M15x and GTX 560M

should work, its all the same drivers and stuff sa to the xplate, I don't know about that

 

Hi, there, I got an Alienware m15x with geforce GTX260M. Now, I want to upgrade to the geforce GTX560M. Is it possible and does the x-plate need to be modified or just plug-and-play. Thanks everyone. I need a confirmation before purchasing the card. One more thing, after upgraded to 560M, do the external monitor ports such as HDMI and Display Port work?

 

plug and play mostly(load driver with modded .inf) .. in any case of x-plate error cause screws fit different, just pop the 560m x-plate/bracket and swap with old 260m

 

Thanks man!! Have one more question, do I need to reapply the thermal paste for the GPU?

 

that would be better yes. also very easy i used the guide of inap. if you need it just write an email to [email protected] i have it forwarded to you

 

Dutchess, Im guessing you play Batman, what else do you play, are you happy with the 560m as your gpu choice. And, what would you recommend now for a guy coming from a 260m, the 560m or the 6970?

 

Depends on what you would spend I guess,, the 560m is an affordable upgrade(with all features of Nvidia chipset- coming from 260m,, both cheaper and 10-15% faster than 460m)
where the 6970m is the better performer but that would cost you more but also lack some Nvidia features.

I haven't tried 6970m but I might in the near future as the price has start to coming down..
Look for example here is where I got my 560m, they also have 6970m :
MXM Video cards, CPU's items in Razors Edge by Eurocom Notebooks store on eBay!

Any modern game goes well on 560m - if not on the maxed settings - than at least at very high..

Yes busy playing Catwoman but I dont mind as I love this character - and the 3D effects of this game are just amazing

 

My eurocom 560m had the same vbios and I just upgraded it with the Dell 70.26.26.00.09. It gave a couple of warnings about the hardware ID being different but still let me complete it. No problems at all and personally I'd swear it's running a whole lot better already and the fan seems less active. Haven't done any testing though.

 

I ordered the card gtx 560m on ebay and when I installed the card, my alienware m15x made 1 long beep and 2 short beeps. The screen totally was black. Have u had any idea?

 

Got my 560m hooked up and everything is great!, just gotta sell my 260m now

 

congrats on the new card

 

Hey guys, so I wonder if the Alienware M15x would recognize a Clevo Geforce GTX 560M? I already tried one from Asus, which didn't work. Thanks

 

They all work, if you read my story right. Its just a matter of putting your id in the drivers .inf file by copy paste

 

Lol, I think you got it wrong man. I mean after I install the card (the Asus GTX 560M), the laptop makes 1 long beep and 2 short beeps indicates something wrong with the graphics. I can't even get into windows or the bios checking screen.

 

Asus doesnt use standart MXM port wirings in their PCB's, they modify connections in order to make it specific for asus computers. Your laptop probably did not recognize the card.

 

Oh, ok man. So how about the Clevo one? Should it work?

 

Not sure about Clevo though should work.

I do know Sager, Eurocom and Alienware use same standard. But when you make a little search on internet you would see that Sager uses Clevo's chassis. So that makes me assume Clevo uses same type of components, like GPU.

 

clevo's stuff usually works, but sometimes there is side effects like needing to do manual fan control etc. that's with the AMD cards though, so nvidia might be a bit different

 

Ok, thank you guys!!

 

Anyone got a confirm on the Clevo Nvidia yet?

 

Guys I've just ordered GTX560 from eurocom. But my question is about thermal pads. Where do I have to put them and what shall be the thickness. I kinda need someone to provide a picture like the one in the attachment for 560M. Thanks in advance.

 

mm thats VERY interesting.

Can you post a screenshot from nvidia inspector that shows the available p states?
I be very interested to see (or hear) what those are...
It shows in the overclocking menu, drop down menu in the top.. Thanks

 

Well.. just make sure you remove any plastics that might be covering the graphics die or its surroundings..
I had similar cases before that was why it beep and not boot then..

Make perfectly sure your die and heatsink are shining like a mirror.. there should be nothing in between.. (except cooling paste)

Use the guide from inap thats what i did.. and dont forget to repaste your GPU

 

You can just re use the old ones. Same goes for the x bracket.. No worriez

All you need is cooling paste(I used artic mx-3) and alcohol to clean the die with.
Use any of the guides i.e. inaps how to do it

 

Guys I`ve just swamped my GTX 260M with 560M from eurocom. Everything seems to work fine.

