Upgrade my 260m SLI? (M17x R1)

Hello everyone,

I own an Alienware M17x that I purchased in August of '09. It currently has two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M's. I am not an expert with graphics cards, and they are probably the only computer component that I am not well acquainted with..

I am fairly sure that my current 260m's are MXM 3.0, and I was thinking about upgrading to 560m SLI or a Raedon 6970m CrossfireX?

Would this even be possible with an M17x? Doing some reading I found out that power consumption might be the biggest issue with an upgrade like this if I do go through with it.

Thanks!

Kyle

 

Hi there.
I've seen M17xR2 user with dual 6990.
Your MXM slot is 3.0 so techincal side, it should match, put you should worried about heat dissipation. Not sure you can go for dual 560'.
Power consuption are the same (150W).

 

Some people reported that none of those cards works on R1. Biggest issue so far for those cards is making them to work !

Best option: Radeon HD 5870

 

How would I go about utilizing crossfire?
Would I simply buy 2 cards?

 

Yes, two cards and a crossfire ribbon/cable, assuming you already have the two heatsinks and fans.
You should also consider buying thermal pads and a tube of thermal paste.

 

I have tons of thermal paste leftover from when I used to do xbox repair
1) Any recommended places I should purchase the card and pads?
2) Is the performance gain really worth the cost (5870m Crossfire)?
3) Is it recommended I wait awhile since I only bought the computer 2 years ago?

The problem I have with this is that the graphics card came out just at the start of '10, only about half a year after my purchase. This seems a little stupid, to buy old technology to replace older technology. Won't I run into the same problem in a year or two?

 

1) I can't recommend any place to purchase the cards but about thermal pads, the fujiploy are known to offer a good performance.
2) That's for you to decide based on what you do.
3) Again, only you or nobody can answer that:
-Waiting for the prices to drop more is your choice.
-Waiting for new cards to show up, nobody can tell you now if they will function on this machine.

Well, nothing better was confirmed as fully functional on the M17x so if you want better or newer go ahead and be the first to try.
Also, bear in mind that "a year or two" is a lot in technology world.

 

I'm waiting on some 5870m to come in the mail to upgrade me from sli 280m. I personally think it's a good investment since it will add a lot of graphics horsepower to your machine with room for much more overclocking. Flashing the bios a lot of people have achieved overclocks of 900+ mhz on the core which is faster than the desktop 5770, so if you crossfire them and get a good overclock you can actually get more fps than a desktop 5870 which is very impressive in my opinion. The 260m are like desktop 8800 gt, good cards but showing their age very heavily. Even in sli they're getting outperformed by a lot of the new cards

 

Turns out I don't need a new card.. Did a full stripdown of my M17x, and when I got to the two 260Ms, I knew what the problem was. The piece that leads the fan to the actual output on the computer was covered solid in dust. Computer runs maxed most games with no overheating, and the fan is barely noticeable now! The max my GPU's got was 60*c! That's what it would've been from 5 mins of doing nothing at the desktop before..

Thanks for your help everyone!

And I understand that 2 years is a lot in technology, but my 260's seem like they still run in a usable fashion. Looks like I can save the money for a future upgrade!

 

hey if it works for you, thats great. the longer you wait, the bigger the upgrade will be.

you're right, dust is a major killer.

 

In my case, if I get a high-end laptop I do it because I wait it will handle games a couple of years. So I am switching of laptop every 3 years, and as xeroxide said, you can really feel a big change when you do that.