Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

Chin I didn't change heatsink, however I had heatsink of part number 0p854t installed on my quadro 1000m. I'm sure that you need that heatsink for use with and firepro as that one was originally mounted on amd firepro 5950. I'm also sure that Quadro 2000m came with different heatsink of number 06cw3p. I couldn't find any information about what was mounted on Quadro 1000m, but in my case it was the same heatsink as mounted on amd. I haven't had any problems with temperatures when stressing my 1000m card.
I could recommend you taking out keyboard out of m4600 and with a bit of luck you will see sticker on GPU heatsink. That's how I found out my is 0p854t. If you wouldn't see the sticker than you must take out whole palmrest.

In short for future readers:
Heatsink 0p854t is for amd firepro m5950, m4000 and m5100
Heatsink 06cw3p is for nvidia quadro 2000m.

Which heatsink should be on nvidia quadro 1000m I'm not sure, but on mine it was the same as amd and worked fine.

 

How strange that the Quadro 1000m heat sink is a 0p854t, which is compatible with AMDs, but not the Quadro 2000. And yes I just removed my palm rest, and indeed my 1000m uses a 0p854t, so I'm guessing I don't need to buy a different heatsink for the m5100.

 

Well I think it's connected with the size of the die of the graphic card. Quadro 1000M and Firepros have similar size dice (Quadro 1000M - 116mm2, Firepro M5950 - 104mm2, Firepros M4000 and M5100 - 123mm2, but the Quadro 2000M - 238mm2. From what I've read also the heights are different with Quadro 2000M.
Anyway I would recommend you getting some thermopads for the memory dice as those on Quadro 1000M are smaller than on Firepros' and of course some good thermal paste for the core.

I hope to get hold of M5100 in the future, but since M4000 was available quite cheap I thought it's worth it for now. Please share with us here your experiences after installing M5100.

 

I definitely will so that people will be able to refer to this in the future, however it'll be weeks until it arrives from now, so for now I have no information to offer.):

 

Just bought an old used M4600. The seller claims that it is in good condition. I probably will have to buy a new battery for it.Hopefully it was a good deal. I paid (with taxes) $510 CAD, which is about 395 USD, and another 40 CAD for shipping. Specs are:

• 2960XM CPU
• 2000M GPU
• 8GB of DDR3 SODIMM
• 500 GB of HDD
• 1920 x 1080 screen (the seller claims ultra-wide; not sure if he means IPS or not)
• Seller claims it has WIndows 10 Pro (most likely)

Going to have to upgrade the HDD to an SSD and 16Gb of RAM. The big challenge is what GPU to upgrade. If it has an IPS monitor, a decent CPU, 16Gb of RAM, an SSD, and if the GPU is upgradeable, these old laptops should be fairly competitive with modern ones, although the battery life leaves something to be desired.

Prices for the M5100 have gone up as of late - they are around $150 USD.

I had been hoping that the release of Pascal would lead to a lot of people upgrading from Maxwell or GCN, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The M2000M right now is about $350 USD on eBay. It's a Maxwell chip and somewhat faster than the M5100, but not by much. Actually, I'm not even sure it would be much slower for DX12 games, as it would likely be Async compatible, versus the Maxwell chip which won't be.

My wish is that a Polaris 11 chip is competitively priced by AMD, is MXM A, and works with the M4600. Here are the specs:

http://videocardz.com/amd/radeon-m400/radeon-rx-480m

With a 35W TDP, that is very possible. The big problem will be if it is MXM A and if the BIOS will recognize the chip.

Edit: I should also mention that AMD priced the desktop version of Polaris very aggressively in a bid to gain marketshare, so hopefully the mobile versions are as well.

 

A few things that you should be wary of when trying to upgrade the GPU.

* I'm not positive but I think this generation required an NVIDIA GPU if you had an IPS display. You should look into that.
* I haven't heard any success stories of people upgrading this generation (M4600/M6600) to anything newer than the first-generation Kepler cards. Not highly confident that a Maxwell card will work.

It looks like upgrading *any* system to Pascal is not happening for the moment... NVIDIA has decided to change things up too much. (I'm very interested in upgrading my M6700 if someone figures it out, might have to wait for the Quadros to show up for a better chance of success.)

 

Yeah I will have to look into whether or not the IPS display needs an Nvidia GPU. It looks like though it might not be possible because when configuring (at least back when Dell offered the M4600), they demanded that you have to get the Nvidia GPU. That and of course no Optimus because of the 10-bit display.




In the case of the M6700, I can see that Pascal is not upgradeable. Will have to see if anyone has managed to get an M2000M onto their laptop. An upgrade to the GTX 980M is very possible though (with an inf configuration change apparently). But yeah, it looks like you are right - Pascal is not an option. Can the m6700 be used with a IPS + AMD GPU? Could the Firepro M6000 be used with the IPS display?

I'd be interested in snagging a M6700 if that is possible and there are compatible Vega GPUs. A m6700 with a 3940XM can be had for under 1000 USD, although the cost in Canada will be higher due to our taxes, weak dollar, and higher shipping costs. Every now and then, there are also the M6700 Covets that seem to be on the market as well. I'd imagine that a Vega GPU that was underclocked + a M6700 would be a very nice combination indeed and almost as fast as most modern laptops.

 

I believe you can use AMD+IPS in the M6700. (Not completely sure... again you should check yourself.) It also seems to be a little more upgrade friendly, both GeForce 980M and Quadro M5000M are confirmed working, and the Quadro doesn't even need INF tweaking. These were the best laptop cards you could get (aside from the desktop-class GeForce 980-without-"M" which is too large to fit) until Pascal hit the scene.

A major blocker from Pascal is, it no longer supports LVDS displays, eDP is required. (M6700 uses eDP for the IPS display, but other displays use LVDS.) However, if using Optimus, the display connection does not matter as that is handled by the Intel GPU, so it may be possible to upgrade to a Pascal GPU with a LVDS display if you are content having Optimus on all of the time.

Too early to know, and it's still difficult/impossible to find standard sized MXM Pascal cards --- GeForce 1060 is the only one I am aware of but 1070 should technically be possible to produce.

 

Like the other guy said, I highly doubt you'll be able to install a Maxwell onto the m4600, I believe that the AMD Firepro m5100 is one of the best gpus compatible with this model. I myself may look into a used Precision m6600 some time in the future. For now , I'm still waiting on my m5100 gpu. Also make sure you have the right heat sink whenever you decide on which one you want to buy.

 

Hi, friends!
I'm very excited that my old laptop may have been upgraded.

I read all thread and now have questions.
What cards will be work on m4600? Let's make list of it:

Quadro 1000m
Quadro 2000m
AMD FirePro M5950 (best of it?)
AMD FirePro M4000
AMD FirePro M5100
Right? Or maybe we have another options?

And if we changed nvidia card on amd card we need to replace heatsink?