Acer 8930g Graphic Card Upgrade

Hey everybody. New to the forum but have enjoyed reading posts now for quite some time now.

I have a question for the more knowledgeable of you out there. I have an Acer 8930g, T6400, 4 gig, 500 gb hd, 9600m gt ... normally I would be thinking right now of upgrading by just buying a new laptop, however I have to admit I love the 18+" lcd screen and really don't want to step down from there. Due to the lack of what I see as affordable new large screen laptops, I've been thinking of upgrading this computer for now. So the easy part with this model is going to a T9900 or X9100 ... based on my mb, I could even do the Q9000 quad, but I'm leaning towards the X9100. Will take it to 6 gig ram because I'm concerned it might not recognize 8 gb and I was looking to swap the 5400 rpm hd with a seagate momentus 750 hybrid 7200 rpm or a wd black scorpio.

Now for the problem upgrade, I have 9600m gt with 1 gb ddr2 and although I'm not a HARDCORE gamer, I do like to game and it's weaker than weak. Am I to understand that my best bet is upgrading to a 9700m gt with 512mb ddr3 (or the 9600m gt 512 mb ddr3 --- since it seems to be easily overclocked)? I've been pouring through sites trying to see if anybody has upgraded with a better card, but can't say I've found anything definitive yet and nothing of late. I know there are other mxm type II/III 2.1 cards out there that might work ... is it a problem of power consumption, bios? I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to the graphic card aspect of laptops, so I would really appreciate some knowledgeable advice in looking for a decent enough upgrade on the 9600m gt to extend the life on this 8930g another couple of years. I'm looking for "playable" (if possible) on most games (not the MOST demanding games), even if it's at lower-medium settings. Thanks.

 

Some people might say that upgrading this machine is not worth the trouble or money.
Personally, I enjoy upgrading laptops to their maximum potential (so long as the monetary cost doesn't hit the roof).

If I had a choice between c2d and c2q... I'd pick the core2quad easily... in this instance, I might pick the Q9100 or perhaps even QX9300 (which should be overclock-able).
The overclocked quad could equal or approach close to the current mobile i5 series.

Since I think your RAM is DDR3, you could upgrade that to about 8GB fairly easily without too much cost.

As for the HDD... you could get an 120GB SSD and put it into your existing HDD slot while moving the HDD itself to the optical bay using the caddy (replacing the optical disk reader).

Finally... for the gpu...
I'm not sure, but I think you might be limited to 9700m GT (your MXM slot is a bit of an oddity though - need to know the proper designation for it because there had been multiple MXM III connectors over the years).
Granted, the 9600m GT is only an underclocked 9700m GT - though I suppose you could get the 9700m GT GDDR3 if its not too much money compared to 9600m gt GDDR3.

P.S. Depending on how much all of the mentioned upgrades would cost you (the gpu would be the biggest expense), I think that you might get a better deal with getting a new laptop. Perhaps an AMD A10 APU that was paired with an 18" screen? I think such laptop offerings exist (or close to them anyway), and they would offer greater upgrade potential (the APU could be upgraded to upcoming Kaveri if I'm not mistaken, and the APU should be more powerful than your current GPU).

 

Thanks for the response Dek. It's not an MXM III A or B, or HE so that really limits the options.

For what I do with this computer, the SSD is nice but unnecessary (the hybrid momentus upgrades speed and capacity) ... same for the quad. Not sure the 8930g motherboard can handle a better quad though than the Q9000 and the X9100 extreme can easily be overclocked 10-20%. There are some 8 gig ram issues, in terms of being recognized.

Adding a 9700m gt to all this, the total cost of the upgrade will run a bit over $300 ... so it's a close call. Just not sure the 9700m gt is going to be good enough for my gaming, even though I'm not playing the most demanding games out there.

 

Well, let's see.
My 9600m GT GDDR3 plays SW: TOR on high settings at 1280x800 fairly well... the only time FPS experience a relative drop is during heavy fog or extremely large amounts of people/characters on the screen.
Mind you, I'm not a heavy gamer.
AAA titles are something I don't really care for (nor are most of the games that came out) - I just pick those that seem mildly interesting, and even though TOR is not exactly something that prompts you to think too much, its connected to KOTOR (which is why I tried it).

