m17 GPU possibilities

Hi so i bought a bottom of the line m17 -(r1 I am pretty sure) in september 2009, and I only got the single 3870 (even though there is another card in the slave spot). I've browsed ebay and saw that you can get a master for $150 -$200, but there don't seem to be any slaves or even crossfire cables for that matter. After more research I saw that you can put a 4870 or 2 in there but I can;t find those on ebay either. Finally on another forum someone said that the dell version (i believe mine is) can use the nvidia 260m's or 280m's.

So are the 260/280ms viable or should I just hope a slave 3870 with a cable shows up sometime?

PS- If i were to find a cable could I use a second master/maybe even flash its bios to make it a slave?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that there is a possibility of flashing the GPUs to master/slave or single card, it's just a matter of finding the vbios. Maybe someone on the forum will be kind enough and share theirs.

280s have heat issues, though I don't know how bad they are in the m17... maybe try and contact mxm-upgrade and see what they have in stock.

That said, I think that your cheapest option would be to go with the 3870 in crossfire, I don't know what your budget is.

 

the m17 coling system should be able to handle the 280m how ever the bios probably does not handle any nvidia cpu if you get a 3870 you can flash it to slave or master at will you just need the correct vbios

 

any interest in a pair of 4870s master and slave with crossfire cable?

 

4870s do not work in the m17. The m17 has a 2.1 form factor. Now the uber rare 4750 mxm 2.1 will work but those are hard to find.

 

Hey man！ could you help me？ I need your 4850 VBIOS，both Master and Slaver，I will be very thankf if you send them to me！ here is my E-mail [email protected]

 

Since when the 4870 isn't MXM 2.1? The ASUS and Dell ones are and last I checked it's already been done before. Table21 has some very competitive prices on those
http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...-video-cards-mxm-3-0-6990s-mxm-2-1-4870s.html

 

the asus one is but it's a custom reversed format

the dell ones are mxm 3.0

so none of these will fit the m17

I will look if i have them at hand otherwise it will take some tim i just formated my pc clean

 

If that's the case, what are the MXM 2.1 cards that I see in the first picture in my link above?
These aren't 3870 so maybe 4850 but advertised under 4870? They seem like they would fit in the m17. Whatever the case, they still would be a good deal.

 

4750 but that are the inversed asus vesion they would fit but the cooling would not cool the die

 

Excuse my arguing but the cutout is on the exact same side as the 3870s you can see on the internet for the m17 ( Alienware M17 R1 ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB Master Card | eBay) so the GPU will be on the right side when inside the laptop. What you might mistake as the inverted connector is actually the connector of the card underneath.
As far as I can see, the only difference between those cards is the third mosfet is a little more to the right.

Also, I can't seem to find any information about a mobility radeon 4750, at least not on notebookcheck.net. Are you sure it's not 4850?

 

you can just use GPU-Z to save them,anyway,thanks a lot!

 

It is the 4850 he is referring to. The 4850's are the best card you can put in the M17.