Dell Precision M4800 - Can GPU be upgraded?

Many thanks to EnglishSkylarking for pointing out the dell deprecated drivers.

M4800 IPS edp successfully upgraded to WX4150 (new dell pull). My goal was a simple upgrade with no changes to inf and not having to try to install unsigned driver signature on Windows 10, plus card was only $130. Display resolution is 1920x1080.

1) I made no changes to bios and don't even know bios version
2) After swapping out NVIDIA K1100M laptop booted to unknown hardware for display adapter and plug and play was useless. I did use .8mm shim based on another thread.
3) Latest Dell WX4150 driver blew up on installation so I used current AMD Radeon Pro WX Series driver which worked great (first reboot) but HDMI didn't work. I don't need HDMI but I am obsessive compulsive when it comes to technology and really wanted this to work as it should.
4) After some searching and stumbling on this thread I rolled back current and pure AMD drivers to older dell proprietary drivers per EnglishSkylarking and HDMI now works fine (second reboot)

Userbenchmark GPU comes in at a "25" and while not great is tied for 13th for all M4800 scans so not bad. I bought this as a 2nd kitchen laptop for homework and minimal games for kids and have less than $400 in it. Fortnite on K1100M was 50-60fps and a little stumbly at times and is now a nice and smooth 180-220fps with GPU temperature no greater than 60 Celsius and fans not even ramping up.

Fan and switchable graphics work fine and nothing wrong with the laptop & GPU marriage that I can see.

 

Awesome! The variation in M4800's and AMD gpu functionality/bugs is curious to me, but I'm glad it worked out. Did you experience any screen freezing on the 18Q4 drivers from AMD before you went with the old Dell driver?

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FYI to anyone with display problems with AMD cards: with the old Dell driver linked a couple pages ago, I've been experiencing occasional screen flickering, like the backlight is being sporadically switched on and off. This happens only sometimes after boot and is 100% fixable by closing the lid and reopening to power cycle the display.

I've noticed that sometimes the GPU fan speed seems to be tied to the CPU fan or temp sensor rather than the GPU temp sensor. If I run FurMark it'll get up to 90°c and clock throttle before the system begrudgingly boosts both fans up to about 50% max speed despite the CPU remaining relatively close to idle. Games tend not to get the GPU this hot, and the CPU is doing more work, too, so the fan(s) spin faster because of that, but I also know independent fan control wasn't a problem with the M5100 or K1100M. Any ideas?

 

There was no perceptual difference between 18Q4 AMD drivers and older Dell driver other than HDMI gave a black screen with no audio on 18Q4AMD WX Pro Series. I never saw any screen flicker or strange behavior (unknown drivers) from any system. GPU UserBenchmark now comes in between 24-25 whereas on latest AMD drivers benchmark was slightly above 25 but there is no change in user experience in what is possibly a 1-4% decrease.

After an extended period of hitting GPU hard (don't have any real metrics), card temperature has peaked out at 70°c though fan is only slightly idling and no where near maxed out. I am sure it helps I just cleaned out fans and heat sinks. I didn't remount CPU and heat sink though to do it right, I probably should have when I had case cracked open.

I based build off another thread where builder tried 3 different shims with .8mm giving best results. I really couldn't tell if a shim was needed or not and just went with .8mm shim based on recommendation.

I stated my monitor resolution incorrectly earlier. I am using an IPS 1920x1200 and unsure if your build is the same as mine. Let me know if you want bios version.

 

So all new MXM graphic cards work in M4800..

Are there any other upcoming quadro, firepro MXM series that will fit M4800?

 

a few pages back, someone was considering upgrading with Quadro M2200. Did anyone upgrade to that card and if you did, can you please provide me with your vbios from GPU-Z?

 

Sadly, he's not replying to PM or the thread. I take it he's very happy and busy with the machine!

I don't have an access to another mxm machine, so I need to be sure I can properly flash m2200 regardless of its initial status in my m4800/4k.

Good luck!

 

@mikhailk "Regardless of its initial status" - usually an external monitor would do the job even if the laptop screen does not fire up with the new video card. This is in fact my current situation - my Zbook display does not light up, but it does show picture on the external monitor.

 

I'm sorry guys, I totally forgot about the thread. I will try to provide all the the information and previously requested details later on.

 

So i bought a m2000m card fro my m4800 and i am just figured out that it comes from a HP.......

1)So far i have managed to install manually a driver using an original inf but if i try to update or mess with it it revert to a Microsoft display adapter with a dysfunction icon.


2) tried to nvflash my hp 82.07.9C.00.01 m2000m bios to dell 82.07.8F.00.1B m2000m bios through windows with no success it just can not find any nVidia adapter....
.

any ideas???

 

Just took the plunge and ordered an AMD WX 4150 & some 0.8mm copper shims from eBay for my M4800 eDP, solely based on information collected from this thread and a few others. I have a FirePro M5100 in my machine right now. Are there any difficulties I can expect? HDMI/ VGA out issues? I have the 4K panel. I already performed an upgrade from K2100M to the FirePro M5100 on this machine so I am relatively familiar with the actual hardware swap process.