M6600 ATI to Nvidia swap possible to get Optimus?

Where I work, we purchased 3 M6600 laptops in the past year all with ATI graphics. There were ordered without the knowledge of the battery life advantage you get with the Nvidia Optimus compatible options.
Apparently the M6600 and M4600 use MXM based cards which should allow upgrades.
Is it possible to install an Nvidia card to gain Optimus support?
If so does it have to be a card specifically for the M6600?
The main goal of the upgrade would be extended battery life.

 

Yes, if you install an NVIDIA graphics card you will be able to use Optimus. Any standard MXM card should work. (Best if you choose a card that is actually sold with the machine, but many people have reported success with other cards.) You may need a new "X brace" piece of the heatsink, NVIDIA and ATI use a slightly different one.

 

The card must be a MXM 3.0b card, But a 3.0a may work also, it is just shorter, but I think it has the same mount holes. There are plenty of nvidia 3.0b cards out there so you will be fine, stick with that. Also make sure the card comes wth the X shaped mount support. The one off your M8900 card may not fit right.

Remove the ATI drivers first, then swap the card. You'll need new thermal paste. One thing I noticed is the M8900 card doesnt have memory chips on the bottom of the card. I notice from pictures some of the Nvidia cards do have some on the backside. I'm not sure if those chips would need to be cooled with thermal pads or not. I would get some more oinions. The 4000m has chips on the bottom also, not sure if it has thermal pads for them. Someone else will know.

 

Wow, good information. Is ebay the best source of MXM cards or is there a good online store to buy from?

 

Another quick question:
I'm thinking of purchasing a Quadro 1000m (pulled from a M4600), will this work for my purposes in a M6600?
I understand I just need the GPU and the X-brace, the existing M6600 heat sink and fan should function fine?

To clarify the comments above, I always thought Optimus laptops had some extra hardware, it seems like all M6600 must use the same mainboard despite the GPU if it is possible to swap the GPU to get Optimus. Has anyone heard of anyone else doing the swap succesfully?

Here is the Nvidia white paper on Optimus: http://www.nvidia.com/object/LO_optimus_whitepapers.html

 

Yes, there have been reports of success — swapping an AMD card for an NVIDIA card will enable the Optimus functionality. You may have to enable it in the BIOS setup utility after the swap (the option will be hidden altogether until you install the NVIDIA card), but that's all there is to it.

(As for your proposed swap — I don't know if that will work, installing an MXM 3.0a card in a MXM 3.0b slot, I don't specifically remember reading that anyone has tried that before. Seems like it should work if everything is physically compatible. Maybe someone else can provide more details.)

 

http://www.mxm-sig.org/file.cfm?doc=36A88883-DFFA-E3E6-16C301BCF5633572
This document says 3.0b slots can accept 3.0a cards but not vice versa. It's a good read.
I ordered the Quadro 1000m for NBR classifieds.

 

I have a 3000m quadro for sale really cheap if anyone is interested.

Dell Nvidia Quadro 3000M Laptop Graphics Video Card RDJT7 7CD45 07CD45 | eBay