M6800 Precision - Tesla M6 & Firepro 6100M - Working/updated/switchable graphics

7970m likely pulls ahead to I would imagine at wider memory bus where as the m6100 is a more lean running scenario.

Not sure, if the trend continues then by that logic the w7170m would work but back in the day the card was quite expensive to attempt a trial run, maybe other forums or some of those chinese forums might have tried it but I just dont have any personal recollection of it. It all comes down to whos willing to roll the dice.

By the time the card became more economical I had already moved on from the M6600 so naturally I had no reason to follow up since that motivation was no longer present.

 

Right! Well they are far under 200 bucks apiece now, so I might pick one up and see. But I don't know, I just don't want to jump ship from the M6600 yet if I don't have to. The whole reason I still have it is because I bumped the CPU up, ram up, and GPU up, and its still somewhat capable to do some light gaming. The upgradeability is great, so I want to get all the info I can and upgrade it more if economically possible. That's why I was asking Keep Guessing about the Tesla M6, because an 8gb card for 100 bucks, even one that takes tinkering and driver-meddling, would be a great boost.

 

Options on the table are always welcomed

 

Like I said, nvidia is a no go with M6600. Of course, you can use older cards, but if you try something maxwell related (Tesla M6 is maxwell) or even some Kepler cards, you'll have a BSOD on Windows start. Considering that works at all, of course.

Even with newer Precisions, seems like Tesla M6 needs to have a specific vbios version. The same this one has: NVidia Tesla M6 8GB GPU Video Card 808409-001 806127-001 GM204-995-A1 805132-B21 | eBay . I bought a different one and it doesn't work at all. Of course, card could be faulty, but I can't just know for sure and the only ones that I'm seeing working all have this vbios version.

 

Well, I ordered it. I guess I'll see if it boots and displays, should be interesting. If not, I always have 30 days to send it back!

 

8970M works just fine in the M6600, heres mine

 

I can tell you qith 100% certainty that the 7970m is not behind the M6100. My upgrade was a bit different as i have the m290x which is a 4gb version of the 7970m but it is a good 10-20% faster than my old m6100. If you get an 8970m/m290x from an alienware with the 4GB Vram (mines green PCB Alienware pull) the biggest advantage is that you wont end up with stuttering in games due to running out of Vram. The m6100 suffers a lot these days because of its limited VRAM and not its shader performance.

That all said my testing with Monster Hunter World showed the 8970m/M290x pushing 60fps @ 720p medium settings vs my m6100 barely managing 40fps 720p minumum settings but YMMV

 

Its likely has more to do with the wider memory bus as I believe its 256 vs 128.

W7170m would be a healthy bump over that as well...

 

Bus Width doesnt make a huge difference on the lower end and Sub 1080p resolutions (which is all these are going to do today). 256 vs 128bit bus wont make or break you like VRAM and other parts will these days at similar shader performance. The 7970m has more TMUs, L2, ROPs, and while it has 40% more shaders the m6100 can be clocked 40%+ higher so the main difference comes down to texture performance on the 7970m along with more L2 and ROPs with the 8970m having the additional larger VRAM.

 

It did for me with my 755m's back in the day, but perhaps your workloads differ from my own.