R2 compatible with GTX 480M?

The Clevo X7200 has a separate rail running from the psu directly to the gpu's. I found it to be quite humorous actually. It has a 4pin power connector instead of the typical 2pin power connector seen on 99.9% of all other laptops including alienware's.

I think you might be able to get a single GTX 480m to run, but then again, I'm not sure. It's well over the 75watt limit on the MXM slot. The PSU would be able to handle a single card, but I'd be scared for the internal power distributors on my motherboard.

Either way, I think a much better bet would be to go for dual GTX 470m's. In SLI they rival the GTX 480m sli and are far more overclockable while drawing 50watts less power. The M17x would definitely be able to handle dual 470's from a electrical point of view.

 

Seems to be a good educated view, GTX 470m in SLI should be the realistic target to stick into a current R2 to tide the R2 over till the R3 (or whatever) comes. Also yer the prices will be higher than the 5870's, I like nvidia and GTX 470m's in SLI look very nice in theory but not on my pocket crossfire 5870's it is for me. Hopefully it is the 470's they decide to stick in though, 460's would be pointless unless to replace the last of the 200 series stock and the GTX 480m well... I still don't agree it should be used as even if one was possible... why bother? dual 470's waaay better .

 

Unfortunately (for me), the UK prices are similar or less than those in South Africa.

But sadly nothing available for the M17x yet.

 

Agreed, Dual GTX 460M Give slightly less or the same performance to the HD 5870 CF, so theres no point upgrading. But if your buying a new system and prefer Nvidia then OK.

But yes GTX 470M's in SLI, would be the one , no point in a single GTX 480M since HD 5870 CF are faster (By Far).

 

personally I think 460s are more likely than 470s, by at least a little bit. They will use the "newness" factor to make them more expensive than the 5870s. At least the 5870s will get a price break

 

I disagree rsgeiger simply by looking at the history between the M15x and M17x. The M15x has always carried a 2nd best GPU while the M17x got 2 of the top gpu. They have followed this pattern twice now and set it up for a third time with the GTX 460m and 470m

 

True, and I'm not saying that we wont get 470s, but I just dont see the chips out there yet. 460s and 480s are already on the market. And it could be Alienware gets an exclusive on the 470s, but until I see something shipping with it I call it vaporware.

BTW, does anyone know the expected TDP of the 470s? or for that matter what the 460s are?

 

470s should be 75 watt. 460s are 75 or 65 watt (Alienware would have you believe the M15x can only accept 65W but they are wrong haha)

 

Alright, thanks. That does pose a tight fit power-wise if it is true the ATIs are only 55 watt, but I can't confirm that either way. The ASUS guys in a forum I read said the 460 is running cooler than the 5870s. I hope that is the case

 

Hi, this is a bit off topic, But does any one have an Idea to what the Mobility HD 5870 in Crossfire can be compared to in a desktop?

I've heard 5770 or 5850?

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Notebook check says 5770 to 5750, but the comparisons don't look right to me, since I found a review on the Mobility HD 5807 (Single Card), and they still say that it performs some where between a 5770 and a 5750?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html

No I can not see that if the Mobility HD 5870 will perform the same as a 5770 in both single and CF configurations

Toms hardware did a review (mentioned before in this post) showing that the M17x r2 performs almost as well as a desk top running a 5850.

Any thoughts?

 

Do you guys think the next ATI cards will fit in the R2?
I guess the 6 series right?

 

I sure hope so chiefs!



Cheers.

 

MR5870 in CF is indeed performing like a desktop 5850 or a little bit better, and if you overclock it, it will run close, equal or even a bit better than desktop 5870 depending on how much u OC. i have mine overclocked to 900/1100 and the 3dmark vantage score is just a little (about 3-400 points) higher than desktop 5870, with the relatively on par cpu of course.

 

it will fit, as long as

1. it is still MXM3b standard

2. it doesnt exceed 75W power budget limit

3. and Most Importantly, alienware/dell decideds to support it in BIOS.

 

Good point there. My guess is if at these time R3 is for sale, than R2 will not support it, somthing similar what happened to M17x R1 with the MR5870, M17x R1 meets 1 and 2 but not number 3.

 

Thanks alexnvidia.