Anyway... the 9700m GT GDDR3 should be able to handle most games (though probably not the newest ones) well at high settings and 1280x800.
Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City seem to behave very nicely on my 9600m GT GDDR3 at the aforementioned resolution.

Mass Effect (all 3 parts including all DLC's) function just fine on high settings and 800p.
So that should provide some insight.

The 9600m GT GDDR3 should be about 25% to 35% better performance-wise than your own DDR2 version.
9700m GT is basically a minor overclocked 9600m GT GDDR3 (you can easily overclock the gpu somewhat past 9700m GT levels and undervolt it to 0.85V - reducing its temperatures).

I think that overall with the gpu upgrade and overclocking, you can gain about 40% increase in GPU performance.

As for the cpu... the reason I recommended the Quad was due to its longevity aspect.
Most programs support multi-core and overall responsiveness should be better than a C2D (even the X9100).

As for HDD... I'm not sure the hybrid will do that much good.
I'd spend less money on that one and just get the WD Scorpio Black.

Finally... if the overall cost is 'high' in your view, perhaps it would be wiser to look for a new laptop and sell this one?

 

No, actually the quad core is less expensive than the x9100 (I just checked) and the new Seagate Hybrid SSD less expensive than the older Momentus (500 gb to 750 gb though, but more than enough for me). My only concern was the 9700m gt and whether I might be missing out on a better possible upgrade --- no question it does upgrade what I have. I know I could go for a new laptop, but then I always have a tendency of wanting more, more, more and the price increases accordingly. lol So circa $300-$350 versus say $1500-$2000 seems like a good compromise.

 

Well, there's no need to crave for 'more, more, more'... instead.. .you should outline what you are (and will be) using your laptop for, allowing you and others to ascertain which one could fit into a specific budget for a new laptop (in this instance it might be useful to fill out the FAQ and see if people here can provide more options).

See... the quad is a better choice on the grounds its actually better and cheaper than X9100.
Hybrid HDD's are not so attractive really given that their SSD portion is too small to be of any practical use. In most cases they will be comparable to a 7200rpm, whereas only the most used programs will get 'cached' into the SSD portion of the drive (if they were going to make hybrids, I personally would have preferred 120GB SSD and 500GB standard magnetic storage on 7200rpm).
But in the end, its your call on which drive to get.

As for the GPU... might be wise to wait for others to see if they can advise you better on the GPU bit... but ultimately, I do think you might be limited to 9700m GT (as far as upgrading existing laptop goes), but depending on which games you play, it 'might' (emphasis on MIGHT) be 'ok' for your needs.

This is why I recommended an APU A10 (preferably of Richland revision)
It's basically a quad core that has IGP that should surpass by a good margin the 9700m GT, and upgrade-wise, you should have the ability to upgrade to Kaveri (which from preliminary reports indicates improved both CPU and GPU, and should arrive in late 2013) - and AMD offerings are relatively cheap either way (you just need to pair it with a fast dual-channel RAM in order to max out IGP performance - which shouldn't be so much of an issue with Kaveri).

Alternatively, you could get this upgrade now and it should be enough to hold you until late this year or early 2014 to see what's on the offering (a stop-gap measure if you will - and $350 doesn't really seem that much for it - especially if you can sell the older components to recover some of the cost).

 

9600m gt is not WEAK !!!! Iv seen countless youtube videos of people playing many great game on it with reasonable frame rates at decent resolutions dirt 2, 3, Blur, COH, burnout Paradise ! Maybe you want to play the new games such as BF3, Planetside 2 ? In that case yeah i understand the need for a new GPU, so more than likley you will have to purchase a new laptop may i suggest the dell xps m1730 for only $449 used on Amazon.com

 

Asus C90S C90P nVidia GT 240M 1GB DDR3 MXM II VGA Card

you will need a modded INF for the nvidia drivers form here, LaptopVideo2Go: NVIDIA & Laptop News

EDIT: you have true MXM 3.0 and 1066 buss capabilities, you have way more upgrade options that i did/do.

