FAQ for Emachines M6805

N

NecessaryEvil

Guest
We tend to get a lot of messages about the 6805, it might be useful to get a centralized post for questions to be answered.

Maybe even get this stickied for a few weeks?

All info I have here is credited to whomever I read the info from.




So, put in the questions and answers here.

6805/6807 statisitics.
the 6805 has a DVD/CD-RW combo. the 6807 has a DVD burner
15.4" WXGA LCD (1280x800)
1.8ghz max CPU, .8ghz min.
512mb RAM. upgradeable to 2gb, but will void warranty due to only 1 DIMM being user-accessible.
RAM runs in single channel mode.
64mb Radeon 9600. Possibly modular; it does not use shared RAM.
60gb harddrive*
Via K8T800 chipset
Via Rhine network (10/100)
Broadcomm 802.11g wireless.
Realtek ALC-650 Audio



Emachines.
It's a friggin Emachines! What are you thinking!?
1. The laptop seems to be manufactured by Arima, a supplier of laptops to many "retail-brand" manufacturers.
2. Emachines of 2004 isn't the same Emachines of 1999. The old company went out of business, and it was purchased by an American who brought the company from poopular to a company that was one of the first out to retail with the Athlon 64s.
3. Emachines is currently being purchased by Gateway. the Emachines CEO will stay on as the Gateway CEO. Emachines will continue to cater to the retail market, whereas Gateway will cater to education and government markets.4.

Purchasing:
1. There are currently $250 worth of rebates (100 emachines, 150 Best Buy/Circuit City)
2. If you take in a printout of Emachines' ESP, there is a chance that the place you purchase it from will price match down $100. (the Emachines ESP is 189, the Best Buy is 299). They did it for me, they may do it for you.

Drivers:
Where can I find the drivers for the laptop?
1. The OEM provided drivers are on Disc 3 of the restore CDs.

2. Viaarena.com has the latest Hyperion drivers for your chipset.

3. The ATI 9600 can use the latest Catalysts or Omegas. The Catalysts will require manual upgrade, the Omegas autodetect.

4. Realtek.com.tw has the latest ALC-650 drivers for your soundcard.

5. AMD has the latest driver for your CPU.

6. Hot keys have no drivers for mapping to other applications at the time of my writing this.

Battery:
Where can I buy additional batteries?
1. Emachines will have it soon, but there are no listings for the M6000 series as of this writing.

How long does the M6805 last on batteries?
1. in normal use, approximately 2.5 hours. (brightness on high, CPU speed at 800)


Performance:
When I run on batteries, it stays at 800mhz.
1. This happens with the Mobile 64. No official workaround, but look below at the overclocking area for a 3rd party workaround.

When I run on batteries, it stays at 1.8ghz.
1. Check your driver details for the CPU. If it lists processr.sys, you're running generic drivers, and need to go to AMD's website to get the latest drivers for the Mobile Athlon 64.

How's the laptop do in games?
1. Superb in BF42, UT2003, COD, Q3A. That's all I've run.


Overclocking:
How do I OC my videocard?
1. Google for ATItool

How do I OC my CPU?
1. Google for Clockgen.
2. Clockgen will also allow you to manually select your CPU speed by adjusting the multiplier. (and FSB as well). When clocking up, remember to apply voltage (VID) first, then Multiplier (FID), and when clocking down to apply FID first then VID. CG-ICS950403 is the version you're looking for.
3. SpeedSwitch is a convenient program to use as well to manually select your speed withing the factory limits (800-1.8); it doesn't allow overclocking though.

Gaming:
What games support widescreen gaming?
1. For more information, go to http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/phpBB2/. Membership is free. Workarounds are listed there.
2. Natively, the only game I've run that supported it was UT2003.
3. CS 1.5 doesn't support it. 1.6 does.
4. Q3A based games and BF42 required manual edits of configurations.

Hard Drive:
1. There are currently 3 or 4 models of hdd being used. All are 60gb. So far it seems to be luck of the draw.
a. Hitachi 5400 RPM 8mb cache (I have this one)
b. Fujitsu 4200 RPM 2mb cache
c. Toshiba 4200 RPM 2mb cache
d. Hitachi 4200 RPM 8mb cache.

Wireless:
My wireless doesn't work!
1. Be sure to press FN + F2 to turn on the radio. This confused me for a while until I read the manual.
 
Thx for the faqs.

I have the M6807.
By the way everyone (probably already known anyway) I think that
all the m6807's come with the Hitachi 5400rpm HD.

The only ones having mixed results are the m6805 owners...but somene correct me if I'm wrong

NECESSARY EVIL....

I'm a bit "afraid" to overclock this baby.

For one...I'm a newbie
Two - doesn't it void the warrenty?
Three - Never overclocked before

How safe is it? I would like to push it to just 2ghz

Can I email you for a "bit" more indepth about overclocking this baby help?


Great machine!
 
