Type X3 video card and CPU upgrade

[300wins]

I was wondering how involved it is to upgrade my Quiz and Dragons X3 from a i3 to say an i5 or i7. What about the video card? It currently has a 640. What if I wanted to upgrade to a GTX 660? Is it straight drop in or do I need to flash any bios? What's the highest card a X3 will accept?

 

[PascalP]

I replaced the GPU from a USF4 with an off the shelf GTX660, worked fine for me, original card would not boot but strangely enough it booted and worked just fine in my Desktop PC for many months after I swapped them

 

[300wins]

So I bought a MSI 660 GTX for my x3. But I can only get to the white Taito X3 screen and it just stays there. Is there anything I need to do in bios or anything?

 

[adgenet]

I picked up an X3 as well and did some experimenting.

1. I was able to populate all ram slots with 4GB dual-rank UDIMMs without issue for a total of 16GB, not that it makes a difference. I used a mix of pairs of nanya and samsung dimms. I don't know if 8GB DIMMS will work as I don't think I have any lying around to test with, but I'll take a look. 8GB DIMMS work without issue for a total of 32GB.
I also tried some ECC RDIMMS, but they do not work. This is expected as the consumer Sandy/Ivy CPUs don't support RDIMMS, but I wanted to try anyway. I haven't tried ECC UDIMMs yet.

2. Tried swapping the included MSI Twin Frozr GTX 660 with a reference board evga blower GTX 660, but it would not boot to the proper resolution. The machine would POST and boot, but once booted, it was as if you were running without drivers. Perhaps the PCI ID is different, or the BIOS is to blame. I haven't investigated swapping BIOSes . BIOS cross flashing didn't work for my EVGA 660
This is an important point to reasearch imo to make sure we have a wide range of replacements available. I already had a panic attack when I swapped back to the original card and the first couple of boots gave me no screen and a series of 5 beeps. Re-seating the card and PCIE power resolved the no-screen and 5-beeps.
I will try some other Kepler geforce cards when I get a chance to look through my pile of parts. I have a GT640, GTX 670, and GTX 760s to test with in the kepler family.

3. On the CPU side, I replaced the original i5-2400 with a retail i5-2400 I had, and it booted fine. I tried swapping this for an of Ivy bridge i7-3770, but was met with 4 beeps from the motherboard and no POST. The bios probably doesn't have Ivy bridge microcode, so you're likely stuck with Sandy bridge CPUs.
I will try a sandy bridge i7-2600 when I find it in my parts bin. i7-2600 works fine.

 

[300wins]

Since you posted what you tested, I should post what I tested too.
I swapped out mi i3-2100 for an i7-2600 and it ran fine. Since they are all in the Sandy Bridge family, I'm going to assume that the i3-2100, i5-2400 and i7-2600 are interchangeable.

 

[PascalP]

I also swapped the MSI Twin Frozer GTX660 with an off the shelf MSI Twin Frozer GTX660, worked just fine for me

 

[enidz]

Hi as anyone tried to put a GTX 760 graphic card into a TTX3 ?

I would like to try but I don't know which one to buy, I found different GTX 760 with 1, 2 or 3 fans...

If you know which one is working as is (without flasnig bios or anything else) please let me know.

Thx !

 

[300wins]

So I put in a GTX 760 in my model 405 (Puzzle and Dragon) and it goes to the white Taito X3 screen and does not go any further. The same thing happens in my model 404 (Lord of Vermillion) machine.
There is an X3 with the GTX 760 card (Figurehead machine). The card I tried with the Nvidia GTX 760 Founder's Edition (1 fan).

 

[enidz]

You tried this one ?

So we can eliminate it ?

there is other 1 fan cards :

the other 2 fans candidate are :

the 3 fans candidate :

and may be more...

I really don't know why there's such a profusion of those card and what are the differences between them, it can't be only the fans !!!

If I can't figure it out I will put a GTX 660 twin frozer III which I know works great :

 

[300wins]

It's the very first card on top, with the fan all the way to the right side. A friend of mine has a X3 model 407 (Figurehead) which has the 760 GTX video card on it. I will try to borrow it and extract the firmware from it and flash mine to see if it will make mine work or not. Will keep everyone posted.

 

[enidz]

great !

Also post a picture/reference of it, so I'll try to find the exact same one !

thx

 

[enidz]

thx for the link and the firmwares !

X3 official firmware

so if I flash the GTX 760 X3 firmware you provide onto any of those cards above it should work ?

 

[300wins]

The firmware I posted are for each video card. I suggest to flash them to the correct video card only.

 

[nam9]

Picked up a GTX 760 card to replace my MSI Twin Frozr GTX 660. My X3 unit only has one 6-pin PCIe power lead... the 760 takes 2.

Does the stock Model 407 GPU only have one 6-pin power socket, or does the 407 PSU have 2 6-pin plugs?

 

[300wins]

There's another 6 pin PCIE connector in the X3. Its behind the black plastic... usually taped so it doesn't show.
And the stock model 407 uses 2 of the 6 pin PCIE power connector.

 

[nam9]

Ok! That's good news then... assuming this card flashes correctly.
I've had everything else out, but don't remember the extra 6-pin connector. I'll have to take another look!

 

[nam9]

One step closer. Managed to flash my card to the GTX760 BIOS provided by @300wins.
I picked up a single fan MSI GTX760 card, same as stock - it just has a MIS sticker on the fan.
I had to use the patched version of NVFlash and also the -6 flag to bypass the PCI subsystem ID mismatch:

nvflash64_patched_5.590.0 -6 GTX760-model407.rom

Flashing process ran smoothly after that.

Before & After

 

[300wins]

What are you guys playing that you feel the need to upgrade to i7 and upgrade the video cards to higher res?

I'm just curious, because I don't think these games really push the video hardware that hard, so upgrading from a 660 to a 760 doesn't seem like it would do much.

Or am i mistaken and is there a clear different when playing things with the higher video card? Or is it just one of those things where we upgrade to the better one because we can, even though it makes no difference (guilty as charged)?

When you are talking about not being able to boot, are you trying to boot original games, or other stuff on this hardware?

Just curious that's all.

Also thanks for the video card information! Helpful, as i need to buy a video card for my TTX3

I just like to see what some of the PC type arcade hardware can handle. I've messed with my X2 and Ring Edge also. I also like to replace fans and because the original fans are dirty and jet engine loud.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Found a 760 locally for about 60 AUD, so I thought I'd give it a try...

I can confirm the 3 fan versions of the 760 just physically won't fit without taking out the fan and having it outside.

Not only that, I didn't realise (stupid me didn't check) that the power is only dual 6 pcie not a 6 and an 8 connector, so I purchased a 6 to 8 adapter on ebay.

I tried fitting the card in this aftenoon and umm... lol. Yeah no chance of it fitting!

I might look into the 2 fan versions and see if I can find those for cheap too.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Found a 760 locally for about 60 AUD, so I thought I'd give it a try...

I can confirm the 3 fan versions of the 760 just physically won't fit without taking out the fan and having it outside.

Not only that, I didn't realise (stupid me didn't check) that the power is only dual 6 pcie not a 6 and an 8 connector, so I purchased a 6 to 8 adapter on ebay.

I tried fitting the card in this aftenoon and umm... lol. Yeah no chance of it fitting!

I might look into the 2 fan versions and see if I can find those for cheap too.

Just an FYI - had the same result as Murray. It would boot to the taito screen, would beep and nothing else.

I haven't tried flashing the bios on it though - so I might eventually try that.

I do have an MSI Twin Frozr III 760 coming in the next few days, so I'll also try that.