Help needed - GTX675M Upgrade for a MSI 1761 Barebones?

Hi all, I bought a GentechPC MSI 1761 Barebones in October 2011 that came with the Nvidia GTX570M video card. It has been an awesome laptop, but I am starting to get video card envy now that the GTX680M has come out

I have the opportunity to buy a used GTX675M 2gb video card (Part No N13E-GS1) for a reasonable price.

I understand that the GTX675M is essentially a tweaked and rebranded GTX580M (which I know can be installed on some versions of the MSI 1761).

I have had a look at the threads on this forum and could not get a clear answer on the following:

1. am I able to install this video card in my 1761? (I suspect it is physically compatible - but that is never the end of the story...)
2. is my existing motherboard likely to be compatible?
3. will I need to make any physical modifications to get it to fit or work?
4. is there a particular bios that I will need to use, and does it already exist?
5. am I likely to have power issues?

If anyone is able to give advice on this I would be eternally grateful. Please let me know if there any additional information that you would need to be able to help.

Cheers.

Jim

 

Hi Moses,

Glad to see more and more people willing to upgrade their GPU ! Though in your case, I think the benefit from going to 570 to 675m is minimal and even though you get a very good deal for a 675M, you'll still have to sell your 570M afterwards to get some money back!

If I were you, I'd think about upgrading to the HD7970M instead - even though I am a NVIDIA fanboy, the 7970M is amazingly fast and will also fit the MSI 1761 - though with little more modifications on the heatsink.

But to reply your questions:
1. Yes you can install it in your 1761 without any issue.
2. Your MB is def compatible.
3. No you don't need to do any modifications to your heatsink, oh you just need to add one rectangular thermal pad to cover the additional VRAM of the 675m.
4. Not needed.
5. You must have a 180W PSU so you're all set - unless you go crazy with overclocking and overvolting the GPU.

In brief, this is really easy to upgrade to the 675M - a bit tougher to do that with the 7970m but all efforts would be worthy.

 

Thanks Paul1ow!

I can get the GTX675M for about $275 - is it easy to get hold of a 7970M, and how expensive is it?

Cheers.

Jim

PS. I am in Australia, so that greatly hampers my buying options

 

That's a fair price for the GTX675M - you can find 7970M for about 500usd - almost twice the price but performance wise it is worthy.

Though you have to be ready to do the heatsink modifications as advised there: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/659226-7970m-heatsink-modification-5.html
This is the only requirement to fit this great GPU - which also means you need to get hold of the correct 5870M heatsink (there's one in the Marketplace btw)

Good luck! But I wouldn't bother going from 570 to 675 - the former can overclock quite well too!

 

I have been recommending these cards to a number of people:
NVIDIA Quadro 4000M N12E-Q3-A1 2GB GDDR5 QS version | eBay
The Quadro 4000m is essentially a GTX 470m with a 256 bit memory interface instead of only 192 bit. It has huge overclocking potential however, and can beat the performance of a 485m, pretty much matching the performance of a 580m. For only 200$, its a great deal.

Works in my MSI gx640 and its just another gf104 card like the 570m, so it should work just fine. And with your cooling system you will definitely be able to overclock the heck out of it. Additionally, the value is likely to go up (to 350$+) rather than down as GFSI doesn't have a large stock of these cards and they are much rarer than geforce cards.

Send them a message about shipping to Australia - if they wont do it, I will.

 

Thanks Niffcreature.

How will the Quadro 4000m compare with the ATI 7970m?

My issue isn't money, just making sure that my wife doesn't think I have yet another new laptop...

 

My MSI 1761 does not want to run with the quadro 4000m
What do I need to do that would be earned this card on my laptop?

find VBIOS for these cards, I can not. My graphics card is taken from Dell.

 

I never had luck running the quadros in earlier MSI machines, i'm not sure there is much you can do sadly.