Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

Yeah that sounds like the price point for me as well.

 

It looks like the M2000m only has 1 1/3x the performance of the m1000m, despite being around twice as expensive on Ebay. For <$50 more you could get an MXM 3.0A 965m, which is around twice as powerful as the m1000m. Anyone considered doing that upgrade?

(I picked up an m5100 on Ebay, currently waiting until I have the spare time to do the upgrade... $370 is too much for me too.)

 

I had forgotten about the MXM 3.0a 965m to be honest but Id actually go for that option as well.

Those cards tend to have a lot of overclock headroom as well after flashing them...Once I start working again that may be something I pursue (couple of months) unless someone tests it out first.

 

I hate to double post but Taobao has the 965m for about 200 USD after conversion.

How reliable is Taobao?

https://world.taobao.com/item/522982940200.htm#detail

Link to item in case anyone wants to roll the dice

 

Taobao is run by Alibaba, which is pretty big/well known, and it says it has buyer protection, so I'd be inclined to trust it and try it if I hadn't just bought an m5100. Also, there was that K2100m that someone tried further up in the thread that didn't work (googling turns up several similar cases) which means that the m4600 is possibly not compatible with just anything you'll stick in there.

Speaking of the m5100 upgrade I thought I would just reuse the thermal pad from m5950 it came with but it tore coming off so now my m4600 is in parts in a cardboard box under my desk while I wait for new thermal pads to arrive. Fun.

 

Of course, its the same in any laptop really. The m5100 I dont think is officially supported either, at least I dont remember reading about support in the BIOS updates...

 

My point was that because the K2100m is known to be incompatible, it seems more likely that other Nvidia cards are incompatible as well. Therefore, a 965m would probably be a riskier buy than, say, a W5170m.

 

I understand the reasoning, but thats only 1 card, its hard to make that assessment based on that.

For now im still interested in the m2000m or 965m in a future upgrade. The m5100 just isnt enough to keep it going as my daily driver.

 

K folks, I have some news. Some time ago I've purchased M4600 to build slim, cheap and powerful HTPC behind my TV and recently got spare $ to update graphics subsystem. I've ordered m2000m, but the seller sent me m1000m by mistake. But it's not what I want to tell you about. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I've got ME error 207 coz of using non Fermi GPU. m1000m worked under DOS and Ubuntu with noapic option (otherwise there was kernel panic).

After this attempts, I've started to dig deep into sBIOS structure and found that there is a white list for Nvidia GPUs which only allow to run Fermi based Quadros. I'm willing to try doing a sBIOS modification to remove or at least whitelist devices I want to run. Within a month I'll have m2000m and GTX 965m available for testing.

P.S. Yeah, having RX 460 in open sale would be much easier for us to go, but seems like mxm modules available for big orders only. Don't think we can find 10 000 people to make an order
P.S.S. A month ago I've inquired price tag for 10 000 of 1050Ti MXM 3.0a boards and was pretty shocked by the response: $450 for small bunch or test sample and $350 for big bunch... For $450 it's much easier to build miniPCIe/Expresscard slim box with GTX 1060 on board.

 

Wow, that's a lot of news. Hyped to hear about the more powerful GPUs, hoping you'll be successful with the 965m, that would be a real coup. Now I wish I'd held off on buying the m5100, haha. As for the RX 460/1050 Ti probably someone will buy a lot and post them on Taobao/Ebay sometime, right? I guess it would probably be priced even higher to make a profit. I wonder if the 1050 (non-Ti) was cheaper? I assumed that the 1050 and Ti were both soldered-only chips, but I didn't do in-depth research.