Dell Precision M4800 - Can GPU be upgraded?

looks good congrats, what was the damage?

just want to add that Quadro Nvidia K1100 Heatsink is going to be prefect fit also since central die of that card is similar height to WX4150, but best be safe than sorry! innit?

 

Darn! I saw a post saying that, but also a conflicting one that just said general NVIDIA heatsinks were a no-go, it was only $5 .

I originally bought 16gb of ram from someone for $30 who then brought this unit out. He thought it was completely dead and knew the keyboard connector was broke since he screwed it up taking out the keyboard, so he offered it to me for just $80. Well, after plugging it in while holding the power and fixing the keyboard pin on the motherboard, it all just works. I threw the ram in here and the specs are as follows:
-i7-4800mq
-FHD display
-2x8gb + 1x4gb (20gb)
-K1100m
-no hdd
-6 cell battery (80%)

Upgrades:
-64gb Linux SSD
-256gb mSATA (on order)
-HP WX 4150 (on order)
-KJ321 Slice battery (on order)

With all the upgrades I'd be at $250 - which seems to be a great deal. I am jumping from my ThinkPad X220, so apart from battery life, it's been a huge upgrade in performance overall. (Hopefully Windows will have better battery life)

 

Hi! Dont forget cheap CH341 programmer and AT0W10060AL heatsink for GPU upgrade.
And I recommend you to read my post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/11037313/

 

I was looking at this exact post as reference, thanks for the quality info on it. I already have a CH341 programmer, hopefully it still works. I have also ordered the heatsink, but as Tyrell mentioned, it may already fit from my K1100m

 

That's a good deal in my book! I myself ended up hunting and buying cheap spares on bay, and eventually ending up with enough to fully assemble one unit!

at first I bought a replacement screen assembly (IPS) for 50 bucks, and chassis with dead board intact came along with it, so then I bought "dead board" that actually came alive! (sound board was bad missing USB)

few words regarding slice and max runtime, I have observed 6+ hours using 9+9cell slice that I also own, but this is using switcheroo graphics.

from what I see on on your previous post image, you are on LVDS unit judging by TN bluish tint.

hybrid will kick in when needed, but what I did not investigate further due to lack of knowledge and need so far is that WX4150 only works in reduced power mode unlike original NVIDIA K2100 that can be forced to work @100%

but Ironically lowest power mode on WX4150 is Equal in graphics power to K2100m @100%, comparatively speaking,

WX4150 does around 550pts in time-spy and K2100m does 529pts! so no loss at all only less power consumed. I did not find an easy way to force it into 50% or 100% on battery.

I would appreciate if you could also let me know how reprogramming went.

 

I will definitely post back here with my results, and hopefully not for help! Does the WX4150 work 100% on power, or is it just on the battery as you had mentioned?

The battery life is somewhat expected, there is a lot more going on with this laptop compared to my little X220.

Note to anyone on buying the WX4150 through the eBay seller, I got it for $60 so keep that in mind if you are making an offer.

 

P.S. I have modded vBIOS with stable work of WX4150 on 1050 Mhz + Undervolting.
Feel free to ask any other questions in future! =)

 

cool, yes when plugged in or on the dock with 180-240w adapter its maxing out at 100%, recent score was about

1650pts on time spy total, with 4900qm chip,
and 1250pts with i5 chip 3.8ghz forgot its name.

(correction) this (1250) score is for "2GB variant" of the same card" I've overlooked dedicated number of GB in GPUZ because bandwidth and transistor count were the same. it shares up to 8GB unlike 4GB variant shares up to 16GB

 

So, unfortunately, I will need some help if possible - board came in today but I can't seem to make good contact with the BIOS chip from the clip.

Just to verify - this is the chip in question, correct?

 

So, I got upset because I wasn't having any luck but I remember someone on a Discord im with mentioned their Dell workstation laptop took the HP WX 4150 without issue. I decided to just see what will happen, if I would get the same results. On installation, the card didn't report in bios but detects perfectly fine in both Windows and Linux without any issue (Windows required driver installation before detection). I ran heaven for a few seconds and can confirm that the card is being utilized.

To be clear, I did not flash the bios of this HP unit. This works, for me, straight out of the box. I will put the laptop back together and provide more information later tonight.






EDIT: After putting it back together, everything functioned but the GPU fan turned on much later than I'd want, sometimes turning on when the 4150 downclocked itself from heat. I found @Aaron44126 s post on DellFanCmd, which has been a great utility to control the GPU and CPU fan on the M4800 - it works wonderfully! I am currently using it with Speedfan and haven't had any issues temp wise, though I wish it had more than 3 fan options.

Big shoutout for this guide, it is the best way to control fans via software on the M4800: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ual-custom-control-of-the-laptop-fans.827106/

In terms of performance, it is a huge improvement from the K1100m, I am nearly able to play all my games at 1080p medium settings compared to the K1100m at 720p low. To give you an idea, I ran a before and after of heavens benchmark.