MXM-Upgrade

Update 11 december 2007: This page is outdated and misses some recent information. An update is planned. The laptop table is more up to date.

Clevo?

Clevo makes some of the most powerful notebooks available. Their D900x and M570x chassis can be found as Sagers, Alienwares and countless other Boutique brand notebooks. And what's more, they feature modular graphic cards and some boutiques even offer upgrades for some models, albeit at a hefty price.

Early in their lifecycles, stories were floating around the Net proclaiming these beasts have MXM cards. This came from such notable sources such as Tom's Hardware. All mention of MXM disappeared from later reviews. When asking around,various sources told me that indeed the Clevo card is totally independent of MXM and proprietary to Clevo. I didn't know what to believe until a reader of our site pointed me out to this article that has a picture of the graphics card of the Clevo. The picture of the Clevo (D900 something) is on the left and a 'real' MXM on the right.

There's a lot missing, there's no contacts on the bottom, the mounting holes are totally misplaced... It seems the Clevo representative at Cebit, Luke from PCTorque and several other were right after all! This is obviously not MXM. For further reference, one of the pictures our reader has taken.

We would like to thank Alex Kan for his efforts and support.

Zepto?

We have very little information, but it looks like they use the MXM connector at least. The heatsink attachment doesn't look right and the format seems off as well. The notebook is supposedly ODMd by Inventec. It would look like they joint the 'kinda MXM' ranks. We can only hope that the show compatibility with regular MXM cards.

If anyone has further information, we'd love to hear it...

Toshiba?

This is a bit of a strange case, and it is not yet closed. At first, we were left to believe that at least the Tecra S3 was MXM. A lot of other notebooks also seemed to fit the profile (modular PCI-Express card, several models for the same chassis. MXM Upgrade went to Cebit in Hannover and several representatives of Toshiba denied that Toshiba had any MXM models at all. All this resulted in a lot confusion, until we got a manual for the S3 from a reader , Mattman. That manual contained this picture...

The insert at the top looks a lot like MXM, the orange triangles, representing the 'main' mounting screws look fine too, but the purple triangles, that represent the heatsink mounting screws are just plain wrong. As can be seen on the 'real' MXM picture above, the mounting holes are arranged in a square. And as we all know: you can't fit a triangle in a square.

That said, we have not given up on Toshiba just yet. We assume there's a decent chance Toshiba used the same electrical interface and just tweaked the mechanics a bit to prevent end users to tinker with their notebooks. In the future, we hope to prove this and provide mechanical adaptation plates to help Toshiba owners out.

At one point, we also labelled the P100 as 'possibly MXM'. Well, guess not (see below)...

Some more? One of our readers has a A100-158 and he was kind (and interested enough) to pop the hood and take some pictures...

The slot iteself looks an awfull lot like a MXM connector and the card itselflooks 'kinda' like MXM but the formfactor is obviously off. The heatsink mounting holes might match, but the board attachement holes are on a slab of PCB where there should be... well, air. The again, Arima also has different physical dimensions but features perfect MXM compatibility!

Acer?

This is actually an often returning question. The answer is simple. As far as we know, Acer does not use MXM technology. A user on the Anantech forum (thanks Sosey!) took some picture of his Acer Aspire 5601(is that right Sosey?) internals...

Modular? Yes. MXM? No. Not even close. The connector is not even close, and it all begins and ends there.

Asus?

Yet another strange story... The Z81, based on a A4 chassis is most certainly MXM. This has been verified through an upgrade from a 6800 to a x1800.We spoke to Asus representatives on Cebit and they told us that Asus will no longer pursue MXM. Through the nice folks at Z71 Forums we took a peak inside this notebook and so we got another prime example of 'kinda MXM but not quite'.

The two red circles represent the main 'problem areas On the left there's the SODIMM-like latches, on the right there's the additional connector on the card in particular and the L-shaped card in particular. So, modular? Yes. PCI-Express? Yes. MXM? Nope.

We assumed this was the end of the Asus story. That all changed when we got a log of the tool described on the 'Notinthelist' page regarding a A6K. LordChaos80 got a value of 5FFF.0000.0000.0000 instead of 005F.0000.0000.0000 or something like it. So, not MXM but it was also the first time it was close. It may not look like it at first sight, but it is actually only a one byte shift that may be caused by a number of reasons..

And it continues.. We recently purchased a 7600 of A8 origin we know it is based on a MXM connector and we know it is "flipped".

We know for sure it will not just "fit", but we have some plans that fall under the 'do not try this at home' file system,so stay tuned!

28 Januari 2007. Asus. Everytime you think you have them figure out, they cook up something new. The Z84 seems to have MXM, Type III no less! And that after they told m they figured MXM takes up too much space. Oh well. To be continued, no doubt.

Quanta?

Not a nice story... Originaly we classified Quanta as a full blown MXM manufacturer. Then we send out some MXM cards of Quanta origin to some costumers and none of them worked. We assumed the cards were protected against use in non-Quanta notebooks so we shipped them to Quanta owner.

It didn't work.

The erratic behaviour ranges from not booting at all over booting but without an image. We assume the protection is embedded in the video and/or system bios. As such, we have not given up hope to flash the vBios one day to correct it. But untill then: steer clear of Qaunta cards and notebooks. One possible exception is a notebook model that came with the x700, 6600 and 6800. If you can pick up a 6800 that came from another notebook in the exact same series, chances are it will work.

HP?

One of our readers, MGS2392, was kind enough to point us to this thread on NBR. He showed some pictures of the HP Compaq nx9420/nw9440. What he showed us...

...were these pictures. Looks, smells and measures like MXM.

We tested one of the cards that came from an HP notebook, and it was a dud. We send a Arima Special to a costumer and it would not fit because of space constraints. So, no final verdict on compatibility, but it does not look good.

Apple?

Apple joins the rank of Quanta: looks great, but offers no compatibility. The 24" iMac uses a card that is based on the MXM formfactor but offers no compatibility. A reader of MXM Upgrade has tried several MXM cards in his Apple, including a reference 6200 card MXM Upgrade has send him, and none of those worked. If we are correctly informed, this comes from an incompatible vBios and this behavious was also seen in the past with incompatible AGP cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some great potential was lost here. As Apple is using desktop GPU's, the thermal budget should be plenty to install whatever notebook card you'd want.

Maybe some smart folks will figure out a way to flash the Bios one day. MXM Upgrade will be happy to assist with such endeavours if we can.

Packard Bell?

A reader of MXM Upgrade (Thanks Clarkey!) bought a second hand MXM (?) card for his damaged Amilo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This 6600 that comes from a Packard Bell Easynote W7 is the correct formafactor but only showed a white image. We don't know whether this is caused by damage to Clarkey's notebook, the card itself or an incompatible vBios.

Dell?

Ok. I'll try to state this as clear as I can: Dell does NOT use MXM. They never have and probably never will. There is no way 'to make it work'. You simply can't fit a square peg in a round hole.

Compal?

We featured Compal for some time in our table, but it turned out to be a dud. The reason the hgl30 and 80 were originally filed as 'MXM' was because of the MXM references in the drivers I found at Zepto. The hel80 was soon dismissed and when Mikisee showed me these pictures of his hgl30, it was clear these are not MXM notebooks at all.

 

And when you look a bit at the drivers over at Zepto, it is very clear they came from laptopvideo2go.com. And because they load their modded infs with all the features any notebook may ever require, they included the MXM part as well.

 

 

The others?

More to be added in the future. Got some information to share? Drop us a line or sound of on the forums.