But, when I was intalling stock thermalpads into the new card, i saw that 560M has ram chips in other side of the card, while 260 did not. So there isnt any cooling for the back side of the card now. Would that be a problem. Did anyone took any precaution for this situation? Let me know,

Thanks in advance

Ps. I`ve attached a picture showing the back side of these two cards.
Top: 260
Bottom: 560


Oh and with furmark my temps hit 85 C... I've never experienced that high with 260m. I've used IC diamond as thermal paste

 

You can put an extra thermal pad there(i did not) Further advise to stick with 3Dmark tests instead of Furmark when benching. 85C is a bit high yes but you are using Furmark. Repaste again if unsure / should be 70-80C max with 3Dmark tests and allday-gaming

 

I just moved the pads around a little bit so they covered everything nicely.

 

Thank you, will try 3dmark

 

Good to know that your laptop recognize the 560M =)

 

Yes were lucky that we have such good hardware.

Cheers everybody into 3d 2012 with alllmighty M15x

 

Well its either I suck at applying thermal paste, or IC diamond doesnt work... I get 86 C while playing L.A noire

EDIT: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY :laugh:

 

I dl L.A Noire just now. some torrent. Will post my experiences soon.

What i read in the games forums it has quite an impact on graphics performance, especially the non-patched torrent version that I have here now

 

could be you didn't tighten down the heat-sink evenly, I've always been told and recommended, tightening the screws in a diagonal formation like an X. half a turn before moving to the next screw, repeat until everything is snug but not to tight. hope this helps you out

 

re: L.A noire after 1,5 hour gameplay 91C. I think I need a repaste realsoon O O

My settings: 1920x1080 120Hz, all nvidia settings to default except stereoscopic 3d@55% as that gives me the nicer 3d effects.

Apart from my 91C the game runs real smooth. its quite fun
Will do a repaste tommorrow

 

Are you running the 3D on an external monitor?

 

Good point Yes forgot to mention, I have it hooked up to the AW2310 when playing games. My built-in is the 1600x900 screen that runs 60Hz (2D) max.
Almost sure this results in higher temps as 560m has to work harder to get the 3D.

For all people with an appetite for benchmarking 560m pls disconnect from any fancy external screens.
Thats how you get high-scores.. the 900p is the best performer.

 

Gentleman,

First off thank you for all the information! You are truly a great help to us m15x owners who never say die!

I have a m15x I bought last year with the following specs, I was wondering if you could help me, sir:

Windows 7 home premium
i7 740-qm @ 1.73
BIOS VERSION A09
GTX 260M
8 GB RAM

I read this entire thread, and am convinced that I want this card. Trouble is, I'm not entirely sure where to get the card (from a reputable dealer). I am going to try calling Dell directly tomorrow. In the meantime, I found this on ebay today: eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices

Before I get the card, just a few questions please.

1) Will this card work for my system?
2) Do I need to do ANYTHING to my bios?
3) I read in this thread that some newer drivers were released, do I still need a certain driver file to make this card work aside from the newest release by nvidia? Do I need to still modify something?
4) I know there are numerous benchmarking statistics, but just a quick overview, what performance gain can I expect upgrading from my 260M?
5) When I actually install the card itself, do I need to remove my old drivers first, install the card, then install the new drivers after it boots to desktop? Is there some other thing I need to know about before I take out my old card?
6) I will watch a tutorial on applying thermal paste/pads later after I get the card.

Again, thank you for the time and help in advance, and congratulations on being one of the first to try this card out! Hopefully I can finally run SWTOR on max settings without absolutely lagging on the imp. fleet and in raids.

Thanks!

 

Hi,

1- I'm not sure. But I bought this one and it works perfectly fine:
NEW 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M MXM 3.0b VGA Module | eBay

2- No, your bios version is fine.

3- You need to modify an inf, I can send it to you no prob.

4- I got around 40%. And ofcourse DX11!

5- Just as you wrote.

6- Just look at your old card before intalling new one. Check which components are covered with thermal pads. Carefully cover the same kind chips on the new card then you'll be ok. Apply some good quality thermal paste thoug, otherwise you might face heat issues.

Also, your heatsink will not fit, screws will be different on the GTX 560. But its easy to solve, just remove the back heatsink from the old one and put it back to the new one. Dont worry it fits perfectly fine.

 

91

So mine is fine hurray

Do you use displayport adapter to connect your monitor? I remember people discussing how to connect 3d monitor to M15x about a year ago, and some told traditional displayport to hdmi adapters doesnt provie enough juice and that you would need some kind of powered adapter or so.

