R3 Geforce Gt 540m

I'm not sure if its a glitch on the Dell's order site, but i been through the order process on Dells website and it's stating the Nvidia graphic card is 2GB?

Is this possible for the R3?

 

if you order the core i5 its a 1GB 540m, if you order the core i7 you get the 2GB variant. Just more VRAM, nothing else changes, I doubt the extra ram will increase FPS in any significant way. (More ram only useful with texture heavy games - which you only get with max details on - which you cant do with the dinky M11x cause its too slow)

Many many many ppl fall into the trap of rating a graphics card by its RAM amount: "oh but it has X GB of RAM" is what I hear from my friends all the time - It has ABSOLUTELY NILL effect how much ram you have above 1GB if your actual processor is ! Be more worried about what GPU it is rather than how much ram it comes with.

 

The GT540 is a decent GPU but it'll never make use of 2GB ram using the M11x's own LCD. Get the extra GB if you're planning to play at resolutions above 1920x1080 on an external monitor, not worth the FPS tradeoff anyway imo.

 

I have just checked, The GT530M on the M11x can come with the upgraded 2GB RAM, Do you know what the noticable differences between the 1GB and the 2GB are? according to you Bendak there aren't any?

 

No there aren't any. By the time the 540M needs more then 1GB of VRAM, the settings required would make the game unplayable anyway. The extra VRAM doesn't look like it could benefit a 6950 at 2560x1600 so I doubt it will help the 540M at all, being much slower then a desktop 6950 and running at a slower speed (6950 is 256bit GDDR5, 540M is 128bit GDDR3, 8x faster clock for clock). It's all for show.

 

is it possible to take the i5 model and just replace the CPU with the i7 and still get the 1gb 540m?

 

Practically, no. It's already too much work and money (you'll to find a laptop with the CPU, not available separately) to acquire a SB ULV CPU let alone reballing the BGA package in a rework station.

It's only theoretically possible at best.

 

Not to mention the fact that you can't just buy any core i7 - its gotta be supported by the bios and the M11x R3 bios will only support those two CPUs. How great would it be if the CPU wasnt soldered onto the mobo!

 

The BIOS can be modded to add support for other CPUs. I know it supports 3 CPUs- the 2517M, 2617M and the 2657M for the non existent R3 review unit. Sourcing the CPU isn't hard if you throw lots of money at it. Swapping it is an expert's job though. The CPU is soldered onto the board to save height ironically.

 

Good news..... this morning I logged into "My Order Status" at Dell's website and the order details from my recent M11x R3 purchase has been updated to include the new NV GF GT540 w/2.0GB VRAM video card. So it was a typo.

 

Like the person said above its because you got the max i7 prcoessor

 

Sorry, I may have posted my comment on a wrong topic.
There was concern from some Canadian shoppers whether the M11x R3 was going to be shipped with the new Nvidia 540M video card because on the website a non-existant Nvidia 430M card was being offered. Even some US customers were saying the 430M was appearing on their invoices. All I was trying to say is Dell revised my invoice this morning to reflect that it was a typo and Canadian customers can be rest assured they will be getting the 540M.
Cheers!!!!

 

2GB VRAM? Pure garbage, 1GB is perfect for 2011-2014. 2GB is over-kill. To compare it's like having 12GB RAM.

 

Yup, when I got my confirmation email it was "NV GF GT430M w/2.0GB VRAM". Now that I checked my details on the dell website it shows "NV GF GT540 w/2.0GB VRAM".

 

You should think about i5 or i7. And 2 or 1 gb is just additional thing.

 

Would the extra RAM help in things such as video encoding?

Have a Magical Day

 

No. Video encoding is normally handled by the CPU - hence normal RAM would be used. Even in cases where you use CUDA or ATI Stream to do the video encoding the additional RAM isn't useful.