Upgrading CPU of a Acer TravelMate 2480 Laptop

Right now it has:

Intel Celeron M 420 @ 1.6Ghz (socket 478m)


I was going to upgrade it to:
Intel Core Duo T2400 / 1.83 GHz ( 667 MHz ) 478-pin Micro FCPGA


- The sockets match

I don't have much experience with CPU's, but I'm almost certain it will work. Should it work though?

 

Most of the informations you are looking for are available here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=206137
M420 is a socket M cpu and others have upgraded to higher cpus, you have to check your chipset and compare with other posts in the above thread.

 

Omg it didn't work. My chipset and socket are supported too... ? I just spent the last 2hrs putting together and disassembling my laptop...

I don't get it at all...

 

try to update your Bios and see if it works
edit: whats your chipset ?? below 945 wont work with 667 fsb

 

I have 945

 

I did upgrade an advent with an i945 chipset from a celeron M430 to a Core Duo T2300 so the i945 is not the issue. The i945 suppots both 133/533 and 166/667 fsb.

Are you sure that the T2400 is not faulty? If it is not faulty then it is likely that your bios is too old and needs updating.

What did exactly happen when you tried to power your laptop with the T2400 installed? Did your laptop refuse to turn on? or did it turn on but you had a black screen?

 

yes, I said below 945

 

I think Espionage has a i940 chipset and he has intel 945 Express chipset family. I might be wrong but when I looked at my CPU-z I came to this conclusion. BTW i943 can be upgraded to 667MHz FSB.

 

now thats another gray zone

 

Off topic
Have you notice a significant boost after upgrading from a T7700 to a T9300?

 

I turned it on and got a black screen.

If my hardware supports it, maybe I could hack my BIOS to support it?

 

Did you twist the lock, I know it may sound stupid but sometimes i forgot to do that and got a black screen.
Hacking the BIOS is very difficult.

 

T7700 to T9300 performance boost is too little to noticed.
but temperature wise, very very significant.
on paper on my machine, difference between T7700 and T9300 with wprime is 3 seconds.

 

Yep I twisted it back in place (almost forgot the first time)

Also I have experience with hacking my BIOS. I managed to use Phoenix Bios Editor to update my VBIOS on the laptop and it worked well.

So my theory was (as long as my hardware is all in check to support the CPU), to simply grab another BIOS from a laptop that comes with a T2400, take it's CPU Microcode data out of it, put it into mine, and then profit.

So I guess my first question is, can my machine support the CPU? Socket matches, chipset seems to support it, idk what else there could be.

 

back to my first suggestion, update BiOS ? do you have the latest ?

 

Before attempting to hack the BIOS I would test the new Processor first.

 

So the T9300 is cooler then the T7700. That's good to know...thanks crayonyes.

Espionage724
at least your laptop is not completely dead with the T2400. Beside an old bios you're ram might be the problem. I mean it might refuse to run at 667mhz. If you have two modues, remove them and try with one only. Sometimes swapping the position of the ram might help.

So start with a bios ugrade. If this doesn't help try swapping the ram around, or with one module only.
For the bios update, the safest way is to update under DOS. Updating under Windows is not 100% relayable.

Sorry to insist. Are 100% sure that your T2400 is in full working order?

By the way what's the revision number [of the bios in your system?

 

OK

Latest Bios here
The above link is for Bios version 1.3508.

Your laptop user guide is here. This is from this PDf:


This shows that even with the default bios the TM2480 with the i945 chipset can support:
Celeron M410, M420, and M430
Core Duo T2300, T2400, T2500, and T2600

To this list you can add C2D T5200, T5300, T5600 (I found those in the bios v1.3505 log file).

Again if your TM2480 has an i945 (based on the above) it supports:
Core Duo T2050, T2060, T2080, T2250, T2450
Core2Duo T5500, T7200, T7400, T7600

But are you sure that the TM2480 has an i945 chipset... I'm asking because I found this:

Fom the above it seems that the chipset on the TM2480 is an i940GML and we know that this chipet does not support Duo Core T2400 ... Sorry

EDIT 1:
I've just found this http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=155958. It seems that you would be able to use any dual core CPU that has an FSB of 533mhz. This includes the: T2050, T2060, T2080, T2250, T2450, T5200 and T5300.

EDIT 2:
I found this, this, this, and this so I'm not any more sure if you can upgrade... I guess you have to try.

 

CPUZ tells me i have i943/940GML

Intel's chipset identifier said I had a 945/ something else

EDIT: uploaded screenshot of CPUZ and Intel's Chipset tool

 

From what I was able to gather around:
If you have an i943/i945 you can upgrade all the way to a T7600.
If you have an i940 than I don't know since some seem to have manged to upgrade too.

Any ways can't you get someone to test the T2400 for you so to make sure that it is not faulty? Also have you tried to upgrade your Bios (link in the my last post)?

EDIT:
I think the '/' in Intel's Chipset Identifier utility mean 'either' of the listed chipsets; i.e. 945 or 943 or 940.

