M17x R2 Most modern graphics cards supported?

I am trying to determine if this machine is capable of properly running the 970M or preferably the 980M and if it can't what is the top Nvidia card that would work? Has anyone been able to get the mxm gtx 1060 working let alone with the rgp panel?

Just trying to find the sweet spot and make this machine last a couple of years once I buy one.

 

Been looking into this myself. The fastest confirmed card i know that works is the Radeon M290X (or 8970m). There are some Dell M390Xs for sale so i'm wondering weather to give that a try since the newer AMD cards have no LVDS support.

I believe a few people tried to get the 970M and 980M working, but they had issues with inverted colours. Perhaps it could be fixed with a modded vBIOS or modded driver, but i'm not sure if anyone is willing to do that.

The 1060 would be interesting, as far as i'm aware nobody has tried it. I do not think it has LVDS support though(although i could be wrong).

I'd recommend following this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-hopeful-of-keeping-mxm-3-0b-alive-thread.795048/page-167

King of Interns is looking into getting the E9550 MXM cards with LVDS support, which could be promising.

 

the GTX 1060 is not happening since the card doesn't support LVDS.

I don't think a GTX 970M or GTX 980M is worth it, your CPU will bottleneck in most games anyways, I'd shoot for a HD 7970M instead if I were you, also buy liquid metal thermal compound to keep the card cool if you want it to live long. The card is cheap, still pretty powerful and works with your AW.

 

I can live with cpu bottlenecks so that isn't a big deal to me until it is wimpy single and dual cores, the only problem I have with the 7970m is the 2GB vram but it is certainly top of my list at this time but I want more. The quadro M4000M has my interest if it doesn't have the inverted color issue.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the HD 7970M/HD 8970M is pretty much all you can get in terms of performance, everything past the HD 7970M/HD 8970M will be bottlenecked to around 7970M/HD 8970M performance and that's when I'm assuming you have a high clocked 920XM in that case. 2GB Vram isn't that bad, only very few games would need more than 2GB anyways, if it's bothering you that much, then you could go for HD 8970M instead, it has 4GB vram, which should be plenty.

 

Depends on the game. Something CPU intensive will not run as well, but something GPU intensive could still see large improvements over those cards.

Unless the crossfire drivers for the 7970M are any good, I would suggest going for a single card setup. I currently have 5870 crossfire and although it will run most of my games at 60fps, they are buggy as hell. Either it won't work at all, will crash the game or it will introduce some random graphics bugs like flashing shadows et cetera. Of course, this is not the fault of the GPUs, its the fault of lazy developers who will not add proper support for crossfire or SLI.

 

Ohhhh I have quite some questions for you. I was always interesting in knowing how a HD 5870 setup will do these days, Pm incoming ;3.

It's not smart to buy a card based on that tho, I mean if it throttles on 70% of the titles, then why bother anyways? instead save the money and go for something way more balanced like the 8970M.

 

Danishblunt, you need to lay off the blunts. The 920XM/940XM is capable of feeding my 970M just fine, it does NOT bottleneck them, though it is getting close to that point. A desktop 920 (tops out a 2.98ghz) still doesn't bottleneck a gtx 1070. a 920XM has been shown to run 3.3ghz reliably.

That being said, I think the best possible cards are the GTX 680M in SLI or the 7970M. The Maxwell cards are not supported in RGBLED M17x R2 systems due to color depth problems. I'm sure pascal would be more of the same, and they don't even support LVDS connections. Later kepler cards had some IRQs conflicts with the M17x R2 that did not allow them to post (780M and 880M will not work)

I don't recommend the W7170M/R9 M295x/M390X because of how hot they run. 680M runs the coolest of the bunch, 7970M runs cooler than the W7170M.

 

Only reason i'm considering the W7170M/M390X and the M290X is because they are single cards. I've got 5870 crossfire in mine at the moment and the performance is pretty good considering the age, however crossfire is rather buggy and does not have good support in certain games. There is also the issue of the 7970M having a less than stellar production quality leading to failures - I would be quite wary of buying one used because of that. There is also the fact that the M290X and M390X support DX12.

As you say, the heat is an issue with AMD cards. The 7970M has the same TDP as the W7170M so in theory they should be quite similar (although lets remember the 7170M is going to have lower GPU usage in games as its a faster card). Some people have modded the M18X 100W heat sink into the M17X by cutting away some material from the fins, perhaps I should consider trying that before i upgrade to something that high powered.

