Considering M17x R2 CPU upgrade.

I am thinking of upgrading my CPU from a 740QM to a 920XM or 940XM. After seeing the deals on eBay, I have found one 940XM for US$700 with a 7 day refund policy and 1 month warranty as well as finding multiple 920XMs for $420++. I am also considering about ordering from Dell but I do not know the price of it. The 940XM is apparently a "QS model. Quote from eBay page : "This is the QS version, the latest version used for OEMs to test their machines ,virtually identical to the retail version, no performance different
". Should I get the 920 or the 940? From dell or from others? Will the performance diff be massive or just slightly better?

 

920 hands down.

 

From
Dell or from eBay?

 

Ebay. Dell is wayoverpriced. He said 920xm because once you overclock it really isnt that much different. If you dont plan on OC, then consider the 940xm because it is 5-10% better stock.

 

940 is 5% better stock. If you OC 5% some 940s have had trouble (so i have read). I have never heard of a 920xm having problems. 920 is almost half the price. So even at 5% difference..920 hands down.

 

Should I ask Dell to buy for me from EBay or should I buy myself? I tink I'm getting the 940 cos the stock clock speed is faster than the 920.

 

should you ask dell to buy an ES chip for you from ebay? Lol dude are you forreal??

Anyways,, get the 920 from ebay yourself (Dell Sure as hell won't buy it for you LOL) run a little app called ThrottleStop by unclewebb, and you can turn your 920xm into a BEAST. What kind of beast? 3.6ghz on 8 threads kind of beast!

When OC'ing... the 920 and 940 are the same

If you need any help with anything i just mentioned, just ask and ill be glad to help you... sorry but the dell thing made me seriously crack up...

 

Dell is not going to buy you an ES chip. Hell, they aren't going to buy you any chip. Get the 920XM ES from eBay. As previously mentioned, the 920XM can hang with the 940XM no sweat.

 

Changed my mind. A new CPU is too expensive. Should I get a 5870M instead?

LOL changed my mind again. Tink I want to get it but Dell won't help me to do it cos of some reason. S$550 is a good deal for a 920XM though.

 

920xm costs like $400 if you buy international. and dude... dont spam forum if you arent going to do what you say, people here are to help you, do appreciate it, pls

 

I just actually purchased a 920XM that I should have waiting on me once I fly home. I was going for the 940Xm but the difference in price is a bit insane for the marginal gains in speed. I figure if I can get 2.8-3.2gHz out of the 920XM i'll be more than happy and even with only <2.8 it will still blow my 820 out of the water.

As to dell helping you... of course they arent, any aftermarket upgrade you preform is going to be totally out of your time and money. But the machine is a dream to take apart and so long as you take your time you shouldnt have any problems doing the upgrade yourself

(just remember to use a good thermal goop and again take your time)

 

Does anyone have a cloth please? I need to remove the cheeseburger I just splattered all over my screen!

BTW, if he does this upgrade, won't his warranty go out the window?

 

The warranty will still be intact as long as he keeps the original CPU for if and when something goes wrong. So he can put it back in if need be.
Also he must not damage anything else during the installation process of course.

Cheers.

 

I did not catch that... thats pretty funny now that i look at it

The simple answer is "maybe"... it unfortunatly also is the complicated answer.

Technically dell could void your warrenty for any number of reasons that none of us would have the ability to realistically challenge. But I have been told (by AW reps over the phone) and from posts others have said that as well; so long as you dont damage anything during the upgrade that your system warrenty is still valid (they will not however cover the upgrades)

Saying that anything you do after market to your machine you take sole responsibility for so should you ever need your warrenty and they decide that its no longer covered due to an upgrade then you are hosed. But in my experience and alot of others AW/Dell are pretty reasonable and wont just heedlessly void out a warrenty if the upgrade was done correctly and isnt causing a problem (i.e. you upgraded the cpu and the wifi card dies)

So its a bit of a complicated issue at times. And though there might be cases where AW/Dell has voided warrenties for something as simple as a CPU upgrade I cant say I have ever heard of many.

 

I too just bought the 920XM CPU. I was going after the 940XM as well however the price difference is so I went with the 920XM instead. Its a great choice really. I managed to get mine for $375.

I'm running the 920XM on the 5% BIOS OC atm and it is great. I can't wait to put it through its paces and do more OCing when I get more time.
Can't wait to try out Bulletstorm and Crysis 2 as well.

High 5 for the 920XM!!!



Cheers.

 

Just throwing this in there: the 5% CPU OC in the BIOS is only as good as the OS is freshly opened. What I mean is that if you put your computer to 'sleep', the 5% CPU OC is gone until the next reboot. The 5% CPU BIOS OC sticks if you use 'hibernate'. This has always been there since the first released BIOS from DELL.

