Well I now have firm proof that I should not be allowed near anything electrical!  I got hold of an MSI low profile card as described in this thread and modified the heat sync as described with my junior hacksaw which took a while.  Not 100% sure what happened but the MSI card went pop when it was powered on, no problem I thought, I will just go back to the original card so I attached the heat sync back to the old and the box came up fine.  Then I noticed a burning smell as the graphics cards was running really hot.

So now I am in a dilemma, do I buy another MSI card (which is hard to get hold of now) and try and use the modified heat sync or can I put the MSI in with its original heat sync?  I am struggling to find an replacement 7600 GTL that I could use as a backup.  Or is there a newer card (9 series maybe) that will slot straight in?

Thanks in advance.

Hi

With all the problems of sourcing the MSI 8500 cards has anyone tried out one of the new ATI 4350/4450 based cards ? They offer native HDMI and low power passive cooling. Also any info on where people are getting the MSI 8500 cards from ? One thing is the actual fitting as they appear to have odd looking heatsink risers.

Thanks

Chris

Eeek, not a good situation. Did you clean the heatsink and apply fresh thermal paste/compound each time you fitted it? It sounds like you were/are not getting contact causing the cards to overheat.

The 8500 cards are now getting hard to source (no I don't have a secret supply). They have been replaced by the 9400 and 9500. These are good cards, but so far the low profile versions all have active cooling.

The ATI cards are also a good alternative but there is one slight gotcha. They have an audio device built into the graphics card for the HDMI audio (unlike the nVidia cards which use S/PDIF pass through). As I understand it, this means that with an ATI card you would not be able to have simultaneous HDMI and S/PDIF sound output (you could however manually switch between the two). Just something to be aware of depending on the rest of your AV setup.

Hi IT Troll,

Are you saying that i should expect the default XL201 kit to simultaneously output HDMI and Optical sound? I take it you mean non-Dolby Digitally?  I have to switch off HDMI output to allow Dolby Dig through the optical on the stock XL201 kit, using the STAC97.CPL tool, and there are no keyboard shortcuts to do this!  Grrrrr.

Thanks, Tony

You sound very lucky!

Perhaps it's a feature of the driver on Vista?  I can only see the option to switch through the STAC97.CPL dialogue pages, and don't get sound on my HDMI (TV) when set to Digital, but my amp doens't see Digital if i switch it so that my TV works.

Perhaps i need to update my SigmaTel drivers?  hmmm.

Hey guys,

I'm coming back on this forum because I just receive last week my new LCD (Sony KDL-40z4500) and so I'm very exciting to try my XL201 "optimized" on it! So, I have installed a 8500GT like IT Troll (thanks for you topic!) and everything works fine...except the sound :-( ! I don't have any sound on the HDMI cable! Did someone can explain me where is the problem?

Thanks a lot!
Gladiateur555

I've just upgraded(?) to Vista 32 on my XL-201 and installed the latest Sigmatel driver.
However, I could not get the sound and 5.1 etc to work correctly.  I was getting sterio all the time.  I read on a website somewhere that there is a bug with the latest driver and you should install on older Sigmatel driver instead untill they fix the new driver.
So you need to use the older driver 6.10.0.5290.  It worked for me.

Hi Gladiateur555,

Is it worth creating a new thread about Windows 7, rather than adding to the current thread titled "XL201 Video card upgrade"?

You can then tell us all about your experiences with the new beta O/S replacement for Vista.  :)

Also, it would really help if you can include your equipment list into your ClubVaio profile signature, like mine just below this post.

Thanks a lot!   Tony