Upgrading to a 980m cost?

I am looking at the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M; 8GB DDR5; MXM 3.0b; 100W; Upgrade Kit with X-bracket, screws, thermal pads, ICD7 Thermal Paste [$817] for my M17xR4.

Are they really that expensive 2 years later, especially with the new card on the market now? Do mobile graphics cards ever go on sale?

 

hey,

mine was $825 Canadian plus tax and shipping so $900. unfortunately I don't think you will ever see a sale as they are mostly being sold by smaller or private sellers. in the grand scheme of things it is a lot less then a new laptop, especially with the new rip off card machines coming in at almost $3k

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Go to rjtech.com and have a look. You will see that even grossly obsolete cards haven't dropped a penny. It is the way it is with mobile graphics cards. The only way to get a better deal is in the used market.

Sent from my overpriced smartphone

 

true story. a 780m wasn't all that much cheaper then a 980m for my laptop.

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They don't mass produce mobile card for consumer upgrades to their laptops. That is one reason they are soo expensive; supply and demand. Your best bet is buy used on auction sites like ebay from trusted sellers. 980ms fetch about $600 on ebay; still pricey.

 

980M is the last best MXM3.0b card that provides so much upgradeability to so many machines across brands. And now the 3.0b is almost dead- AMD RX480-85-90 Polaris MXM cards are there but no LVDS marks end of an Era. with the new proprietary B$ from MXM machines likes of Clevo/MSI

Expect the Maxwell MXM cards to become rare, they are run cooler than that volcano 10 Series. Since the production seems to be stopped iirc...grab a good one and pamper it until we see a successor from AMD VEGA, NVidia won't they are super greedy and consider the gimping of the 980M step by step...

Volta comes with HBM I bet all the MXM slotted machines will be SOL. The vapor chamber heatsink designed ones like 870DM3 and forget the MSI propreitary B$ design they also backed off against their previous campaign such shame and the 77xDM will also get rekt they have this unified HS design which is useless asf in current scenario let alone upgrades..., the 870DM2-3 have these contact points and what can Clevo do if the HBM comes, the VRMs and the VRAM modules will get shifted and also the power phases.

Pay around 2-3K for the 1070-1080SLI and get rekt when Volta/Vega hits. Clevo build is having too much of flex I didn't expect that and so many machines are heating with over 80-90C Nvidia's push is great for the real desktop chips but instead they could have gone for the same 1080M class reducing some power by 30% and giving MXM3.0b would have been better and cooler for the laptops. The tweaking that has to be done to damn 3K Pascal machine by 30-40% is too much or get the future ripped off MSI, Clevo alteast has the information that this is their new standard...

I can't just stand to the rip-ff game they are playing now what a sadness the Dell's Privatization is the cause of this massive anti consumer B$ Propaganda from Intel and Nividia dropping MXM, Also that MXM pricing is insane, Forget it get the 980M and wait for the Skylake X and get a HEDT hardware and enjoy limitless power & upgrades.

The only issue is I may keep moving so I cant really bet on the Desktop and afford to move them across America, BGA is no go not all, the Intel BGA chips are so pathetically binned and that soldered gunk in my notebook is something I can't even imagine.

So I may end up with a Clevo (I won't support that fallacy MSI) or a HEDT at some near future..

Edit -
1060 is not worth at all. It offers just 15-20% improvement and the cost is skyrocketing plus needs an eDP and also the vBIOS don't expect it to work at full clocks with MSI vBIOS on an Alienware, Prema won't mod it atm See this post.

You can mod the heck out of the Alienware 17 R1 like at the German Forum here -
CPU, GPU and make them work but loooooong shot to make Pascal work and It's hell of a job to do.

It's over the good days are numbered now across Laptop gaming, PC - Windows, Android.
Liberty is being chipped off slowly.

 

Actually this MSI 1060 is still a true MXM 3.0b and a few users have reported it working on their alienware 17s. Benchmarks put it slightly above a 980m. This will be probably our last possible upgrade unless Eurocom will figure something out.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-NVIDIA-...511588?hash=item4656c5c224:g:kbIAAOSw8gVX~MEL

Also there is the 980 desktop variant which performs better than the 980m

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Alienware-1...583b3b9&pid=100009&rk=1&rkt=2&sd=302103511588

 

I'd rather buy new than paying for those exorbitant prices tbh.

 

Nvidia pricing strategy is never to reduce price on older GPUs after new GPUs are launched so we always pay the same price even if the GPU is 2 years old. Keep also in mind that you get new GPU and not previously used.

 

Do you know if there will be option later on to upgrade the alienware 17 r1 to the new 10xx series from you guys? I plan to upgrade in maybe a year or two.

 

There most likely wont, all signs is that the 980m will be the last top tier mxm 3.0B card..... Sadly.

 

I was almost tempted to buy a new Alienware 13/15 or the cheapest Sager, MSI, Origin, or Eurocom laptop just to get the 980m....... I mean crap.... $1400 laptop with a 980m in it... that is half the price of the laptop and then just let the laptop sit or use the integrated graphics in it so I can put the 980m in my Alienware.......lol. There is absolutely no way that the 980m is half the price of a cheap laptop..... unless the rest of the parts are "REALLY" cheap and all the cost is in the video card.

 

I still haven't upgraded to the 980m because the prices are crazy expensive now. Is the 1060 the only new card that has a vew MXM 3.0b variants or is there a 1070 or 1080 available? if I am going to dump $800-$1000 for a mobile gpu, I don't want 5 year old tech.

 

1060 is supported as long as your LCD is eDP and not LVDS. All of gtx 10 series only support eDP panels.

 

How do I find out which one it is, I don't see that information in the System information program in Windows.

 

Not right, some laptop can use Optimus

Is your laptop that in signature? m17x-r4 (ivy bridge cpu, hm77 chipset?)
Look at your 7970m tell you don't have an EDP screen because that (edp) is a 3D screen for nvidia, but you can confirm by HWINFO or AIDA64.

Screen upgrade from lvds 60hz to edp 120hz 3D is possible without issue (beside the reperebility and its cost)

The 980m is at 600$ and is still a very strong card
or there is the msi 1060 about same price/perf (10% more depend on title) but you must use it with an unlocked bios set at SG mode(optimus) and mod the heatsink because it doesn't fit the 1060's mosfet.

Look here for successfull upgraded laptop list

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/successful-mxm-gpu-upgraded-laptops.805136/

 

The best approach is to remove LCD panel and check what kind of connector it has. Record panel name/model and check specs online.

 

I don't mean any disrespect to Eurocom, Clevo, Sager, Orgin PC, etc but we all know what happens to older hardware. It depreciates just like almost anything else. If I wanted to sell my M17xR4 today, I am not going to get the $3000 I paid for it + the $400 I paid for the 5 year warranty from Alienware. I might get $700 if I am lucky.

So I understand that they may have paid $845 for the 980m when they purchased them from Nvidia, but they need to understand that if they want that much for them, with ebay sellers reselling used ones at least $200 cheaper; there is a limited time that they can ask for that much money for them before technology passes those GPU's so far that they won't get $1 for them. I would hope that they would cut their losses just like everyone else and be happy getting half of what they paid for them instead of nothing.

My first PC was a Zeos 386 with 4mb of ram and a 2mb video card. The first mac i used was a Mac Plus with 2 floppies and a SCSI hard drive. That 386 cost $2400 back then. Only the Mac Plus has gone up in value.... Somehow I don't think that will happen with the 980m's.