replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

[Petrakis796]

Hi to all
I would like to ask the following
I have an Acer 5920 G and i want replace 8600 G86-770-A2 with radeon HD 3470
The supplier says it is possible but I have read that it may need to be updated to bios
My problem is that the card 8600 is completely dead (black screen) and if I need updated the bios if i use HD 3470 how will I do it?

[televizora]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

5920G has MXM slot. But you can never know if it will be compatible with other card.
Maybe the best bet is to bake the Nvidia 8600.
Long time ago, I did it with IR termometer, radiator from a GPU cooler and gas soldering iron, used as a small torch.
You can also try to reflow it with hot air gun.
Heating the radiator to spread the heat evenly and controlling with the themometer not to burn anything. After baking at 250C it worked. Just preheat and do the heating and allow to cool down gradually.
Or ask some computer repair shop if they have working 8600 and can update your bios. But replacing the bios can also brick the laptop. It depends so much, even with MXM, laptop GPU-s are not interchangeable, unless they are specifically mentioned in the BIOS whitelist.
My procedure was heating with hair dryer, put the metal block, heat gradually up to 245-250, then gradually let it cool down. Dont move the mobo until it cools down to room teperature. Back then I did not have temperature controlled hot air station, neither temperature controlled soldering iron and etc. It was about 12 years back. This is why from this point in the past, I buy only laptops with integrated in the chipset/cpu Intel Graphics. They are not powerful, to say at least, but never fail in such a manner.
Unless you can get other GPU dirt cheap, it is not worth the effort. The specs are low. For 150EUR you can buy core i5 with 4GB RAM and SSD.

[Petrakis796]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

thanks for the reply
Ι understand that such a replacement is questionable and dangerous
I will probably get one exactly the same (8600 G86-770-Α2) refurbished from ebay to be sure as far as not to change the bios

[televizora]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

thanks for the reply
Ι understand that such a replacement is questionable and dangerous
I will probably get one exactly the same (8600 G86-770-Α2) refurbished from ebay to be sure as far as not to change the bios

The price of the the card in ebay is about 1/3 of another laptop with core i5, 4GB RAM and 250GB SSD. And this is not including the shipment of the card. Just sell if for parts and buy another laptop. And you cant be sure if the one you intend to buy from ebay is not defective as well.
It just doesn't worth the effort to repair this laptop.`
You can get about 25-30EUR for the screen, 10EUR for the keyboard, 10-20EUR for the HDD and another 15-20EUR for the plastics and WLAN card.
Even if you replace the card, the replacement may die as well. The whole 84/86 series are defective to some extend.
And for 150EUR you can buy much newer laptop, with newer hardware, more memory and if you are lucky, even SSD.

[piernov]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

If you want to get a bit more life out of it just heat to 200°C max (if you go above you risk damaging the balls or completely killing the GPU) for a minute and a half (no flux), it should bring it back to life for a short time. Of course the GPU is dead and it'll fail again.

Also if you get the same GPU then it'll have the same issue. You have to get one with the fixed revision of the GPU (white underfill around the die). But of course most stuff you'll find on eBay/Aliexpress will have the defective GPU (dark underfill around the die), it'll most likely have been baked already and will fail again soon enough.

As for replacing the graphics card with another model, it's possible, but this series of Acer laptop is known to have a lot of compatibility issues with MXM cards due to poorly written BIOS. In general you'll need a specific VBIOS on the card and/or a patched BIOS on the laptop to have them work properly.

A good replacement would be the 9600M GT but you need to flash a patched BIOS, see http://forum.notebookreview.com/thre...00m-gt.575866/ .

The ATi Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series could work but I think it requires a specific VBIOS. If the seller does not know about it then I would not recommend it. Also the Radeon HD 3000 series still has a kinda high failure rate (nowhere near the NVidia GPU from 2006-2008, but it's still not unusual to find them dead).

[Askic]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

If you want to get a bit more life out of it just heat to 200°C max (if you go above you risk damaging the balls or completely killing the GPU) for a minute and a half (no flux), it should bring it back to life for a short time. Of course the GPU is dead and it'll fail again.

Can you please explain this in more details? If the GPU is defective (dead), how heat will revive it? Some internal broken connection will be connected again or what? I understand that heat can make better solder joint, but how will it work inside the chip? I know this works, but I don't know why if solders are not the culprit.
This is something I don't really understand (the physics behind it).

Thank you.

[piernov]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

Look for NVidia "bumpgate" related articles on SemiAccurate, The real issue of these chip is actually explained (it's a combination of wrong underfill material, wrong bump material and heat dissipation). I haven't seen an analysis on why heat affects the GPU though, but we could speculate that it has to do with softening the underfill and the bumps.

[Petrakis796]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

First of all, thank you all for the usable ideas you gave me
but I prefer the upgrade to the card 9600
My problem is how can flash the pached bios with black screen ?
Is there the pached file in a file for example bin? so i can buy a empty bios chip from ebay and then program it and replace with it the bios chip that my motherboard has now?

[Dan81]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

Just wanted to chime in and say that some of these shipped with ATI cards.

It will support 3450/3470/3650 as well as 4650 out of the box.

I have bought an 5920G with a defective 8600M GT and have easily replaced it with a 4650. The only requirement is for the card to be a Acer OEM'd card - usually these have a VG tag on them:

3470 - VG.82M06.003
3650 - VG.86M06.003
4650 - VG.M9606.006

[piernov]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

Hence the specific VBIOS requirement.

[Petrakis796]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

As for the 9600 card, does anyone have any idea to successfully place it on my laptop that has a black screen?

[zunasthegreat]

Re: replace 8600nvidia with radeon HD 3470

I have already fixed 2 5920G from the dissasterous G84/G86 mxm cards. The cheapest solution was to buy an acer hd 3470 card from aliexpress for 20-25€.
Wouldn't spend a penny more for a 12y old laptop. If u go that route you will need a copper shim of 1mm I think so the heatsink can touch the ATI die.
Just search for acer hd 3470 and you will see many results, just have some patience.