 

Thanks this was what I needed.

 

I would try to find later production examples of the 7970M from Dell, (usually those with the 022 vBIOS sticker on the back are later production cards)

TDP is just a general guideline. 680M and 7970M have the same TDP, yet the 680M tends to run cooler under the same given load. tonga core (which the w7170m is based off) ran hotter than tahiti (7970m based of desktop 7870), so I would hold off on more heat especially in the m17x since the cooling was originally designed for 50-75W cards instead of 100-120W cards

 

Go ahead, prove it. You have a 920xm + GTX 970M setup, which means you can run games like rise of the tomb raider, ashes of singularity, GTA 5, Crysis 3 and witcher 3. I'd want to see you play one or more of those games with afterburner and show your FPS.

Oh you want a post that can help delude you with non factual crap. Sure let me help you.
[delusion]
The 920XM and 940XM are the pinncale of CPU's, it's a masterpiece, it won't bottleneck anything, it will even run with a GTX 1080TI and other high end GPU's for years to come. It's so powerful that one of these is 10000% faster than the best supercomputer on the planet.[/delusion]

So for those tho don't want to delude themselves and are legit interested in buying the best they can get.

[Fact]
The GTX 970M gets bottlenecked by the 920XM or 940XM, in some games more than others. The CPU is simply way to outdated and cannot handle many games. It's not only about the clock, but also cache, architecture etc.

Here are some practical examples:
(1080p starts at 5:20min)
Battlefield 4, high settings, 1080p
gtx 970M, 940XM 3.5ghz
min FPS: 47
Avg FPS: 58
Max FPS: 72

Sadly there is no Battlefield 4 video where people only play on high settings, everyone plays on ultra. And notebookreview only did high settings BF4 on 736p. So I'll take ultra settings to get my point acress:

Battlefield 4, ultra, 1080p
GTX 970m, i7-4710HQ:
min FPS: 55
avg FPS: 62
Max FPS: 80 (I won't count the FPS boost to 90s when looking up in the sky)
(Sidenote, this was recorded with Fraps, unlike the other and still outperformed)


Battlefield 1 Medium 1080p
920xm @ 3.2ghz, GTX 970m
Min FPS: 52
avg FPS 55
max FPS: 61

High settings:
min FPS: 44
avg FPS: 51
max FPS: 60


Battleifled 1 Medium 1080p
6700HQ, GTX 970m
min FPS: 64
avg FPS: 72
max FPS: 78 (again, i will exclude map view that gives 90s FPS)

Battlefield 1 High 1080p:
min fps: 59
avg fps: 64
max FPS: 81 (again, exclude looking at sky or map) [/Fact]

As you can clearly see, some people here are simply deluded and dislike looking at reality. OP can waste his money on a GTX 970M, I don't care, but I do care when people are misleading honest people who really want to know what the actual max non bottlenecked upgrade is.

Also:

Even the sandybridge is bottlenecking the GTX 1070. You should stop smoking, get back to reality.

 

920XM is not a masterpiece by any means, don't get me wrong, its old and inefficient and hot. If you read what I said, I stated that it will run up to a 1070 without bottlenecking and the effects start to be felt with a 1080. I don't own any of those games, but I ran a quick benchmark
http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/4824055

and you can see my 970M performs near the top of its class in a given number off samples (in the 90th percentile of all 970Ms), not taking into account other 970Ms may be overclocked. Point is, the 970M runs perfectly fun with a moderately overclocked 920XM

 

Are you trolling me? I even showed you a video where a 2700K is serverely bottlenecking a GTX 1070 and you claim a 920 won't bottleneck a GTX 1070.

You clearly don't know what bottleneck means nor do you know any way of checking it. I literally cannot believe you're completely ignoring all the facts I presented and then make a random GPU only benchmark saying that your GPU is not bottlenecked. Of course the GPU doesn't get bottlenecked by a benchmark that doesn't test both GPU and CPUat the same time, duh.

You need to run a benchmark that stresses the GPU and CPU at the same time. How in the world is a CPU going to bottleneck a GPU in a GPU only test, that's plain ridiculous. You have to run a game that stresses your CPU and graphiccard at the same time, like the titles I asked you to benchmark. I showed perfect examples of Battlefield 4 and the new Battlefield one, where you can CLEARLY see severe bottleneck in performance caused by the CPU.

