M17xR2 Upgrades

Here's my M17xR2 so far.

920XM
16GB DDR3
Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Boot
Western Digital 750GB Storage
7970M
Killer 1103-N Wifi Card

I like my computer, but is there any other suggestions to make this computer faster/better?

 

Not really, unless you want to go with an RGB LED screen (if you don't have one already). You've pretty much maxed out your stats. The only other thing I can think of is swapping out your 920XM for a 940XM. But that isn't enough of a boost in speed to justify the cost.

 

If you already have those specs, there's not much upgrading, 940XM is a horrible upgrade price/performance ratio over 920XM.

 

Agreed.

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Hmm, if you want to make it slightly faster, get the highest MHz ram your CPU will support, and perhaps upgrade to the GTX 680M GPU. Other than that, you're golden.

 

I've yet to find 8 GB DIMMs that are slower than 1333, which is the fastest the R2 will support with a quad core i7 anyway.

I would think at 7970M CF/680M SLI, your bottleneck would be the CPU unless heavily overclocked, might be time to look at a newer platform, Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge quad cores smoke Clarksfield in terms of price to performance, especially cheapest 920XM OEM is like 250+ while a used 2630QM is 150 and below.

 

That maybe true, but there are those of us who still keep our R2's around for reasons OTHER than nostalgia.

 

I'm almost at the limit of giving up 16:10 RGBLED WUXGA for a newer platform and newer hardware without spending a fortune (tell me 680M SLI for 1000 is a good deal, and I'll eat my shoe).

 

Oh, you're not alone. I've been wiping the shoe polish off my mouth since the 680MX was announced. I can only pray the 680m cards will fall in price before they're totally discontinued...that way I can afford one before that point.

 

Personally upgrade the m17x r2, its cheaper its easier to build, you can spot a gtx 680m single into a r2 and it works fine, slight driver tweak and boom it works, overclocking is a possiblity with it as well as long as you don't overvolt it, the throttling should not occur on the r2, i've seen 1 guy locally where i live that has a m17x r2 that got me into these laptops that has a gtx 680m in his m17x r2, and he has the latest drivers for it installed as well, its simply a switch of the driver inf and you have a working card, he runs circles around my gtx 580m and has the ability to overclock it all with no mod to the psu, honestly people don't understand that old tech specially the first gen i7's can handle alot more then they were ever designed to, people have been running the 920xm at 4ghz frequently in all honestly if you dont want the price tag just upgrade the card cause you cpu should still handle till atleast another year or so, plus no offense to people of the ati world but nvidia plays alot better then ati in my opinion

 

wait... the r2 MB supports 16 gb of ram?! i thought 8 was the limit?

 

Correct it can have 16gb just the bios doesn't recognize it, but windows shows it and uses it

 

looks like i'm buying some more ram =D

 

This is correct. It is because the maximum supported due to stability is 8GB. I think you really are on top of the line. The only upgrade I see is to switch to a new m18x R2

 

16Gb are stable and run well in the M17x R2. The fact that the 8Gb sticks are not 'recognized' by the BIOS is because there's no code for them.
For those who have upgraded, run multiple VMs and you'll see for yourselves.

 

is 940XM the highest processor that would actually fit in R2?

I might need to OC my processor soon.

or a new M18x? (i wish)

 

Yes, the 940XM is the best Clarksfield CPU available.
Be aware though that the 920XM can almost perform the same way as the 940XM for half the price.

Search these forums because this topic has been mentioned before.

p.s.
You said you wished that you could buy a M18......how much do you actually think a 940XM will cost you....

 

double 920xm, which is around 500-600 I reckon....

yea i read the thread, just rechecking if it actually has anything else other than 920 or 940...

 

Actually most best benchmarking results were achieved with a 920xm. There's really no point in going for the 940xm instead of the 920xm unless you know the former is a golden chip.

 

Or for bragging rights.

 

Last things I can though of to upgrade your M17x R2 is to install a USB 3.0 express card. Maybe RAID 0 SSDs, and if you'd like, removed the optical drive and install a 3rd HDD into that slot. When I had my R2 I used to run dual SSDs in Raid 0, and a 1TB HDD in the optical drive slot. But it's really all about what works for your when it comes to your storage setup.

You can also go with a DAC for clearer/crisper audio. Just some suggestions from what I did with my R2.