From 860m to 880m

Greetings guys, actually i have a Aw 17 R1 with 860m. I’ve read about upgrading to 9xxM series, but I have in mind to upgrade to a 880m. Yes I know 980m is better, but I think with 880m I don’t have to do anything about drivers and so on, cause 860m and 880m are same family. Is it correct? Is it just a “Plug and Play” from 860m to 880m?

 

I wouldn't really do that unless the price on the 880m is really good. Last time I checked the 880ms cost much more than the 970m and the 970m is better. Go with a 980m if you can, even if you need modded drivers or something its really not that hard. I would wait until an Alienware guy responds though. I've just done similar with an MSI laptop, and the 980m was so much better than my 880m.

 

You're right Galm, but i wanna know if switch from 860m to 880m is just a Plug and Play without modding any drivers.

 

Yes its a easy swap I did a recent upgrade from a GTX 860M to the GTX 880M I uninstalled my NVIDIA drivers first before inserting the GTX 880M then reinstall drivers

Dont forget the GPU 3 pipe 100 watt HEATSINK 0YP26V Alienware 17 Ranger

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-ALIENW...491839?hash=item3d1e02993f:g:vxUAAOSwMNxXXYtq


Good Thermal paste GELID Solutions GC-Extreme Thermal Compound
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835426020

 

will that fir the M17x R4?

 

I would strongly warn against 880m. A known problem graphics card(heat/throttling/can't hold boost). If you want plug and play... Select rather the much better 780m. You can run higher clock speed than 880m and at a lower temperature. Lots of info about the problem card 880m in this and other forum!!

 

780M is not produced anymore, it was impossible to get in Europe when I was trying to buy it. 880M or 980M only.

 

I find the 780m on Eurocom site.

 

And pay in the euro, great.

 

Ask @woodzstack If he can help you!! Regardless. Rather pay more for a functioning graphics!!
Also follow the marketplace in the forum.

 

I have a SINGLE 880M left. It is SORT of new, as in I made a mistake and sent 2 of them to a client with a M18X-R1 (just human and made a mistake here) thinking they were supported in SLI, it was just soo long since I dealt with the 880M I totally forgot. So, naturally one of them was returned, and is in limbo either waiting for a buyer or destruction.. I never sell them like this, normally, but this is the LAST 880M I'm going to have. I'm not buying more. It's in great shape, and I can sell it to you for the cost it cost me. It will be 8GB and have very high ASIC quality and will worth fantastic in the AW17 and I can walk you through all of it, if you need the assistance in plugging it in and so forth.

@Flaick

Also thanks @Papusan

 

He needs the 3 pipes heatsink as well. Hope you can offer this to I know you offer quality + support so this wasn't difficult

 

I will have to source the heatsink, but I can do it. I only have ones for the M17X-R4 left ATM. Only adds about a day to the wait, no worries.

 

Noooo don't go for the Kepler !!!
Maxwell got released Kepler got gimped and less optimizations and now Pascal is here , Even maxwell will suffer the fate of Kepler sooner or later this is Nvidia's strategy, better to get Maxwell since the perf bonus is quite good and reliable working with the 970M / 980M (Without any throttle on the Ranger). If you still prefer kepler then don't go for the 880M you need background knowledge of the 880M (vBIOSes , etc. GodlikeRu knows about 880M more but I'd stay away from that GPU even If I have to use the HD4600) else you can't tame it, Huge mistake you are making here @Flaick, I know you want to skip the hassle but It's easy. Think it over again.

 

What do you mean for "background knowledge"? I need lot of informations to keep 880m works fine?

 

I guess so, wait until pascal cards are released, the maxwell mxm price will drop then get one.

 

dont think maxwell laptop cards will decrease price anytime soon , pascal is not guaranteed to work on old laptops, gtx 980m will be the best upgrade possible on eol machines if they change the mxm form factor, if pascal cards are 100w and remain mxm 3.0-b there may be a chance of working on previous gen. i still have hopes for pascal since tdp is lower than maxwell.

 

The MSI 1070 is the only hope rest all cards from Clevo even the 1060 needs a power connector, also new news is there is no support for LVDS LCD screens of 90% of machines which doesn't have the eDP, But you could have posted this in the pascal thread...

 

MXM slot can support a really high amount of power to the GPU if motherboard is good. 980Ms pull a lot of more power than MXM standard allows but they still work in AW18 and M18xR2.

So if MSI will release normal MXM without additional power connector then there's only UEFI compatibillity check introduced in Maxwell cards that blocks M18xR1.

 

Jeesh guys, I own an 880M and it's not THAT bad. Mostly just a disappointment. But remember that 780M was not spectacular when it was first released.

I would do a 860M to 880M swap in a heartbeat if the price was right. Of course 970M and 980M are much better choices. Heck 970M is probably less expensive than 880M.

Sent from my overpriced Galaxy S6 Edge +

 

880 is not that bad below 93 degrees , it performs very well , but unfortunately i could not get this card to work below that so i upgraded to a 970m, also gt60 cooling system is mediocre at best , is not enough to keep this card cool when gaming , and yeah gtx 860m to gtx 880m is a huge performance boost, if you find one cheap it is worth it, but i would not pay more than 350.00 for one, now that i have experienced first hand the gtx 880m and 780m i rather keep the second one, it is way cooler and has more fps consistency, beyond that a 970m is definitively the sweet spot for a mobile gpu

 

Yes, the trick to getting the 880M to run is to keep it below 80C. I was able to get my GTX 880M to 1193 core clock. THAT took a lot of work.

Edit:
Just to clarify, I only got it to complete Firestrike once at 1193 without throttling and it was getting as hot as 92C. 93C is the thermal limit where it instantly throttles to save the GPU.