Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=2954&gid2=617&compare=firepro-m5100-vs-firepro-m5950
Actually, the M5100 greatly outperforms the M5950, I THINK it's the best gpu available for the M4600...still waiting on my m5100.
As stated before, which heat sink do you have? To find out, remove your keyboard and a little sticker might show it on the exposed part of the heat sink, if not, then you have to remove the whole palm rest to find the sticker. Look for either "0p854t", or "06cw3p". Which gpu do you currently have? That will affect which heat sink you have. (And you don't have to open up your computer to find out which gpu you have, just check your "This PC" properties, and go to device manager, under "Display adapters" you'll find your gpu.)

 

It's looking the M5100 is the best of them right now.

 

Currently I have quadro 1000m

 

EgorR, if you take a look at the first post on page 7 you would find answer, but I will quote myself:
"In short for future readers:
Heatsink 0p854t is for amd firepro m5950, m4000 and m5100
Heatsink 06cw3p is for nvidia quadro 2000m.

Which heatsink should be on nvidia quadro 1000m I'm not sure, but on mine it was the same as amd and worked fine."

So giving that I recommend the same thing I've recommended to Chin_Chan_Lee, which he also said on top of this page - take out your keyboard and with a bit of luck you'll see sticker with the model of your heatsink. If not, then palmrest need to be removed to be 100% what heatsink you have, but both our (mine and Chin Chan Lee's) Quadro 1000m came with 0p854t heatsink.

It would be fantastic though, if someone finds even stronger GPU to put in M4600 than AMD's m5100. I don't have access to bunch of MXM 3.0a cards and buying them just for testing is not an option for me though, so I'm ruled out from finding something new.

 

Has anyone tried installing the m2000m on the m4600 yet?

 

Folks,

Brand new here - but I found the forum through this thread.

Have an M4600 with a Quadro 1000m built in. Have an M5100 on hand. Upgraded BIOS to A16 then installed the M5100 - but the system doesn't seem to recognize the new hardware (pic below), and it appears in device manager as a generic VGA device.



The hardware ID in device manager recognizes it as an AMD device but not as an M5100. Hardware ID: VEN_1002&DEV_6821&SUBSYS_04A31028&REV_00 (which is not the same as either the integrated Intel HD 2000 or the original Nvidia Quadro 1000m)

Has anyone here seen this? Do I just install the drivers over it and have a shadow GPU that does the job even if the system doesn't see it?

Thanks!

 

Hello All,

I've upgraded my M4600 with the Fire Pro M5100 a while ago and so far everything seems fine. But shortly I discovered during pure GPU stress testing with Furmark that no fans are starting at all even the GPUreaches high 90s °C. As soon I put some stress to the CPU both fans starts and the GPU is colled down very quickly. Can any other user with the M5100 upgrade test that sceanrio please? For me it seems that the EC (latest official BIOS from Dell) doesn't care or even know the temperature sensors from the GPU or the MXM board at all.

Thanks in advance!

 

So you should be nowhere near 90c. I have the m5100, overclocked by 20% in an m4600. I am using an nvidia heatsink(not an issue) But you need make sure that all the memory chips/shaders/processors on the board are well padded(order thermal pads on amazon if you don't have enough good ones.) and then make sure that the main gpu die is well thermally pasted.(shim with copper shims if necessary.) My m5100 overclocked by 20% ish, at 100% usage, with my i7 2960XM at at near full capacity, at 90 C(which is fine, the 2960xm is good up to 100c.) Under the previous circumstances, my m5100 reaches 72C max, with 'BD PROCHOT' enabled(can be controlled with throttlestop,) the gpu tells my cpu to throttle down to lower temps, once the gpu reaches 78C. I'm not what the actual tdp maxes are, but either way that doesn't add up to me. The reason the performance/temp drops off at a certain threshold is because somewhere there is protections, that throttles down the gpu, or cpu if 'BD PROCHOT' is on, and the gpu reaches a certain temperature. I think you need to reseat your gpu and make sure it is well thermally pasted/padded.

 

Hey t3mulligan,

thanks for the quick reply. The problem is not the fitting of the gpu heatsink. All voltage regulators, VRAM and the DIE itself are properly conneted with thermal pads/paste and cooled down perfect if and only if the fans are activated. The problem is simple that the fans actually won't start if no cpu stress and so no increase for CPU temp occurs and so it is more theoretically possible that the GPU is cooking itself

So it's my guess even the M5100 is working quite good in the M4600 it's not fully supported by BIOS thermal wise.

Edit: During stress testing it takes quite a while till gpu die temp reaches the high 90s but fans never start to kick in while gpu is stressed alone and cpu is idling at 1-5% usage.

 

Max temp I get is 75C with 1.1v but at normal voltage I tend to hang around 70c so you might need to repaste?

 

This thread is great for M4600 owners. Thank you all for keeping it going.

Just like kalzoo, I have an M4600 that came with a Quadro 1000m. Also like kalzoo, I upgraded the BIOS to A16 and installed an AMD M5100. And again like kalzoo, the system recognized it as a generic VGA device.

I downloaded the M5100 driver from the Dell site and installed it manually, and I just want to confirm that everything works great once the driver is installed.

Performance is much improved over the Quadro 1000m. Benchmarking the Quadro 1000m with the Unigine Heaven (Direct3D11, 1920x1080 fullscreen, high quality, tessellation disabled) yielded a pathetic average fps of 3.7 with an overall score of 92. Before any overclocking, the AMD M5100 gave me an average fps of 10.9 and a score of 273 even with more rigorous settings (Direct3D11, 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen, ultra quality, extreme tessellation). Overclocking 10% and 20% increased these values by about 10% and 20% as well.

I am very pleased. Thanks to all for the advice in this thread.