Upgrading the DGFF GPUs in the Precision 7530 & 7730

In older Precision systems which take MXM cards, it's possible to slap a GeForce in instead of a Quadro as a GPU upgrade, generally for around half of the price comparing equivalent cards. Obviously there are no GeForce cards in this DGFF form factor (the Alienware one being totally different).
Honestly, unless you really need the portability, slapping a desktop GeForce card in a Thunderbolt eGPU enclosure would probably be the most economical way to upgrade the graphics.

 

That would’ve been one good reason for MXM to stick around.

 

Thanks for trying to get us deals regardless of the result. Much appreciated.

 

yeah quadros are just silly priced. Why oh why doesn't someone make a business class laptop with a powerful geforce card, they'd sell a ton of them! Love to have a thinkpad P, Zbook or Precision with at least a 1060 for VR.
I have a Lenovo y7000 and it's great and all but really missing the trackPoint and quality of the business class If u decide to sell the 3200 let me know, I'll sell the Lenovo and grab an integrated intel 7530. Thanks again for this thread!

 

Pretty sure that NVIDIA has a deal that if you call a system a "workstation" then you can't put a GeForce in it, it has to be Quadro. (How else are they going to get people to buy these things ...?)
Are there any systems marketed as "workstations" with GeForce cards?

 

Doubt so—even the new entrants to the workstation market like the Asus StudioBook and the Razer Blade Pro are marketed as workstations and have Quadros.

But then NVIDIA now has 'Studio Drivers', that essentially nullify a large part of the Quadros' benefits over GeForce.

And on the AMD side, one can cross-flash Radeons to Radeon Pros and vice versa with absolutely no ill-effect whatsoever.

 

I know that upgrading existing machines is pretty expensive (this is even true for Geforce cards, a Clevo RTX 2080 MXM module costs around $1500 from RJTech). However I think the price / performance of the Precision vs Alienware is actually very similar. For instance, you can get a Precision 7740 config with 9980hk and RTX 4000 for around $3200. The Area 51m with i9-9900 and RTX 2070 and 3 year warranty costs around $3100, and the m17 with 9980hk and RTX 2080 MQ and 3 year warranty costs around $3500. Sure, you can get a RTX 2070 machine for as little as $1500 if you find a good sale or such, but it likely won't have onsite warranty or as good of build quality.

 

Actually the price you're showing is still cheaper than that $1100 card on ebay. If there is no new low price on ebay in this October, I might consider buying from you.
But actually there is a potentially better option: someone quoting from USA. USA has one of the lowest electronics price in the world, (at least it's lower than Singapore and UK) and I believe that there will be better prices for those cards if one quote from USA.

 

A couple of people have tried this and been told that the Quadro cards are unavailable from Dell's spare parts department. They'll sell you all sorts of random parts but for some reason graphics cards don't seem to be included.

 

That's unfortunate. I may have to wait for a while on ebay, or wait until I go back to China to get a cheap one, which is next March.