 

I run stock in the bios and OC with throttlestop... Much more stable and allows for a much higher OC. why settle for 5% when u can achieve 100%! lol

 

you've ran your 920XM at 4gHz? did reality itself catch on fire around it
Thats pretty amazing though that CPU has some serious overhead then.

 

Well wtv 3.6ghz on all 4 cores/8threads simultaneously is ... Lol

Stock the 920xm does:

1 core @ 3.2
2 cores @ 3.06
3 cores @ 2.26
And 4 cores at 2.0

So that would mean 160% would it not? With 4 cores active..Lol

I managed to run it ... Overclocked to:

1 core @ 3.724
2 cores @ 3.724
3 cores @ 3.591
4 cores @ 3.591

.... So yea ... That's some serious headroom!

 

so you can run wprime 1.55 at these clocks right here?

 

2.0 GHz to 3.6 GHz is an 80% increase when all 8 threads are loaded.
That may not be 160% but it's still very impressive.

 

are you using stock voltage?

 

LOLLLL... ya 80%...my bad... started to get ahead of myself there...

yup all stock. check your PM

 

> wprime at 95tdp was around 8.4 secs, oc 920xm
> i think stock the 920xm is 12ish
> my i7 970 (which ever one is 2.8Ghz) is 9. something

so the 920xm is def good when throttle stop is running

 

My wPrime32m 1.55 got 7.561secs TDP 90w 26xmulti can prob push more

 

all this talk of numbers got me excited..ordered my 920xm from ebay tonight as well..can't wait to take the machine apart, do the cooling mods and put new CPU in!

 

What speed is your processor running at to get those times. Also theres no way that OC would work for the extended test your temps would shoot through the roof right?

 

since we're talkin numbers ....

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/alienware-m17x/61943d1298631133-official-all-powerful-m17xr2-edition-owners-lounge-part-3-test2.jpg
CPU is OEM from dell. first test temp not very high 72c will upload 7.5 test tonight

 

What TDP Watts/Amps did you run @ to get 6.995 ?

 

How are you guys keeping your temps so low. if I run throttle stop at 90/85 and multiplyers at 27,27,26,26 I'm hitting close to a 100 degrees and then getting thermal throttling. I also changed the thermal paste out which is a little bit beeter now thne when it was with the stock thermal paste

 

lol I havn't even had a chance to replace heat compound yet on Gpu's/CPU mines completely untouched from the factory.

 

well its only running for 6-7 secs so its not so bad...

for everyday use i keep 28-28-27-26 and it runs cool... crysis gets it to like 75ish? the cpu is so quick its never 100%loaded.... so usually its around 40-50*C honestly....

 

Just got my offer accepted today, cant wait to get mine in! The 5% OC, which I was able to achieve with my modded bios, made such a change in performance with my 720qm. It really was the selling point for me... I cant even imagine the difference the 920 will make straight out, not to mention with a 10% in the V2 Bios (hopefully)!

 

Nice one! Mind telling us what kind of deal you got? Curiosity and all that...

 

Who are you guys buying your 920XM ES from on eBay?

 

Just bought mine,

I7 920xm KING!! on ebay, paid £250inc express delivery. Are there any guides to swapping out the processor?

Im using an i7 740q at the moment so expecting a nice boost for my M17x r2, should see a nice improvement on FPS with the crossfire 5870's being cpu intensive

 

Nice, make sure you have some thermal paste and some stuff for cleaning the old paste around (e.g. isopropyl alcohol).

Here you can find the service manual, that should provide all the necessary information.

 

Many thanks for the svI7

Will take a look through that this evening.

 

Hi there, first post in these forums, looking for a bit of advice

I've got an M17x R2, and I'm looking at upgrading the CPU from the current Dual-Core i7 620m (2.66GHz) to a new i7 920XM or 940XM. I had a few questions I was hoping for help with:

1. Is it worth upgrading at all?
The 620m isn't exactly sluggish but with 2 ATi 5870s its definitely bottlenecking the system at the moment. Would I see a worthwhile improvement with an Extreme i7?

2. What's the performance difference between the 920XM/940XM?
There's a £60 price difference - is the 940XM worth the extra money?

3. Should I buy an ES over an OEM processor?
There's some ES 920s and 940s on ebay for a good price, but I saw a video here Alienware M17X R2 CPU upgrade from i5 Dual Core to i7 Quad Core engineering sample - YouTube where someone said that they got an ES i7 and it couldn't control the fan speed in their M17x, so they had to re-install their old processor. Has anyone else had that problem?