 

The ddr2 version is kind of weak, the ddr3 9600 and 9700 are of course better.

 

Thanks, I do seem to recall seeing this mentioned somewhere else ... lowest price I can find is $175 on the asus version (ebay) --- since not all versions of the 240 are the right mxm for the 8930g.

 

Not sure how that would work laptop-wise, it's rated at 100 watts ... haven't seen any laptops using it. It does sound like it would be an interesting laptop build with the proper juice.

 

Read this,

MXM technical v3.0

and this,

MXM notebooks 3.0 and up

then scour ebay and NBR market place. As you have some options.

EDIT: you should be able to fin and MXM 3.0 GT 240m, which is a 23 watt card.

EDIT: and this, http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Store_30.html

 

The A10 would be a new laptop Pantheon, and the last time I checked, the A10 4600m APU was rated at 35W (the 100W on the other hand could be the desktop version).

Either way, CPU-wise, you'd get a mid-range i5 Ivy Bridge mobile performance while gaining much higher GPU performance (especially if you get Richland version) - and if you take into consideration potential upgrades to Kaveri at the end of 2013... then I'd say that might be a good choice for a relatively cheap price tag.

Still, "cdoublejj" mentioned that you have 'true MXM 3.0' capability in your existing laptop.
If I understand the technical manual correctly for the MXM 3.0, its compatible with either Type A or Type B gpu's (extract from the link:
"The v3.0 connector is identical for Type A and B"), the only difference is that the Type B gpu requires more in terms of 'height' - but seeing you have an 18" screen and quite likely adequately spaced chassis for hardware, it might not be a problem).
Couple it with a QuadCore cpu such as Q9000 or Q9100 and 6GB RAM, and you probably won't have to worry about this system for a while.

Though... it might be worth looking into what the problem might be with 8GB of RAM (you could see if you can borrow the RAM from someone and try it out in your system, or just buy RAM that has a return policy).

 

OK, will have to check into this ... I was under the impression that I needed to get this type of connector ...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/for-ASUS-M90GN-Acer-Aspire-5920G-nVIDIA-GT-240M-DDR3-1GB-CARD-60-NTSVG1000-A01-/261179436662?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3ccf81ee76

as opposed to ...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-240M-N11P-GS-A1-1024M-MXM3-0A-VGA-Module-for-Laptop-/230889809059?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item35c21ae4a3

It would be a whole other ballgame if I could get the latter configuration.

I was going by this ...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/396320-acer-mxm-models-cards.html

 

Just to be on the safe side... you could open the laptop and take a picture of the MXM slot after removing the existing GPU from it.
But if the MXM 3.0 notion is accurate, then you shouldn't experience too many issues with a much more powerful GPU of a more recent design - but I would still pair it with a quad cpu.

 

Hey Pantheon, have you done something in the end ?
I'm in your shoes too now, as you can see here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/659923-acer-aspire-8920g-upgrade-12.html#post9417713

So please jump in and let me know ! Thanks.

 

I tried upgrading a 8735g to a Q9000, it did not work. I'd say the safer bet is a T9900 or X9100 (latter is hotter, but you have a high chance of getting more performance from it with overclocking).

As for 9600m DDR3 vs 9700m DDR3 - it's the same thing, except for the clocks. If the VBIOS is flashable, you can easily overclock the former to 9700m gt speeds and higher. And it's a pretty beastie card, I have mine overclocked to 710/1760/960 and it plays Crysis 2, Mass Effect 2 (haven't tried 3) and Tomb Raider 2013 at (most) normal settings even with FXAA or SMAA antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering - without them it's faster, but the picture quality is worth a little less FPS .

By the way, SMAA is faster, better and can be easily enabled for a lot of games using the SweetFX Configurator from here: SweetFX Configurator v1.3.3 released | SweetFX Configurator . FXAA and SMAA are way faster than the usual SSAA, for the same quality.