m17x replacing the i5?

Im thinking of buying a m17x. However my budget is tight and im offered a m17x with i5 520m and 4870 xfire. The processor is OKAY but i wudnt say im fully satisfied. So later down the road could i buy and i7 mobile and just put it into the m17x?

 

Yes, you can.

 

Hummm..
DR...
Is the pinout the same for the i7-9xx mobile as the i7-800,700,500 mobile.
In the desktop products the pinouts are diferent.
I7-9xx has 1366 pins while the i5,i3, and i7 have 1156

This difference is the pci express pipelines.
What I've read is that pipelines given up mean pcie X8 X8 graphics when using the 1156 cpu's. The way around this is to employ a n200 chip to boost the X8 X8 back up to X16 X16 rates as EVGA does in some of their classified boards.

I guess I require input from those folks that have been lookng deep into these motherboards on laptops.

Just some food for thoughts...

 

There isn't a single mobile i3/i5/i7 chip that makes use of QPI, every last one of them is DMI. Because of the common interface, all the mobile i3/i5/i7 chips (so far) are socket-compatible.

There's more than just a pinout difference between QPI and DMI, they're completely different architectures with resources for the various components being placed in different locations. With DMI, they placed the PCI-e controller on the CPU, intending for it to be a direct PCI-e graphics link, bypassing much of the bandwidth that the former northbridge would have had to deal with. The northbridge and southbridge functions have also been smashed together to make the Platform Controller Hub. The PCH has a few PCI-e lanes of its own, but only just enough for a few peripherals.

With QPI chips, the northbridge has become the IOH (I/O Hub) and traditional southbridge functions have remained on a separate chip. The northbridge is responsible for providing PCI-e lanes, so something like the X58 IOH can much more easily provide 40 of them.

 

Moot: OK
that helps with the confusion.
With that in mind what are the pci e lane speeds if connecting two graphic cards running at 16x 16x, or 8x 8x on a laptop?
Just pondering these questions...

thanks for the quick response.

 

Unless a manufacturer decides to add that Nvidia chip to a laptop, you'll always be running the graphics cards off the CPU's PCI-e controller, which means you'll only ever have 16 lanes total. With two cards, it's split.. so x8 for each. This is PCI-e 2.0 though, so it's a lot faster than it sounds.

 

Isn't the powersupply that is shipped with an i5 lower voltage than the one that is shipped with an i7?

 

From what I've read, you only automatically get the 240W PSU if you order a 920XM or two video cards. Voltage on the supplies is the same, amperage is not.

You could probably specifically request the 240W PSU, but I doubt there's a really significant current draw difference from one CPU to another, barring overclocking.

 

no i got a 240w with mine

 

I just spec'ed out a base model (no upgrades with an i5 520M) & the summary stated:
POWER ADAPTERS 150 Watt Adapter

So make sure before making the purchase.

 

when you customize a laptop and change either to the crossfire option or the 920 the power supply automacticaly changes to 240 watt. If you change both the option back to the the option where you would normally get the 150 watt adapter. it will still stay with the 240 watt adapter. I tested this theory when i was customizing my m17x on the website. tried it multiple times and as long as you at one point changed it to the cross fire solution and back you will get the 240 watt adapter. Unless they changed something in the web site that changes it back.