I haven't OCed it yet...I'm just using it to adjust from 800 to 1.8ghz

however, it does allow FSB bumps...but I've not yet done it.
 
Someone on AMDforums has overclocked it to 2.2ghz:p

Quote" spiderkhan Posted: Jan 31 2004, 05:55 AM


8088


Group: Members
Posts: 3
Member No.: 10,693
Joined: 31-January 04



Using the same tool, I was able to push my M6805 to 2.21 GHZ. It's been very stable running through several benchmarks, but I haven't put it through a serious burn in yet. I wish that the hard drive wasn't soooooo slow.......This and the weight of the machine really keep me from totally being in love with this beast. I DO love having the Radeon 9600 graphics card on board. I had the M5312 and the onboard graphics left a lot to be desired.

Spiderkhan " end quote

OC 2.2ghz


That is risky with PCI at 40mhz and AGP at 85mhz.


I think 2.0ghz with PCI at 37 and AGP at 75 is rather painless
 
i think this should be stickied for the time being, cuz there are a rediculous amount of threads on this laptop and this covers most of the issues
 
Originally posted by Asian Fury
i think this should be stickied for the time being, cuz there are a rediculous amount of threads on this laptop and this covers most of the problems
Click to expand...


Issues! Not problems ;)
 
Not a bad post, definately helpful for those who are considering the laptop.
 
Well, fact of the matter is that we're the bleeding edge, the beta testers for it.

So, might as well pool our knowledge.

We seem to know more about how these things work than Emachines does...so....yeah.



As for problems, issues, etc...we're working with quirks unless we don't find a resolution to the problem/issue :p
 
Great one.

From what I've heard, the Gateway deal is sealed and done, pretty much...

The onboard graphics is the 9600, NOT the 9600 Pro, or Pro Turbo. It will OC from stock (300/200) to the pro (330/200), and most of the time to the pro Turbo (350/230).
 
that's the driver I used.


if you're still running the XP Home that came on it, it'll have it included.

XP Pro (even SP1 integrated) doesn't have it though.


I think they might even have it on disc 3, but I forget.
 
Has anyone found a new driver for the broadcom? I cant find the exact model number, but it is listed in device manager as a "Broadcom 54g MaxPerformance 802.11g" If i am correct this card with the new broadcom drivers should do 125mb/sec. Fastest wireless card made baby.... This laptop is so sweet... I think I will grade to a 7200 RPM drive, and drop this one into my zen....

Also, it looks like a very new Athlon 64 driver is up on AMD's site. Version 1.1.0.1 It is newer than the included driver.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html
 
Thanks for the wireless tidbit was just messing around with the wireless part and kept saying the radio wasnt enabled then 5 mins come around here poking around and found it since im 2 lazy to look at the manual..

Thanks again.

Also wanted to state that my 6805 plays anything I throw at it played Far Cry most of the weekend.
 
This is a good post. I went looking for SoftFSB on friday. Should be interesting to see how it benchmarks once I up the clock to 2ghz.

Adam
 
I tried overclocking last night and was quite succesful. 2096MHz. One thing to note is you must make sure you back off the video cards clock because the AGP goes out of specs. Mine locked the video on the first try.


Added:
If you run your laptop with Video O/C and CPU O/C on the battery you can kill it in about 30 minutes :D. Gets pretty warm too. Kids don't try this at home!

Also at normal specs 1800MHz and Video with Power saver off battery lasts about 1Hr.
 
I recall running the Realtek sound utilities program in the Control Panel and it listing the onboard sound as being the older Realtek ALC-201 or 250? 251? one of those but it was a 2xx series.
Is it just messed up or what?
And even if it is, it's not like we can take advantage that the ALC-650 can do 5.1 we've only got the darn line out and mic ports :p

Also would be good to have upgradability to say PC3200 and what not mentioned in the FAQ.
 
:) Here is how to sustain 1.8ghz on battery without any hack :)

First off, hi folks, great place to hang the hat.

I am one of those bleeding edge dogs, I got my 6805 2 nights ago from CC (attracted by their liberal return policy, just in case)

Any way, while playing around with it, taken it off power cord and back again, taken it from suspend to hibernate to real time, I found that the CPU was running at 1.8 on battery mode (right click my computer --> property).

I was mystified at the beginning till I found the following:
* If you are on external power, go to either suspend or hibernate, while you are in this state, unplug it.
* Turn it on (back from suspend/hibernate), if you go to my computer/property, you will find that it is running at 1.8 even though you are running on battery :rolleyes:

On the other hand, if you shutdown, unplug it, turn it on, then go to suspend/hibernate. When you are back on and on battery, the cpu is 800 but if you plug it, it would go up to 1.8

I do not know if it is a bug or what, I do not know if it is specifically related to my HW or any one can recreate it.

I could be also wrong since I am reading the CPU off my computer/property.

I just wanted to share this with you guys/gals

-Alan
 
Lite On makes the optical drive in the 6805.



and 3200 wasn't mentioned due to the fact that messing with the internal DIMM would void the warranty(according to Emachines). a 3200 in one and a 2700 in the other does no good.