Thats what I understood from reading, through the forum and from benchmarks results.

 

5870m CF is almost upto a desktop 5870. In Vantage if you heavily overclock the 5870m they catch up. But a stock desktop 5870 is 850 MHz core not over 900

Also, the 5870 has twice the memory bandwidth, which really matters. At the same clocks, the 5870 will always beat the mobile cards. At both stock, the 5870 easily wins

 

Sorry, are you saying that the 5870m in crossfire at stock is almost as good as a single desktop 5870 at stock?

 

No. Both stock the desktop card easily wins, and also has much easier time with drivers

 

So then the 5870m Crossfire at stock is similar to a desktop 5850 at stock?

 

I wouldnt get too excited about the 6870/6970 cards since they are mid-range now. ATI changed their naming scheme. Since the 5870M is based off the desktop 5850(?), the 6870 would be slower since the desktop 6870 is about even with the 5850. Radeon HD 6870 Bad Company 2 Performance | bit-tech.net
I think the Nvidia 4x series will trump here.

 

I believe it goes; 6870 is the mid-range. 6970 is the top tier. Just like the 5870/5970 naming scheme now. 6870= single gpu based, 6970= dual gpu based.

I'm positive however, we'll see all single GPU based 68/6970 cards in the mobile segment.

 

5870m is based off of the 5770 desktop card actually

If they bring a full 6870 to the laptop world (which they wont ) it would be the new king

 

The 6870 is mid range. The 6970 is not a dual gpu card. The 6970 wil be the higher end single gpu card. The dual gpu card is rumored to be called the 6990.
Read up on ATI's naming scheme change for the 6 series.
ATI 6 series Info. - Emuforums.com

 

That really disapointing for the desktop version.

 

Yeah, I was hoping for some big jump too. Oh well, its not like my 5870m's are holding me back...

 

Defenetly not, gues no need to upgrade any time soon.

 

MR5870CF is quite powerful by today's standard actually. the biggest bottleneck for our gpu is the memory bandwidth, which is 128-bit.

desktop 5870 has the same amount of stream processors as we do (1600), but the secret weapon is the 256-bit with GDDR5 memory, which in plain english means doubled the amount of memory bandwidth compared to ours. we also have to take into account CF scaling, which is getting better by the driver, but it's safe to say we can squeeze out more than 80% performance from the second MR5870 gpu.

but like i've mentioned earlier, with a little overclocking, you can pretty much close the gap between them. desktop 5870 has 850MHz default gpu speed and 1200MHz GDDR5 speed, so that pretty much gives u an idea on where to improve on your MR5870CF.

having a desktop 5870 performance in a laptop though out of date by today's standards, is simply just awesome.

 

It has GDDR5... there's no bandwidth bottleneck.

it also has twice the stream processors, which is why it needs more bandwidth.

 

The desktop 5870 is also GDDR5, but it is also 256 bit

Trust me, that is bottlenecking the MR5870 - especially in AA performance

 

you could say any stock bandwidth numbers are a bottleneck with infinitly increasing bandwidth/clock speeds... that is why people overclock. my point was that it has approximately the same about of bandwidth as desktop cards with similar shader count does. There is no OEM using substandard parts bandwidth bottleneck..

 

that's right. like i've explained earlier, the desktop 5870 has twice the amount of memory bandwidth compared to MR 5870 CF, and we can prove that MR5870CF is still memory bandwidth limited because all things being equal (stream processorts, ROPs, etc), the desktop 5870 performs a little better than MR5870CF/desktop 5770CF.

to understand what me and scook9 are talking about, i suggest reading reviews on desktop 5770, where it is properly proven that despite using GDDR5 to "balance" the 128-bit memory bandwidth, the bottleneck is still with memory bandwidth. that is why 5770 underperform when it tried to replace 4870.

that said, the MR5870CF is again no slouch and is very much comparable to desktop grade 5850 and 5870, or should i say somewhere in between.

 

So then if the 6870 is brought to a mobile version with the 256Bit memory interface, then it should be better than the current 5870m?

Asside, how do I get a green square under my avatar?