You have to be insanely ignorant to keep on saying that the 920XM doesn't bottleneck the GTX 970M despite having the facts right in front of your nose in a video format showing you the difference.

 

There will always be a bottleneck. One component will always hold back another. Even a 7700K clocked to 5GHz will bottleneck a 1070 in certain situations.

The people on this board are not smoking anything. I am pretty sure they know that when it comes to the M15x, the 1st Gen i7 is the weakest link even when overclocked. I know this, @Raidriar knows this. We know this. However, to say someone should pick a lesser card because the 920XM will bottleneck is not a good recommendation. Yes, GTX 970M will be bottlenecked in some games. Even so, it will vastly outperform just about anything else you can stuff in it. Bottleneck does not mean that once a certain level of performance is reached that it goes no further. In my experience it simply means that overall performance will be reduced across the board.

One of the videos you picked has a user named "Marc m". He has another video showing the M15x with a GTX 970M messing over a 2015 AW 15 with an i5 and GTX 675M. I think that a 2015 machine with an i7 and GTX 970M would be much more fair of a test, but this is what he had. The upgraded M15x is still cheaper than the 2015 AW 15 by a LOT.


In 2017 I would probably not buy an M15x and upgrade it unless it was just for a fun hobby. They are cool machines, but know their limitations.

 

It will get bottlenecked in almost all AAA games. Paying around 150USD more for a card to get in very few games slightly more FPS is plain dumb. On games like GTA 5, witcher 3, ashes of singularity etc the performance will be much worse and even throttle on a HD 8970M. Battlefield one is one of the best optimized games out there, and if you see a bottleneck there, other games will get far far far worse. I can tell that you do not play modern games on your M15x since you're not aware of the bottlenecks.

Let's do an experiment, since you seem open minded, I got a GTX 970M on my P157SM with a 4940MX, you can get a GTX 970M or even use the Quadro M4000M, I'll then overclock my GTX 970M to GTX 980M performance, we can run various games to get a nice sample.

EDIT: NVM, if you want to test the M4000M, I got an MSI notebook with a GTX 980M stock clocked, so we can use that one.

Once you see how much more my system outperforms yours you won't ever recommend a GTX 970M over an AMD HD 8970M ever again,

Also the video about the GTX 970M vs GTX 965M is not relevant, since synthethic benchmarks gives a very poor understanding on actual performance. it also mostly tests the GPU only, instead of a real combined setup, which you will see once we do the comparisons on several games.

 

Would be interesting to see this done to show the effects of CPU bottlenecking.

 

The Quadro M4000M is almost the same as a GTX 970M. The differences are 970M has 6GB VRAM with a 192 bit memory bus where the M4000M has 4GB VRAM with a 256 bit memory bus. Overclocking the memory on M4000M yields no gains. M4000M core clock is slightly higher with 975 versus 924 MHz for 970M but the Boost speed is lower at 1013 versus 1038 MHz. The biggest limitation to both of these cards is the low power limits in the VBIOS. Fix that and they really fly.

Of course your system will outperform my M15x with the same video card. I already know that my M17x R4 with 3720QM is about 20% faster than the M15x with 920XM and the M4000M. I have done this comparison already not just in Firestrike but the games I play.

I also know that a 8970M in either of these laptops is simply disappointing compared to the M4000M. This is based my experience in actual use of both cards in M15x and M17x R4.

As far as testing goes, MechWarrior Online (Cryengine) and early versions of ARK are probably the toughest games I have run on the M15x. I have Witcher 3 but don't play it. I recently started playing PUBG, but not on the M15x. My M4000M that is in my M17x R4 will not run in the M15x because the VBIOS has been modded. I get a no boot situation when installed in the M15x. Flashing back to stock VBIOS does not fix this. My daughter-in-law has the only M4000M in M15x available to me.

I too am after accurate information. It is true that most of the games I play are not AAA titles as I usually wait for them to go on sale through Steam which takes a while.

 

for some reason I thought it was a M5000M, kinda get confused with those Quadro cards. They seem obsolete anyways. What modern games do you have right now? We can do exact test GTX 970M vs M4000M, you'll see that the difference in some games are up until 40%

 

We would need something that pushes both the CPU and GPU. I am open to purchasing something for testing purposes. Suggestions?

