Need advice for upgrading M15x

hello there,

owner of a M15x laptop bought in early 2010, I plan to upgrade the GPU to a GTX 970m ( still have the stock GTX 260m card).

But before achieving the costly purchase, I got few questions that will undoubtedly get some answers here for sure:

• I only see 970m Clevo card on ebay or marketplaces : will the X bracket and screws from my stocked 260m card fit for a GTX 970m Clevo card ?
• It seems that flashing the Vbios of 970m Clevo card is not necessary, cause it should work with the stock clevo vbios; only modding the inf file is required : can someone confirm that ?
• I got a 9 cells battery which is dead for years (and I don’t intend to get a new one) and a 240W PSU : As I have no need to recharge anything, is it recommended to pull the central pin of the PSU jack connector anyway ?
• what are the best settings for CPU (I7 920XM ordered and on the way) and GPU to avoid throttles, bottleneck effect or heat problem, and have the smoothest experience on AAA games ?

thanks ahead for your good advice.

 

@D2 Ultima

The CPU is too slow for modern applications. I would recommend that you buy a new laptop instead and not waste money on the M15x.

 

Thanks, I already know that but that's not the point.
I just want to make the most of my laptop.

 

The best cards you can get with little bottleneck is the AMD 8970M or AMD HD 7970M

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...s-cards-supported.808305/page-2#post-10591861

here is a link to a post showing how severe the bottlenecks actually are. Sometimes up untl 40% bottleneck on the GTX 970M, no point throwing your money out for it.

 

This was not my experience with 7970M, 8970M, FirePro M6000, FirePro M6100, GTX 970M and Quadro M4000M. I swapped out a GGTX 970M for a Quadro M4000M in my daughter-in-law's M15x. Both my son and his wife were shocked at how much better it ran.

Quadro M4000M was the best card I have ever run in an M15x.

However, the M4000M does run about 30% faster in my M17x R4 with an i7-3720QM.


On the desktop side of things, I have tried a GTX 1080 Ti with an i7-7700K @ 4.8GHz and a Xeon X5660 at 4.3GHz. I lose around 10-15% performance in BF1 with the Xeon X5660. It's not a bad as people claim. Still getting 100 - 135 FPS in BF1 at 1440p with the Ultra preset and that Xeon. The question is should I have spent the money on the i7-7700K setup for an exta 20 FPS? I always go for the best graphics card you can afford. Had a GTX 1070 before I bought the GTX 1080 Ti. Glad I switched.

 

Overclock the hell out of the CPU to reduce the bottleneck. Lots of people manage over 3GHz. You will still get a bottleneck, but it will not really matter as long as you get over 60FPS as you can just use V Sync.

 

Both the CPU's where overclocked as you can see.

 

Thanks all for your feedbacks.

Danishblunt, I'm not fond of FPS games and the videos on your link didn't discourage me to get a 970m card.
But thanks for your warning.

Arrrbol: ok for the OC of CPU

Any answers regarding questions in my first post will be greatly appreciated.

 

those were just examples, RPG games and RTS games will get even heavier bottleneck.

Enjoy, it's not our money anyways

 

Since nobody here really has answered your questions yet, I will:
1. I wouldn't recommend swapping the xbracket and screws over from your 260M, the chances of damaging the new GPU die is too great since the screws and xbracket used are non-standard and were changed from 2011 forward with the M17x R3/M18x R1. I would buy a set of clevo GPU screws and use the stock clevo xbracket to avoid damaging the GPU die. You will have to bust the c-clips retaining the existing heatsink screws on your M15x heatsink. Don't worry, you won't damage the screws and you can reuse them later on the 260m if needed.

2. Mod INF and you're good to go. I recommend flashing the svl7 970M vBIOS since it drops voltage significantly, which helps limit throttling related to power (down from a stock voltage of 1.000V to 0.9500V)

3. Don't pull the center pin on the 240W PSU. just do a hard shutdown, plug in the 240W PSU, disable adapter warnings in the BIOS, and toggle the stealth mode switch on/off/on/off and you should be fine.

4.Avoiding power throttling in the M15x GPU is the main concern here. CPU can draw as much as it likes, but it starts to eat away from the power being supplied to the GPU. For gaming settings on my 920XM I use settings of 24-23-20-20 and I rarely if ever get GPU power throttling. Your mileage may vary, but don't expect to push 26-26-26-26 and expect no throttling.

good luck

 

Late reply but upgrading to a 970m is a lot cheaper than buying some hot running BGA hot plate anyway and the cpu bottleneck while real isn't that much of a big deal and even more so for the desktops of this generation. There are videos of people running these ancient systems with up to 1080Ti at 4k without much of a loss vs newer systems.

 

Thanks Raidriar for the detailed answers.
What is svl7 Vbios ? A modded vbios ? where can I find it ?

 

Going a bit off topic here:

I just noticed what you said about running 24-23-20-20 on the CPU. I will have to try this because I am finding heavy power throttling with the Quadro M4000M. Prema helped me with some VBIOS mods to the M4000M but we discovered that once the modded this causes a no-boot situation. Modded VBIOS does work very well in the M17x R4. I estimate that I am reaching 80-90% of GTX 980M performance with the M4000M.

I never thought about reducing the voltage to limit power throttling on the GPU. Excellent idea!

 

It is a modded VBIOS available over at TechInferno. You need to be a member and have 5 *quality* posts to download (which takes some time) or pay for an elite membership.

Link to membership info. The bottom tier is $6. I think that's a deal in my opinion.
https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...-account-promotion-rules-read-before-posting/

Link to files:
https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/files/file/16-nvidia-gtx-970m-oc-edition-rev0zip/

 

As I already clearified on our conversation per PM, there is no power throttling.

Just writing here so u don't have to anymore

Me and deadsmiley will actually show you, why a GTX 970M in a 1st gen core I7 system is complete nonsense.

Here is a little taste of what we have so far:
Non bottleneck


Bottleneck


So yeah, we are currently doing benchmarks, stay tuned for the rest of the gaming benchmarks. We don't know if it's only DOOM yet. We used the exact same settings etc. A video will come up with side by side comparisons etc.