Update 31 oktober 2007: We have stopped selling the 6800 for some time now and have replaced it with Type II 7600 cards. They are cheaper and cooler and represent much less stress on the power supply. Performance is comparable but in most cases marginally less.
Update 24 january 2008: That's it, no more 7600's. We hope to replace them with a DX10 offering soon, frop us a line if you want to be first in line to give them a go.
The MXM Upgrade team.
Preface: The below report was written by Juergen 'Topkman' Knacke from the German Amilo forums forums. When he showed interest in upgrading his notebook, he was asked to verify if the necessary room was available. He was kind enough to confirm that both a Type III and Arima Special would fit. This prompted us to send him a 'Arima Special' 6800 256MB. The report was translated from German and has not been changed by us. We have allowed Juergen a nice discount on his card because of the great help he has been to us.
Juergen has been kind enough to run some becnhmarks with his 1437 1,73GHz/2GB Amilo...
3DMark06: 2151
3DMark05: 4026
3DMark03: 9239
3DMark01: 18823
So, how much of an upgrade is that? We have checked this thread in the Amilo forums and have found...
1437/2GHz/2GB 3DMark05: 2269
1439/1,73GHz/1GB 3DMark05: 2600
That's a performance increase between 55 and 77%
Not a bad upgrade...
These cards are available from MXM Upgrade for 300€.
MXM Card Upgrade Documentation for Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437/9G
By Juergen 'Topkman' Knacke.
This is an upgrade guide, but no responsibility for damage of any kind is taken in any way by anyone.
The MXM standard is alive. Before anything else, I would like to say that without Kris's MXM card I wouldn't have been able to write this report. He supplied me with this card and I would like to thank him once again for his trust.
Mounting the card is not so easy, as can be seen in the picture, the card comes without the studs to mount the heatsink. The two screws to tie the card to the chassis are standard and always there.
Now I must find a solution to get the temperature under control. I used commercially available screws, bolts and plastic spacers. As can be seen on the picture, a messing bolt is on the card with a spacer underneath. The spacer prevents the bolt to short the SMD components on the card. As I have quite some experience in the 'cooling' department from desktop systems, it didn't take me too much time to find a solution to the challenges brought forward by this card.
In this picture, the MXM card is removed and two bolts are shown. You should mark the positions before removing the card. When the card is still in it's place, you can see the holes and use a marker on the black foil. Again, plastic spacers should be used to prevent shorts. It is suggested to use super glue and glue the spacers to the bolts.
Now it's time to mount the MXM card. In the next picture, one can see I applied thermal paste to the core. I used 'Flussigmetall', with a thermal transfer capacity ten times higher as the widely known Artic Silver 5. Believe me, currently there's simply nothing better.
The 'Flussigmetal' doesn't conduct electricity, just like AS5. Remove the excess paste. Because I destroyed the heatpad completely, I needed a way to fill the space between the heatsink and the GPU die. In this case, I used a copper plate, 0,5mm thick. In the picture, the copper plate is already on the die. The copper plate should match the area of copper on the heatsink. Thermal paste should be applied to the GPU and the copper part of the heatsink. That should do the trick.
Note: If you didn't destroy your heatpad, the original heatpad can be used, even though the procedure described by Topkman probably yields better results.
As shown on the picture below, the stud between MXM and heatsink is not supplied, so a surrogate should be used (marked in red). Another bolt can be used but remember to use a plastic spacer. The same procedure was used on the opposite mounting hole. As some may already have noticed, I only fastened two screws. More isn't necessary and this facilitates the next MXM upgrade, if needed. I marked the two mounting holes that were used to attach the heatsink to the card.
As some may already have noticed, I only fastened two screws. More isn't necessary and this facilitates the next MXM upgrade, if needed. I marked the two mounting holes that were used to attach the heatsink to the card.
In the last picture, it is shown that very normal screws were used (M3x10mm). They connect to the bolts previously placed under the MXM. If they don't, use a pair of tweezers to hold the bolts. Do not screw the bolts to tight, just enough until you feel a bit resistance.
That's it!
Hope this helps. In my notebook, the card runs absolutely problem free and my temperatures are better than before. Finally: because of the generated heat, the fan should run almost continuously.
High Res pictures available under http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/1437_High_Res
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