460M VS 660M question!

I have two videocards i am considering buying. I mainly play WoW, some starcraft II, and various other games. My issue as of lately has been specifically WoW for whatever reason though, and my FPS has been steadily dropping in other areas of gaming as well [the plague has reached SCII]. As my Video Card / Processor are the two things that will make the most influencial difference given my current set up I am curious as to what i can buy to attain the best performance for a decently cheap price.

The Two video cards i am looking at are linked below:

660m: NVIDIA GTX 660M (Kepler); 1.0GB DDR5; MXM 3.0b Module - Upgrade Kit | eBay

460m: NEW 1.5GB DDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M; MXM 3.0b; VGA Module | eBay

Anyone who has perhaps used these cards or knows anything of them want to give me a rundown of which i should buy and why? Thanks in advance.

Edit: Also as mentioned i am also slightly curious in a processor upgrade (currently using Intel(r) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q840 @ 1.87GHz 1.86GHz) As a quad core being that most games do not use but two cores i was curious in finding a good reliable dual core (quad core would be fine if said CPU provided adequate performance increase).

------->Thanks again

 

Go for the 660M hands down. It uses the new kepler architecture and is better than the 460M in terms of graphical capability.

Moving on, you could upgrade your processor to 920XM and aggressively overclock it, and it may even reach the performance of a 3610QM or higher tier sandy bridges.

 

Ditto on what onego said, and to add to it, the 660m, with its Kepler architecture (28mm), will run considerably cooler than the 460m will.

As a general rule, newer tech is the best tech to go for.

You may also consider the AMD solutions as well. They run close to those prices, and will deliver similar, if not better performance. Plus, they tend to be easier to get to run smoothly with the M15x.

 

Once again thanks for the speedy reply. As MoP is soon to be released I am pressed to ensure my fps issues are solved once and for all [at least for another year or so ]. I have never really deviated from Nvidia cards to be honest txsizzler, which particular one(s) would you recommend? If I can get equal performance spending possibly less money I'm all ears. That or as you said they run smoothly. I would like to stay in the same price bracket as the 660 if at all possible, I do plan on building a desktop from scratch about a year down the road so whatever I commit to needs to last me at least until then!

Also, how does OC with the 920xm work? As my bios has no unlocked oc option would the addition of the new processor allow this form of OC or would I have to get a 3rd party application? Just curious as I do not have a ton of experience messing with my cpu clocks. I've only ever needed to play aroud wiith the video card clocks to fight a stuitable stable oc and was good to go despite most mmorpgs not being immensely gpu intensive,. The updates to most games now are causing a strain to run at any respectable graphics level.

 

Zarreda, any of the 69xxm (6970m, 6990m) series would be a pretty big step up from the 660m, as would the 79xx series (7950m, 7970m).

If you can, go for a 79xx series card. Runs cooler, and ohhhh so fast!! There is a large thread on here about running the 7970m on the M15x, and lots of threads on the usage of the 6970m/6990m cards.

 

For any pricing info you can send us an e-mail to [email protected] and we'll help you as much as we can, we only recommend the 460m for that platform however some users have successfully installed better cards than that.

 

Sorry to res an old thread, but is a 920XM still a good upgrade for an m15x? I currently am running a 460m with the factory installed i7 processor.

 

Yes 920xm is an excellent upgrade. It allows this aging beast to run a quad core i7 at clock speeds of over 3ghz, a recommended requirement for playing very recent games on high settings. If you also upgrade the GPU to 7970m or gtx 680m you should be able to run all new games on very high settings.

Sent from my One S running 4.4.2

 

Thanks for the reply. Doing some pricing, it looks like I'd be spending somewhere around $700 for the two upgrades. I'd have to balance that vs.upgrading to the latest and greatest Alienware 14 or 17 I guess.

I see you did the upgrade, do you feel like your rig is going to last? Mine is going on 5-6 years old now.

 

To upgrade both CPU and GPU is definitely an expensive business, for what is an aging beast of a laptop. I did this upgrade and have no regrets on spending the money. I love my M15x.
Check out the cooling mod picture in my signature. I'm very happy with the overclocks I run and the 3d mark 11 score (also in signature). If all this sounds good then maybe start looking for the upgrade components. Don't get a gpu lower than 7970M or gtx 680m because imo its not worth it.

If you want things like faster data transfer (native usb 3.0 and sata-III) and faster wifi then it might be worth moving to one of the newer models. However my 4 year old beast can destroy a new AW 14 in games (gtx 765m).
Happy days.

 

I am not one to overclock. Would I still need a special cooling setup? While yours looks good, I game while sitting on the couch with the laptop on my lap. Also, my company picks up the cost if I need a new laptop. Upgrades like this would be out of my pocket.

 

I would suggest a newly announced gigabyte aorus x7 or AW 17 on company money then.

Sent from my One S running 4.4.2