 

yes, 256-bit with GDDR5 effectively doubled the memory bandwidth, and if everything is like to like, i would say a solid 15-20% improvement over 128-bit solutions.

also, 6870 desktop version is a very optimised version of Broadway gpu, and with just 1120 stream processors, it can achive almost 85-90% the capability of 5870.

however, even so, it will still be too hot and power hungry to fit inside a laptop, so expect something tuned down a bit, like 6850 (960 stream) and possibly clocked down to fit the power budget. if you look at the load power consumption of 6850, it's quite close to that of 5770, so assuming alienware and amd are continuing this trend, then this assumption will become reality.

as for the green thing underneath, i think that is the rep points, to give reps, all you need to do is click on the scale like button under the green bar thing, that is if you like or find the reply useful/informative. im not really sure to be honest

 

Oles Chiefs,

Here I'll turn you Green eheheheh oles. TADA your Green now eheheh LOL.
To turn green you need others to Rep you and give you rep points. For posting insightful posts or helping others out or just because they like you ehahaha LOL.

I don't think we'll be seeing any new AMD mobile GPUs in our Aliens anytime soon. More chance of some 400ms surfacing before any new AMD mobile GPUs will hit us oles!

Cheers.

 

Thanks Man , I'm Green I'm Green .

Any way, yes looking forward to seeing some of those 400ms in our Machines.

The 480M will probably need some serious mod to be done, like sli PSU's D 2x 240W Dell psu), Extra power cables inside the aliens, (Like from what I've read regarding the cleo x7200 four power cables instead of two), and better cooling, (Cooling Mod in this forum, but probably a bit more).

But none of those things would be done by dell, so there would probably not be any bios support, unless they add it for a single 480M (and thats enough?), else a hacked bios (I've hear of these).

So hopefully at least see the 470M's as an option .

 

There are variables we can work around, and some we can't. For instance, it would be easy to run two PSUs in parallel. That solves the power issue. The heatsink issue is not so easy to work around.

 

Heat, always a problem .

I see they have removed the 285GTX SLI option off the uk dell site:

The Dell Online Store: Build Your System

I wonder if this meens any thing, or if it meen what we hope it does, probably not .

Edit: Never mind I see they've put it back .

Edit 2: Now it's gone again

 

I see (a while back) that the 470M is available in a sager machine, but no benchmark results yet.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/527682-sager-np8690-now-gtx-470m-5.html#post6856146

 

Well, I stand corrected. XoticPC is selling the Sager NP8690 with a m470. Guess the m17x refresh does have a chance of getting them...

 

Alienware US is showing the GTX 460m as well now. Same price as the GTX 260m laughably haha

The GTX 460m should be pretty competitive to a 5850m when both stock. No clue on how it overclocks yet

 

I just looked and no GTX460 for the M17x.
*edit* The GTX460 is on the M15x.

 

Ya I meant on the M15x, sorry for the mix-up. The 5850 did come to the M15x before the 5870s on the M17x though

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the M17x have one of the most efficient and effective cooling solutions out there? The entire back end of the laptop is a giant vent, not to mention the three fans and snug heat-sinks.

I don't see how any laptop could handle the heat of dual 480's if the m17x cannot.

Of course, the power supply obviously cannot handle it, but that's nothing that a better power supply and a new bios can't fix.

It does suffice to say that I've never seen a increased power supply for an old laptop, just so it can support newer graphics cards. It's far more likely that they would simply release a new model of m17x.

 

Only about a third of the back is actually exhaust vents, the rest just looks like it should be. And the clevo x7200 has a much more robust cooling solution compared to that of the M17x. It comes at a price though, that laptop weighs even more than the M17x

 

M17x does contain a very elaborated cooling system, but im afraid it's not the best and most efficient out there. the clevo ones have much better cooling capability, in terms of massive copper heatsinks and larger more powerful (in terms of CFM) fans. M17x was designed 2 years ago, and it has not changed (in cooling) even after R2. so it's a bit "out of date" and the way it copes with added heat is to run the fans MAX, which in turn produces loud annoying noise.

like scook9 mentioned, x7200 can handle 2 480M GTX easily, and if you look at the design of the cooling system, only one heatsink and fan is dedicated toward each gpu. compare it to M17x and you'll see how massive their heatsink fan is.