I installed a 512mb PC2700 from Corsair in it yesterday...it runs hotter than the samsung...but BF42 doesn't have the lag it used to.
 
Originally posted by NewToIt
:) Here is how to sustain 1.8ghz on battery without any hack :)
I was mystified at the beginning till I found the following:
* If you are on external power, go to either suspend or hibernate, while you are in this state, unplug it.
* Turn it on (back from suspend/hibernate), if you go to my computer/property, you will find that it is running at 1.8 even though you are running on battery :rolleyes:
On the other hand, if you shutdown, unplug it, turn it on, then go to suspend/hibernate. When you are back on and on battery, the cpu is 800 but if you plug it, it would go up to 1.8
-Alan
Click to expand...

When do I jump up and down on one foot? And do I have to ctrl-alt-del while i "shake it all about"?

That post hurt my head. ;)
 
You bought an Athlon 64 notebook and ATI 9600 videocard and forced it to run full speed to play Heroes of Might and Magic !? :eek:
 
Originally posted by Kingofl337
You bought an Athlon 64 notebook and ATI 9600 videocard and forced it to run full speed to play Heroes of Might and Magic !? :eek:
Click to expand...

Nah. I let it run at 800mhz.
 
from AMD's drivers:

KNOWN LIMITATIONS:
The processor performance state may not be restored to the maximum state if the CPU runs at 100 percent. This problem occurs if the computer is 100 percent busy when the power policy changes.

For more information and support options, please refer to the following website:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330512

2) The Processor speed may be reported incorrectly in Windows XP.
For more information, please refer to the following website:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316965
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by 2phastPRO
Anyone know of user upgradability? GPU, Mem. etc..
Click to expand...

Memory can be upgraded. 2 slots, you have to take it apart to get to one of them.

CPU is in a ZIF socket

GPU is integrated.
 
hi lopoetve, fellow 6805 fans...

When and where (and for how much) can we buy an Athlon 64 Mobile chip to upgrade the current 3000+ ?

Is this going to be worth it, as won't the rest of the laptop (graphix, etc.) be kinda old by the time a faster chip is available (assuming it's even affordable) ?

Also, are the RAM modules in these machines error-correcting or not? And is there really any advantage to using higher spec RAM than 333MHz/PC2700? (I assume all modules need at least to be the same type in order to work properly?)

Thanks, guys...
Dave
 
honestly, it probably won't be worth the effort to upgrade the CPU; upgrading both DIMMs of RAM will result in a voided Warranty (from Emachines' viewpoint).

It can be upgraded to 2gb, but officially, it only will do 1280 mb RAM (non-user-upgradeable 256 PC2700 internally, external upgradeable 1gb PC2700).

between the warranty and the cost for all of that, it'd be wise to run it at 768...and call it a day.

Not a happy answer, but the cost-effective answer.

(and the bump to 768 really helped out my BF42)
 
Originally posted by NecessaryEvil
honestly, it probably won't be worth the effort to upgrade the CPU; upgrading both DIMMs of RAM will result in a voided Warranty (from Emachines' viewpoint).

It can be upgraded to 2gb, but officially, it only will do 1280 mb RAM (non-user-upgradeable 256 PC2700 internally, external upgradeable 1gb PC2700).

between the warranty and the cost for all of that, it'd be wise to run it at 768...and call it a day.

Not a happy answer, but the cost-effective answer.

(and the bump to 768 really helped out my BF42)
Click to expand...

But later... when the warranty is done... then, we go to work :)
 
Originally posted by sonny
hi lopoetve, fellow 6805 fans...

When and where (and for how much) can we buy an Athlon 64 Mobile chip to upgrade the current 3000+ ?

Is this going to be worth it, as won't the rest of the laptop (graphix, etc.) be kinda old by the time a faster chip is available (assuming it's even affordable) ?

Also, are the RAM modules in these machines error-correcting or not? And is there really any advantage to using higher spec RAM than 333MHz/PC2700? (I assume all modules need at least to be the same type in order to work properly?)

Thanks, guys...
Dave
Click to expand...

We don't know when or where. Probably not all that long.

The modules are not ECC, and it doesn't appear like we can get them running at 3200 (with or without 3200 sticks).

As for upgrading being worth it, that will depend on a lot of things.
 
Just a thought on the 3200 issue.

Isnt the mem controller on the cpu itself?
Does that take mobo variables out of the loop on the cpu to ram communication?

I read somewhere that the controller expects cl2 ram.
Would the ram tested work at 3200/cl2 on another computer with the same vdim and timings? (sorry dont know these numbers)
 
I have a 6807 ordered and, based on this discussion, plan to add extra RAM. Can someone provide a part number and supplier for a 512MB stick that is known to work?
 
Corsair Value Select PC-2700 512m SODIMM from newegg is what I use.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top