 

Just tell me what you already got, maybe you already have a game that pushes both pretty good.

Most known titles that do that already are:
- gta 5
- witcher 3
- ashes of singularity
- rise of the tomb raider
- project cars
- crysis 3
- Total War: Attila
- Far cry 4
- Shadows of mordor


We could also go for something like the Prey demo, which is for free, I don't know if it's CPU heavy or not but it's free and we could already have 1 game as example, we should both record with MSI afterburner for the clockspeed etc. We could also use Dota 2 as a benchmark, which is free to play.

EDIT:
List of free games and Demos:
- Dota 2
- Prey Demo
- The Division Demo
- DOOM demo
- DIshonered 2 Demo
- Mafia 3 Demo

 

These are the games I have currently.

- Witcher 3
- Metro 2033 Redux
- Metro: Last Light Redux
- PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
- MechWarrior Online
- Far Cry 3
- D00m 2016

On my wish list, which means if I am going to spend money on it I want to spend it on these games:
- Far Cry 4
- Star Citizen
- GTA V
- Space Engineers (can be setup to to take a machine to it's knees)
- Dying Light



I will pickup my Daughter-in-law's M15x with 940XM, 16GB, 500GB EVO 850, M4000M tomorrow night. Will not be doing any testing until maybe Sunday night as I have a very full weekend.

 

Not familiar with many up to date games. I've heard Rise of the Tomb Raider is really tough on old hardware though.

Metro: Last Light Redux is extremely GPU demanding, but i'm not sure about the CPU (although i'd guess its intensive on that too).

 

I just tried 980 on mine, the Laptop won't even recognize the graphics card. Not showin on BIOS. Already tried the Legacy from UIEF setting

 

Huh

 

You need to use a Quadro Mx000M series card if you want to use Maxwell in a M17x R2 as the only the Quadro cards are enabled to run the sort of screens this laptop uses. The normal cards work just fine in the M15x.

 

Not true, only the M1000M will work. M2000M and higher give color inversion for whatever reason

 

Thank you for correcting me, I have to wonder why the higher end cards have this problem.

 

Not a problem with the cards themselves, but the way the BIOS attempts to interface with some maxwell cores

 

Breathing some life in this dormant thread.......so all I do is play WOW and am looking to get my crossfire 5870 / 920M rig up and running to play battle for azeroth and I'd like to dual monitor / 2 account play. WOW no longer supports sli / xfire due to dx12 and is apparently CPU single core friendly so my 920m should be fine. I'm not that computer savy but could certainly get the old graphics cards out and a new one in. I'm just looking for the easiest plug and play route to go with a single GPU replacement. Your input greatly appreciated.

Edit.... I've been reading so apparently a mobility radeon 8970M clevo is what I'm looking to purchase. Are there any cheaper alternatives that what Ebay is showing ?? $260+ usd and up to the mid 300's

 

cheaper no. The AMD card is the absolute king of price / performance ratio. You can see if you can get a cheap GTX 680M/780M/880M/970M, which are around the same performance, usually more expensive but who knows, maybe you're lucky. A GTX 675MX is also acceptable.

 

I’ll sell you a 680M for 200$ shipped, should be more than enough for your needs and less power hungry. You will need hwinfo to control your fan speeds though

 

@deadsmiley

I have just installed the Quadro M4000M in my Dell Precision M6700 and I see that you have some experience with this card. I am trying to get some performance gains and would like you help if at all possible.

 

I tryed a GTX 965 and just got blank screen. Anyone know how to get it to work?

 

Maxwell GPUs will not work on the M17X R2, they are incompatible with the display. You 'might' be able to get it to work with the right vBIOS and the CCFL display, but it is not worth the effort trying.

 

I was just asking cause of others talking in this thread about getting 970 980 and 1060 working. When I can't get my 770 or 965 to work. Thought as much, thanks for the reply

 

Sucks really, the 980M would have been a nice upgrade as it is in the M15X. As it stands I think 8970M crossfire is the best you can do in the M17X R2, either that or a 680M. I ran a single 680M in mine for a while, which performed pretty well. Temps were pretty good too, only issue with it was there was no native fan control so you had to use HWInfo to force it. I think the Clevo 8970Ms have native fan control, but the Dell ones do not if memory serves me.