SYSTEM SPECS:
Alienware M17xR2, i7 620M CPU, 2x ATi 5870 Xfire, 4GB DDR3, Kingston HyperX SSD 120GB, Win 7 Home Prem 64bit.

 

1) Yes the 620M is definitely your bottleneck. You could consider a 820 or 840QM, they can be had for like 200 while 920XM still hovers around 300. 940XM is still around 400 USD...not really worth the bump IMO.
2) See #1
3) Don't have an ES CPU, but I can tell you under light load the fan sounds like a jet engine. I can't comment on ES, but usually it is best to avoid them, sometimes temperature diode doesn't work or other features are not working as it is an Engineering Sample. Try to look for QS or retail/OEM.

 

Thanks to the mod(s) for moving my questions to a more relevant thread

Are you sure I shouldn't get an ES 920XM? It seems like a few others here have bought them with good results... An OEM one will cost me like $500 more, I can't even find a seller based in the U.K :S You mentioned a QS, would that be a better bet than an ES? Thanks for the word on the 940XM, consensus seems to be that the extra 5% isn't worth the money, especially once you OC.

One other question - once I upgrade the processor, do you think its worth moving from 4GB to 8GB of RAM? I read that returns on RAM upgrades are minimal.

EDIT: Read about QS CPUs and rephrased

EDIT 2: So I've done some reading (courtesy of Soviet Sunrise)...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...4&postcount=29
http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...7&postcount=32
...and they seem to say that an ES chip may be unreliable if its from an early batch of chips, potentially suffering from potential issues such as temperature sensor failures, which might explain the fan control issues that guy in the video I linked earlier had. Soviet Sunrise also said that a QS chip is identical to an OEM chip, so I should go for a QS chip from eBay. Is that all correct?

 

Yes QS are much closer to retail/OEM release. Our workplace got QS i3/i5 chips for 1156 launch and QS i5/i7 chips for Sandy Bridge launch.

You are rolling the dice with ES chips. Some eBay sellers are shady, I would buy only from a seller that has alot of feedback.

As for the RAM, I would say it all depends on your situation, but given how cheap a 8 GB kit of DDR3 is, why not? You can get it for like 30 USD for a 8 GB kit.

My RAM usage isn't normal, I normally have 12+ Firefox tabs open which puts me around 2-3 GB on idle. Playing SC2 or TF2 can easily skyrocket me past 4-5 GB. I'm thinking about doing 2 x 8 GB sticks for 16. I once measured, Flash player, 15 FF tabs, SC2 and TF2 all open at once, I was using 13.5 GB RAM.

 

I've found LaptopMonkey on eBay, they are selling QS 920XMs from inside the U.K for under £200, I think I'll go for that once I'm back into positive equity next week then hit up the OCing guides

Well I thought "why not" myself on the RAM, but then I also thought maybe its so cheap because its basically useless? I tend to be very kind to my laptop and close all programs when I start a game, save maybe a single walkthough in a browser. Any reccomendations on brand for RAM chips?

I'll report back with how it goes once I've got the new CPU - Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it

12+ tabs is a truly heroic amount of browsing; have you tried Chrome?

Oh also, silicone or metal thermal grease?

 

@OWSucks: I bought my 920XM from Shirleys on eBay but I was also looking at LaptopMonkey as well and they look like a great seller. I went with Shirleys purely because it was a bit cheaper. Both sellers have great feedback and you'd be fine purchasing from either.

Mine is a QS and perfoms perfectly. You'll be very impressed with the upgrade to the XM.

 

Thanks mate, I had a look at Shirley's, might stick with LaptopMonkey because I heard they have super-fast delivery times. It looks like once I've got the 920XM we'll have pretty much identical systems, excepting the RAM. Have you seen a benefit from 8GB over 4GB, or have you always had 8?

 

Got mine from laptop monkey. Paid at 1pm, it was delivered at 8am next day. Good communication too. Amazing seller.

The 940 chip I got is brilliant, no problems whatsoever. Go for it!

 

I've got my 920xm from Laptopmonkey, i definetly recomend them. Got it shipped via DHL up to Mexico. for Thermal paste i use mx-4 on my cpu and gpu.

As far as ram brand is concerned, well buy the cheapest you can find, besides benchmark you wont notice the difference

 

Sorry, ripped out the 4GB and replaced it with 8GB before I even turned it on

I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make in day to day usage but it would definitely help in photo and video editing and other intensive programs. My next upgrade will be 16GB...

 

Cool stuff, what type of RAM did you get? I'm snouting around now, looks like I need to get 2x4GB SODIMM DDR3-1333 and to hell with the manufacturer.