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    swapping 6970 for 580 17x r3

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by alaskan9974, Oct 15, 2011.

  1. alaskan9974

    alaskan9974 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Dell sent me a 580 to swap out for my 6970. I swapped out the cards already.

    My questions are do I need to get a different heat sink? It seemed as though the copper heatsink on the GPU should be larger?

    Also, can I replace the thermal pads with paste? I used A5 ceramic but I have some IC diamond on the way and I want to repaste everything with that on the GPU for O/C purposes.
     
    alaskan9974, Oct 15, 2011
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  2. alaskan9974

    alaskan9974 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I installed the drivers from dell along with the hd3000 drivers. I see both cards under device manager but for some reason it does not switch to the 580m it is stuck on the intel card. I changed power settings and used nvidia control panel to select the card for the game but it still is running on the intel card. Should I uninstall both drivers and use the latest one from nvidia?
     
    alaskan9974, Oct 16, 2011
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  3. juliant

    juliant Notebook Deity

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    If you do not mind me asking, how did you get your 580M from Dell?! The GPU should switch by itself as soon as you use any 'power graphic' software / games and then back to the intel gpu when not required
     
    juliant, Oct 16, 2011
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  4. alaskan9974

    alaskan9974 Notebook Enthusiast

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    My 6970 went out, so I requested a 580m since my warranty is up in 30 days. They sent me a new one and I installed it.
     
    alaskan9974, Oct 16, 2011
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  5. alaskan9974

    alaskan9974 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I wasn't sure how the graphics switching worked since when I ran windows experience test it only scored 5.9.

    In my games I saw a noticeable improvement. In FSX it only lists Intel.0 as a video card but it runs 45+fps versus the 30fps with the 6970 so I am sure it is working with everything maxed ansio @ 16x and 1920x1080.

    I was concerned at first because the 580m name did not show up any adapter settings etc.
     
    alaskan9974, Oct 17, 2011
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  6. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

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    It doesn't show up due to the Optimus working.
     
    widezu69, Oct 17, 2011
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