Can I upgrade my 680M to a 780M card in my GT70????

Hi fellow laptop enthusiasts, just a quick question. I want to upgrade my gpu to a 780m. I have the 2012 GT70 680m barebone laptop with the ivy bridge board. I have seen plenty of clevo, alienware / dell cards I can get m hands on. will these work?

thanks guys.

 

With a .10p or .30p system bios yes. Not worth it though.

 

why do you say that?

 

20 - 30% better performance - not a too good idea; better to wait the next generation. At least I do expect at least 50% or bigger step to upgrade.

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M is rebranded GTX 780M that was rebranded GTX 680M

First of all, GTX 880M will not be using Maxwell architecture. There is no shocker here. Mobile series have their year-to-year cycle, which is dictated by the partnership with notebook manufacturers. They simply need new graphics cards every year. What is shocking though is that NVIDIA won’t be using GK110 with this one. I think it’s because Kepler GK110 is possibly too powerful for a laptop, at least in terms of battery usage, NVIDIA decided to use GK104 (yet again) for their mobile flagship. What does it mean exactly? It means that NVIDIA will using the same GPU continuously for three series:

GeForce GTX 680MX
GeForce GTX 780M
GeForce GTX 880M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M is rebranded GTX 780M, has 8GB memory | VideoCardz.com

 

780M was not technically a rebrand, it had faster vram and more cores enabled.

The 680M with tweaking can get to stock 780m levels easily and beyond.

 

Can I not tweak the 780m and get even more power though?

 

You'd be paying almost a thousand dollars for very minimal performance gains.

Here's a comparison of the 780M vs other graphics cards.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+780M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB Fastest GPU in The World | eBay

The cost of purchasing a stand-alone 780M is almost the cost of a flagship GTX 780 Ti, the fastest video card for a desktop.

http://products.ncix.com/detail/evg...-dp-sli-ready-graphics-card-29-91735-1226.htm

If you have that much cash to burn, you might as well sell your current GT70 and buy a new GT70 with a 780M

 

A little, about 10-15% since they reach similar clock speeds.

 

I can sell my card for £400 roughly then buy a 780m for around £550 so it Will only cost me £150 at the end of it all.

Is it worth the extra performance for only £150?

 

Well is it? Do you struggle now? Is it worth the work?

 

I'll be honest there is a few games I could do with having just that bit extra power and if the 780 is say 30%-40% more power then I'm sure that's going to cure it.

 

Better to tweak your current card. At stock it's 10-20%.

 

Ok the only problem I have with overclocking my card at the moment is my power supply isn't man enough.

 

I'd be skeptical about selling your GTX 680M. Is there a big market for last-gen cards priced at £400 made specifically for MSi GT laptops?

 

Well looking at completed listings On eBay yes. Can this card not be used in alienware or clevo machines?

 

If your psu struggles with the 680m it won't enjoy the 780m which draws more anyway. What symptoms have you had?

 

When I use msi afterburner to overclock the gpu I get very bad throttling. Iv tried using throttle stop but no fix sadly.

 

Your current setup from CPU + GPU alone is already 145W so it should have some room there.
There was an EC release from the MSI forum for the retail boxed units but not barebone units so you can't really use it because it will brick your system.

 

The modded vbios wouldn't brick it would it?

 

Which modded VBIOS did you use?

 

I havnt as of yet but I'm planning to use the one that svl7 has created.

 

Seeing how it's a barebones machine...I don't know.

 

Well I guess there's only one way to find out.

 

Ok so I can trade in my card and get a second hand 780m for £120. By the time I overclock it I must be able to get some amazing power from it compared to my 680m. It's a clevo card so would I just need to flash my laptop with a clevo 780m vbios.

 

Let us know how it goes. If you don't reply for a week, we'll assume you've bricked your system xD.

 

In that case we'll be glad to welcome you to the magnificent, hair-pulling, nerve breaking and sweat inducing world of modding. Have a nice stay
Oh and I forgot cash burning
I would save up for a next-gen notebook or if the difference in performance is really big. In the past I went from a 570m to a 7970m and that's a really big jump and totally worth it. 680m to 780m? Nah I'll pass. It's your choise

 

Iv been looking into the card and at standard clocks you get around 15-20 fps more and that's before overclocking. But if the 880m is going to be say 30 fps more then it is worth waiting for it your right. If I do brick the laptop then surely I just need to install the old card and install the original vbios.

 

Vbios is on the graphics card not the laptop itself. The clevo card has a chance of working out of the box. The 680m heat sink might work with no modding.

If the card isn't recognized then it's a vbios or motherboard compatibility issue and that could be solved with a motherboard bios.

But don't flash the card or laptop with anything until oh try plug and play first. You might get lucky!

 

Ok talon thanks for the advice. Would you say this is a good move?

 

Well since some games don't okay nice with overclocks I'd say just go for it. If you can afford it and dump your old card for a decent price then is do it.

I went from a 7970m which is no slouch to my 780m and definitely saw a nice increase.

Option 2 is to wait for the 880m or whatever newest gen card they release. Those might also work well.

 

880M seems to be not too amazing - just higher clocked version of 780M, +100 MHz about. But max 8 GB memory support.

 

When will we be seeing the 880m?

 

Perhaps February? (Clevo)

 

I'm not sure what to do now. I get a 780 which is 30% better than my 680 or a 880 which is 40% better than my 680 but it will be costing me like £300 to upgrade instead of £150 for the 780.

 

From your signature, it looks like you went from a GX660 to a GT60-2OD rather than a component upgrade from 7970M to 780M. The nice increase you saw was also partly due to the new CPU going from a 920MX to a 4900MQ.

 

Yer that's very true hazrD.

 

After the next gen cards are released, will it be possible to upgrade a 770m to an 880M on an MSI GT series laptop?

 

Yer that's true hazrD. But the gpu is the main part to play with games now, the cpu he had was more than powerful enough for today's games as its no different to today's newest cpu's when it comes down to a single task like a game and ram is no longer an issue in computers these days so the change his seen has probably all been down to gpu.

 

Yes. You will be able to keep upgrading until they choose to change the board or a component that these motherboards won't be able to support.

 

870M and 880M are coming based off the same Kepler chip GK104.
Compatibility usually isn't an issue with MSI products, but heatsink can be since the design/placement of components on each card varies from one to another.

 

Sod it I'll wait for the 880m it has a nice gain over the 680m And it would be well worth the upgrade. Also it uses 20w less power so it should run well in the laptop.

 

The 880M will perform almost identically to the 780M. You are much better off tweaking the 680M though since it can achieve similar levels of performance at the same power level (the 780M and 880M use more power).

 

Ok I'll give it a go I'm just a bit weary of bricking my laptop and not being able to get it working agen. Or is that not the case with the vbios only the main board bios.

 

I don't know what you have bricked but with the vbios there are very clear instructions over at tech inferno.

 

I havnt bricked anything just worried incase I do.

 

You are more likely to brick it by opening up the machine and handling the parts.

 

Really i'v never had any issues like that with changing hardware before.

 

And i never had issues flashing firmware (which was not me testing something unknown) but issues happen in both cases.

 

Hey Guys

would an Nvidia GTX 880m be compatible with an MSI GT70?