 

I have tried before with CCFL display, it made no difference as the BIOS VIDEO module in the M17x R1 and M17x R2 are incompatible with Gen 2 Maxwell cards (GM2xx cores, not GM1xx)

GTX 770M + anything higher has problems with M17x R2 due to audio IRQ conflicts. Best card will always be Clevo 8970M since it offers native fan control and good performance.

 

I am currently in a process of upgrading an M17XR2. Right now I'm waiting for arrival of 1920x1200 screen (CCFL), and thus the questions begin:
1. What actually are the odds of an M4000M running in it? I've read about the Maxwell GPUs behaving oddly around this PC, but maybe some fiddling can let it run?
2. Would a pair of GTX 860M or 765M in SLI work and perform well in this beast?

 

1. You wasted money on the CCFL panel, it is junk compared to RGBLED
2. M4000M will work, with external display only. Forget it on internal display, it will never work
3. Neither 860M nor 765M work in M17x R2, their onboard audio has IRQ conflicts with onboard M17x R2 audio card. Disable audio at expense of using those graphics cards.

 

Just use a either a GCN era card or a Kepler based Quadro as they are the only cards that are going to work with minimal to no effort especially if you are using win10. The M4000m is more suitable for the M15X for which it does work pretty well for most titles. Should have bought the RGB screen as they are nice even when compared to more modern screens.

 

I'll see what can be arranged, the CCFL 1920x1200 was about 30 bucks with free shipping.
M15X I've already maxed out, works like a charm with M4000M.
So far I was only able to acquire an SLI cable for this model, still seeking the Xfire, they are hard to come by in my country, and getting allegedly new one from China just doesn't seem to be cost effective. Thus looking into GTX options, but somewhere recommended 680M is nowhere to be found or with prices from around their premiere date.
Got two 5870Ms, but, as mentioned above, no Xfire.

 

Some good news and some bad news, the good is the crossfire editions of the Firepro M6100 having working fan control however my machine may either have a defect or some conflict where the second card can't properly be initialized despite being a good card. So if someone else gives it a try I can confirm there is both automatic and manual fan control so that is far as my testing goes until I come up with a fix or buy another machine at some point in the future.

Those who may have wondered the FirePro W7170M is likely to work as it works in the HP elitebook 17 of the same generation however it didn't have working fan control and with the m17x r2 one is likely to end up with having to buy a few things mainly longer screws to compensate for the thicker gpu substrate.

 

Another crazy question - has anyone tried modifying a non-Xfire Firepro by soldering in an Xfire port? The pins are there, the tin is there, but the port is missing. Is it just a question of adding a physical port or does it require a different vBIOS, or...? I have by now a few different cards with ports that are actually scrap or too old to be worth considering, but some tinkering may yet yield positive results

 

From what I've read here on this forum suggests that there might be a small difference in the vbios between the two versions but that is all I know.

 

Hi, I am struggling with my m17x R2 and upgrading to 660m.
I managed to install nvidia drivers by modding the inf. files and using the signature bypass method, but although having the latest drivers the fans are running on their minimum.
Is there a trick where I can somehow update my bios that hopefully will recognize my 660m and more hopefully make the fans run as intended ?
RIght now the video is simply overheating.

I also saw that you suggested DELL HD 7970M 2GB 8DG8P for thi laptop and I am wondering if the fan issue will still persist and if even the laptop bios A10 will struggle to recognize it ?

 

I never suggested Dell 7970M for M17x R2, only Clevo 8970M

 

Tried a Quadro M1000M that was meant for my R1 in the R2 and apparently this one didn't like the RGB screen where it didn't display but booted into windows. Probably the vbios or defective card even though it came from a precision 7510.

 

Ahem. I would like to relay some great news, at least it's news to me, not sure about the rest of you guys here, but it seems that the M17XR2 CAN work with Maxwell cards despite the discoloration issue - image needs to be set to 6 bit instead of 8 bit. Just had a conversation with pictures here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...upgraded-laptops.805136/page-79#post-11001933
There is a fully operational M17XR2 with a Quadro M5000M and GTX980M. All fine and dandy. Anyone willing to retest?

 

Really simply setting panel depth to 6 bit fixes everything? I have M17x R2 and I can dig out a 980M from my M18x. I do not think it is so simple. And if I have to sacrifice rgbled display than it completely defeats the point of M17x R2, I have M18x that works fine. Plus, bottleneck from first gen i7 to deal with