Preface: The below report was written by Gary Cole. Gary had a x700 and was looking for somthing just a bit more potent.. We were rather skeptic of this project because the notebook is basically a rebadged Quanta notebook and in the past we've had some rather nasty experiences with the compatibility of these cards and notebooks. As a result of this, we have some Quanta cards laying around that are gathering dust and some tales of tried and failed attempts of upgrading Quanta's. When Gary decided to give it a go after all, we agreed to send him not one but three cards (a Quanta 7600 and 7800 and a 'regular' x1900) for the price of the x1900 and we offered him the 'full money back' guarantee in case it didn't work out. Not expecting much of it, we were rather surprised when he briefed us on his success. We were even more surprised to receive his review some time later. Even though we often offer full money back warranties in cases like this, costumers tend to not live up to the deal they struck.
MXM Upgrade is aware that there are several Gateway notebooks that belong to the same family as this one. If you have checked the pictures below and have compared it to you own hardware and you believe you have a match: let us know. Not only if you want to get yourself a x1900 too, but also just to add to the knowledgebase that helps many people.
Gateway 8550 GB Upgrade
Remove your old graphics card drivers and power down.
Unplug power and disconnect battery.
Ground yourself or use earthing strap before starting
Remove the bottom panel shown above.
Remove the CPU heatpipe (the one with the large fan) and remove it (There are the three screws over the CPU plus a couple by the actual fan on the right hand edge not forgetting to unplug the fan from the board. Clean off any old thermal pads/paste.
With the CPU heatpipe remove now remove the GPU one and clean off any old thermal paste/pad from the GPU core (I kept the four heat pads from the memory for use on the new GPU)
Unscrew the two screws holding the Graphics card down and remove the old one, reinserting the new one in its place and screwing down.
Apply AS5 or similar as shown putting a slightly thicker layer than normal on the GPU core as due to the edging on the X1900 card there is a slight gap to be filled.
Important notice from MXM-Upgrade: We don't censor reviews and as such we did not remove the above remark but applying a big blob of AS5 is not the way to cover the gap. MXM-Upgrade provides a high performance heatpad with every card we sell and it is this pad that should be used.
To reattach the GPU heatpipe you will need to get 4 x M2*5mm screws as the old ones are the wrong lengths. Leave the memory heatpads attached to the heatpipe on their respective cut outs.
Place the GPU heatpipe in place and gently press down over the GPU then remove (this is so you can check you didn’t put too much AS5 on or too little, does it leave a nice GPU sized mark on the heat pipe face? Reattach the GPU heatpipe using the new screws, just screw them down until the pressure springs bow at little (due to the heatpipe not being made for the card the screw stops are no longer any use). Don’t overtighten. You will notice that the heat pads don’t cover the whole of some of the memory chips, don’t worry they didn’t before on your old card either and it works fine as is.
Reattach the CPU heatpipe plugging the main fan back in. Reattach the bottom of the machine and battery, power pack.Boot up the machine and install the latest ATI desktop drivers from ATI website using the DHMod tool.
Current System Specs Gateway 8550 GB
Pentium M 2.26Ghz CPU (upgraded from 1.73Ghz)
2GB Ram (PC-4300) (upgraded from 1GB)
Ati Mobility X1900 (upgraded from X700 Mobility)
100 GB 4800rpm hard drive.
Benchmark Scores. (running standard clocks)
3DMark 06 = 3133.
3DMark05 = 6311
Benchmark Scores. Running O/C 2.5Ghz (CPU) 452/972Mhz (GPU)
3DMark06 = 3432
3DMark 05 = 6926
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