drivers have any tweaks aside from which default display is the output device.

So the fact they work on other laptops is a sign that we are officially *stuck* on 9.12's until we get an update from Asus.

 

All I want for christmas is asus to update my computer. Oops better lower my expectations!

 

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! I somehow managed to get all the >10.x drivers working with the 3650.

[edit] I removed my story of what I went through to get these working, so I'll spare you the long post and just keep the instructions here on how to get them working.

INSTRUCTIONS
[edit]Old post removed, method no longer applies: Download Scripts from my signature which contains everything needed, and an easy batch installer for them.

ENJOY EVERYONE!

 

[post reserved for benchmark results once done]
MSI KOMBUSTOR
9.12:
DX9 Min=37 Max=53 Avg=45
DX10 Min=38 Max=50 Avg=42

11.1:
DX9 Min=46 Max=54 Avg=50
DX10 Min=45 Max=53 Avg=49

 

Seriously though, it's been a over a week now since I've posted the fix and no ones checked this thread yet? I thought you guys would frequent a little more often

Well, when you guy come back let me know how it works out for you and if any adjustments need to be made to the files.

 

ZanQuance, big thanks for your post. Ive finally updated my drivers with your help. also ive installed that fixed 11.1 drivers but its still needed to shut down 3200 card, to get 3650 work.

 

Sorry Zanquance, I was busy reformatting my computer. I will try them asap.. Thanks!

 

Ah that's more like it now

I should probably do some benchmarking, these new drivers feel much faster and smoother than the 9.12's did. I wouldn't doubt that they bring up the min fps by a large factor.

 

That didn't work out for me. I still get the black screen. Installed the 11.1 drivers over the 9.9. Had to rollback to the old drivers. I tried the shutdown command four times. 9.9 drivers works pretty well on my computer so I will go with these after this if nothing revolutionary comes from AMD ;o)

 

Well considering we are using the same laptop they should work for everyone...

There might be a slight software problem on your end I haven't accounted for, perhaps it is one of these things:

1)GPO isn't running the scripts
2)The scripts cant see Devcon in their directory
3)9.9's don't update to 11.1's properly? haven't tried a 9.9->11.1 update

Run the enable3200.bat script and see if it switches you over to the 3200. If so then they are fine. Double check the GPO settings and make sure something wasn't missed. If all of that is ok, then it's simply a driver fault locking the 3650 and not letting you shutdown.

Uninstall everything ATI, then uninstall the GPU's from the device manager, and Run this ATI Driver Cleaner script: ATI Cleaner

Don't reboot, install the 11.1's first and then reboot once they prompt you to
this way the scripts enable both GPU's and get them ready for the next startup.

I know it's not a perfect fix, but the new drivers seem to make a huge difference so I think it's worth a little effort to get them going. Though an official fix would be most welcome from Asus

 

you forgot to tell that devcon isnt default win tool. so you guys have to dl it and put into c:\windows\system32 directory so command promt could operate with devcon.exe.
ps. sorry for my english

 

Well no not really, since it is a stand alone app that I included in the RAR. The batch files call it from whichever directory it was extracted to. Just keep the scripts and Devcon in the same dir and everything works.

 

When I run the batch enable3200 the graphics won't switch. Don't know why, but they seem to be locked. Will give it an another try later and do as you say. Thank you for giving it your time.