Can't you open your laptop and read the ref number printed in your northbridge? It's under the CPU heatsink. The ref number contains the name of the chipset.

 

I already have the latest BIOS. and nope idk anyone with my socket in their computer :/

Hmm, its such a pain to open this laptop up though like I have to disassemble everything...

 

If you open the back cover and read the numbers on the label just above the RAM modules, you can determine actual chipset in your laptop by checking the Motherboard specs.
So far I have found two motherboards MBAZL06001, MBAZL06003 and unfortunately both have i940 chipset, if you find different numbers google for it and find out the chipset on that motherboard.

 

Mine was slightly unreadable at the end but I got MBTEB06003651192302(next # is either 9 or 8)00

EDIT: no information on this number at all either

 

just read the number on the chipset

 

But wheres that at? I don't feel like ripping my entire laptop apart again

 

Do you have to take the laptop apart to acces the CPU?

 

I'm afraid the motherboard says it's 940GM.
http://www.ezsystems.com/test/imageview4.php?part=MB.TEB06.003&mfg=Acer&desc=Refurbished Mbteb06003 Aspire 3680 System Board ( Motherboard ) 940gm.
http://www.ezsystems.com/newcart/search.php?s=Motherboard&m=Acer

 

OMG... I wish I knew all that before I bought this thing now i'm stuck with it and without $50...

 

Never mind, still you can sell it on ebay or on NBR Market place, it is a good proc.
Have a look at the sticky link I posted in my 1st post,it contains many useful info for you.

 

Yea true.

So if I read everything correctly, the only CPU I could upgrade to is the T1350 which is 200MHz faster then the one I have now and 1MB additional L2 Cache? Would that really be worth it?

 

For everyday use such as Internet, word processing, DVD, music you won't notice the difference. Besides I don't think the T1350 won't be that easy to find and if you find one it won't be that cheap.

Are you using XP or vista by the way?
If you have 512MB and XP adding another 512MB would money well spent
If you have 1GB and Vista adding another 1GB would money well spent

EDIT:
The only advantage the T1350 has over the Celeron is a considerable increase in the battery live.

 

I have noticed a reasonable speed change for all aspects of my computing when I moved to T2400 from T2060, I have found a T1350 on ebay for $16. I sincerely believe you should give it a go for that price.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Core-Solo...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3efdd9e1bf
EDIT:
I have just found one under a tenner,wow: http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Core-Solo...03QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCPUs?hash=item35a75ed263

 

I still that it won't make a difference in particular if you're running WinXP. Your money would be better spent if you add more ram or replacing your harddrive with a faster one.

By the way have you considered the Celeron M 450 which is clocked at 2Ghz?

Are you tolking about the T2400 you initially bought for your Acer TM2480? If yes to should try the T2060 in the TM2480 just in case. The T2060 has an fsb of 533Mhz

 

No, I don't have a Travelmate 2480, I have seen in many threads people kept saying "you won't see any improvement in performance" by upgrading cpu but I got a good deal on this T2400 and went along and really pleased with it. My pages load faster, I can now even play 720HD in youtube without any stutter and Office loads very fast as well. This is my personal experience and I would like to see the OP benefit from an upgrade because I strongly believe any upgrade will improve the performance.

 

I've mixed up between you and the OP.

In general a CPU won't lead to a significant boost. A CPU ugrade is significant only in CPU intensive task such as Video encoding, Photoshop, and rendering.

 

Hmm, the CPU that was mentioned that was OC'd to 2.0, I might take a look at that.

And thanks for the ebay links for the cheap CPUs (I should of checked there first...)

Also the only thing I need a better CPU for is Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft. I run XP and have 2GB of RAM and a 950GMA (no graphics upgrading possible)


So from my readings, aparantly the i940 doesn't support any dual core CPU of any kind, and supports up the the Core Solo as the best CPU upgrade. Is this true?

 

It looks like it.

 

So about this Celeron M 450? It's compatible with i940? The FSB and socket seem to be compatible with my system, although on Intel's site it doesn't list compatible chipsets :/

 

yes you are right bro..

 

nothing you do will allow you to run those games lol

 

If I OC I can play them quite nicely, and if I were to use Windows 7 and use my modded 950GMA drivers, I can play SC2 way better.

 

can you OC though?
Does the 950GMA run any faster with the modded drivers?

 

GMA950 can be OCEd using a Software using GMA Booster but don't expect much.

 

I think that Espionage724 is talking about a desktop GPU modded driver.

 

Hmm, actually I'm pretty known in a google group called 9xxssf and we mod intel gfx drivers.

Anyway when I said I oc'd b4 I meant just OC'ing the FSB and PCI-E bus, that alone boosts performance quite nicely.

GMABooster also barely does anything (it makes a difference for sure though, just not a big enough one to be useful).

And also the 950GMA can run way faster with modded drivers (if under vista or 7, search out the google group 9xxssf and find Alpha drivers [their called alpha, but there not in an alpha state], if under XP, look for my drivers from IEGD)

 

thanks for the info