 

91

So mine is fine hurray

Do you use displayport adapter to connect your monitor? I remember people discussing how to connect 3d monitor to M15x about a year ago, and some told traditional displayport to hdmi adapters doesnt provie enough juice and that you would need some kind of powered adapter or so.

 

Yes I use the DisplayPort to DVI-D Dual Link active Adapter, Its doing a great job.

Also just updated my vbios of 560m, the one from Dell posted earlier.
I woke up this morning and told myself JUST DO IT
Update successfull

new vbios is 70.26.36.00.09 --- old vbios was 70.26.29.00.06
Will do some benches when I grab the time

 

Brave move

 

@Djan84,

Thank you for the timely and informative response. I ordered the card you recommended and it should be here in a few days I recon.

Please do send me that modified file, and if you have some spare time a quick walkthrough to make sure I install it correctly:

It's just a modified exe file? Do I run this file stand-alone when I reboot after putting the new card in? Do I need to mess with it?

Also, after I get the card all up and running, as far as future driver updates are concerned, where would I get these? Would I just get new drivers from Dell, and would I have to modify THOSE in the future as well?

Sorry for the newbie questions, I just want to make sure I have all my bases covered so I dont post a frantic "Omg what I do I do it won't work!" thread next week and irritate people.


p.s. If you would be so kind as to recommend a good retailer that sells quality thermal paste/pads I would be much obliged.

 

Hola all new guys I recommend reading this post from page 1..
Its all explained in much detail how to do it and very easy to follow You only need to modify 1 .inf file (very easy with notepad)
All upcoming drivers you can just grab from nvidia website and than just redo the copy-paste-trick again for each driver set.

Any problems just post here - or pm me - and you will be looked after

 

And thank you very much for all the information having just read through the pages, I've ordered the 560M from the ebay shop you recommended. Now... I play the waiting game. Let's hope transatlantic shipping to Denmark won't take forever.

 

laptop2go makes modded drivers so you could just head over there and grab the modded inf there. They usually update the inf 1-2 days after the driver release. the modded.inf always worked on my 460m before Nvidia ended up supporting it. Hope this helps some of you out.

 

For modified inf, just like our friends bigtonyman and dutchess63 said, follow the intructions carefully in this thread. Its not that I wouldnt share the inf with you, but more like what you would do when Nvidia releases a new updated driver. So its better you try and discover yourself. Nevertheless I can upload the whole modified driver to rapidshare if you need it.

I know I shouldnt tell that but I made a bargain and they included free IC diamond into their package for free

 

While I'm waiting for my card I've been reading up on that part, and I'm just trying to make sure that I've got this right:

1) Download the reference driver from nvidia's website
2) Extract the exe file
3) Download the M18x modded inf, and add the device IDs as per instructions on page 2 of this thread
4) Place the modded modded nvdm.inf file into the Display.Driver directory of the extracted driver from nvidia
5) Install
6) ???
7) Profit

There isn't a nvdm.inf file in the Display.Driver directory as it stands right now, but I'm assuming that Windows reads all of the inf-files from the directory you point it to?

 

All GOOd except nr 3. SKIP 3 (you dont need that anymore.. just work with the original driver set okay. to keep it easy really)
Look for the post with RED tekst in it..

Btw any .inf file will do the job... It doesn't matter which one... nvdm= dell thats why we aw freaks use that a lot.
I use nvcv.inf these days as that was designed for my eurocom...

If you do not see nvdm.inf than either you dont have the original driver / or your windows doesnt list all files visible / you enable that in folder-options

 

EDIT: Oh it appears I was a moron and downloaded the driver set intended for stationary graphics cards. My bad

Consider everything past this line redacted:

Hmm - I downloaded 285.62-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-international-whql.exe from nvidia.com, and this is the contents of the extracted exe-file's Display.Driver directory:

Code:

jonas@jonas-m1530 ~/Downloads/285.62-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-international-whql/Display.Driver $ ls -l *.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  57439 Oct 15 10:53 nvae.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  43251 Oct 15 10:53 nvak.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  64796 Oct 15 10:53 NVDD.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas 136750 Oct 15 10:53 nv_disp.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  40232 Oct 15 10:53 nvgd.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  98081 Oct 15 10:53 NVHDC.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  46811 Oct 15 10:53 nvla.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  66103 Oct 15 10:53 NVLE.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  92811 Oct 15 10:53 nvmt.inf
-rw-r--r-- 1 jonas jonas  34625 Oct 15 10:53 nvpg.inf

- no nvdm.inf
Am I supposed to download the driver that Dell distributes from their site?