17x-R3 460M upgrade possiblities? Newcomer and novice...

Hey all! This is my first post to NBR and I've been reading a lot of the threads over the past couple days before deciding to make my own account.

Like the title says, I have a 17x-R3 AW with a 460m card (not sure how I ended up with this since it seems like most have the 560m, but I got as a gift so I can't complain haha). So, I saw that some have successfully installed the 680m and changed the BIOS to A10. After spending hours looking at how to do this, I realized that 800+ dollars is going to be out of my price range. Now I have been looking for something more reasonably priced that will still give me a huge boot in performance (which I assume would not be that hard since I have the 400 series).

Do all the 17x-r3's come with the same heatsink? Because most of the upgrades I see are "560m to xx" which made me wonder if my 460m would have the same heatsink as those with the 560m.

Could I do a 670m,675m or 675mx with great results? Should I opt for the 7970? I don't even know where to begin my search for a card, alas here I am. I talked to Alienware and was told that they don't "validate" any cards past the 500 series which is BS. I thought I got a computer with awesome upgrade potential (which seems to be true), but it doesn't seem like dell or AW wants anything to do with me. A shame since I'm trying to give them more business.

I just want to run SC2, D3, SimCity, Crysis on close to max settings and I figured this would be a great place to start.

Any advice would be appreciated because although I know the computer basics I am far from an expert on all things computers.

Edit: And why does the 580m cost just as much as the 675m on ebay when it seems like a much more outdated card.

 

The 675M is as fast as the 580M and looking at benchmark tests, they're essentially equal in power. You might be able to plug in a 580M, if you get a dell part I believe. The heat sinks and plates however, could be different so be on the look out.

 

Where can I see how the speeds of these different cards differ? And what am I looking for because all I know is the internal memory of graphics cards 2gb, 4gb etc.. beyond that I'm not sure what to look for.

 

Allright, let's narrow it down a bit.

The current top end notebook cards are the 7970m, and the GTX680m. They are not 'a bit' faster then anything directly under them, they are leagues ahead. If you opt to upgrade, i'd very strongly advise in choosing between one of these cards.
Performance wise they are close to eachother, in one game one is faster, in another game the other is. When seriously overclocked the GTX 680m seems to be a bit more powerfull.

The 7970m is the cheapest of the 2 cards, so the biggest bang for buck. You can get one for around $400. I believe some of the NVidia's you mention which are a LOT slower will also cost you around this figure, maybe a bit less but not much.

The more expensive option (although it's lowering in price a bit) is the GTX 680m.

From both cards there's regularly offered one here on the marketplace, if you ain't sure what to buy, start there and ask advice here

 

The heatsink parts that we handle are different between those 2 cards, if the 680m or 7970m is out of the question then getting the 580m or 675m would be the way to go. 580m has official support so I would say that it would be better.