yet another m17x R2 upgrade project

Hello All,

First of all let me thank you for your effort to keep this forums such a great place. Over the years I've found all the answers to my problems, without even a need to ask them! So many informative posts, and all very friendly!

Having old, low configuration m17x r2 i decided that it is time to put some new life to my baby.
Recently I upgraded RAM to 8GB (still not utilizing it fully cause of CPU) and I'm about to order SSD for primary slot (most likely Samsung 840 Pro).

As of now it have:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz
GPU: ATI/AMD Mobility Radeon HD 4870 (M98 XT)
RAM: 8GB (2x 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 666.7 MHz (PC3-10600) Crucial Technology CT51264BC1339.M16F)
BIOS: A02

I was reading a lot about CPU and GPU upgrading in a course of last week, but still have my doubts and would like to ask you few questions.

Let me state that i do not care about having best parts available if i need to pay ridiculous amount of money for that upgrades (If I wanted to have best I would probably build desktop long time ago).
I do care to have good machine for reasonable money.
I do play games.
I do stream a bit (CPU power needed for encoding live stream).
I do use linux as well (problem if I need to use HWiNFO64 for fan control)
Oh, and I would like to have reasonable quiet machine too, meaning that as little heat as possible desired

I know that it might sound that I want something unachievable, but maybe you could give me some opinions about getting near sweet spot (low budget/good performance/linux usability/stability/low temperatures).

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BIOS

Last time I was really checking BIOS upgrade was about A04/05 time, and I was reading that some people had issues with fans and these BIOSes.
Now I know that there is A10 and even modded version of it.

Is A10 stable and not creating any problems compared to old one (A02)?
Is mod A10 secure and problem less? Should I flash it even if i do not use overclocking?

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CPU

My first reaction is to get i7-840QM (QS at GBP 105).
Other option is i7-920XM (QS for GBP 260).

I incline towards i7-840QS because of price vs power gain when compared with i7-920XM. Other factor is lower heat emission.
Since modern games are not very CPU intensive, i think it will be enough upgrade from my i5. Only real situation where i could potentially use some more CPU power would be streaming.
Other pro i7-840QM factor would be that i7-920XM causes higher GPUs to 'disconnect' from BIOS' fan control.

Did I missed something? Or maybe I do not understand something very obvious for rest of you? Do you think that I would benefit much more from i7-920XM for my needs?

Another thing that concerns me a bit is what I was reading about processors not going into turbo mode when they get full load (unfortunately lost link to that post here on NBR). Can somebody explain this to me?
Does that mean that my i5-520M @ 2.4 GHz (turbo 2.933 GHz) can perform better in some situations than i7-840QM @ 1.86 GHz (turbo 3.2 GHz)?? [In that case what do you think about i7-640M @ 2.8 GHz (3.46 GHz)? Althought that would mean not using RAM fully]

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GPU

Anything would be upgrade really.
I have few of GPUs in mind tho, but maybe you can suggest me something cheaper but almost as good.
Another issue would be - if I go with i7-840QM CPU, would it be bottleneck for any of GPUs?

So far thinking about (in this order):
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX (GBP 360 from Eurocom) - from what I was reading here it seems that there are no issues with this card in m17x R2. Price is high (for me) but being 3rd best performer in solo category this is justified. Are there any drawbacks of this card that I missed?
- AMD Radeon HD 7970M (total cost including p&p GBP 426 from Eurocom) - was reading that there is no fan control from BIOS and HWiNFO is needed, but is it only with i7-9x0XM CPUs or with i7-840QM as well? Other issue is not working HDMI (not biggie now, but might be usefull in future). Apart of this issues this card seems to be great value, even tho a bit expensive.

I'm open to some other suggestions as I would not mind losing few fps in game if I can save 100-200 GBP while taking 'lower' GPU.

I know that new X bracket would be needed, but what about heatsink from my HD4870?
I remember reading few years ago here on forums about some heatsink mod, but I can't seem to find that post... are there any mods worth to do?


I apologize for long post and such a newb questions

 

Hi, the heatsink on the M17x is generic, used by all,versions of gpu card supplied with the Lappie. You will, as mentoned require a x-bracket and screws, might be supplied by vendor. You will need to control the fans with hwinfo, if using nVidea don't know about AMD. Easy to set up hwinfo though. For me both 820qm(oem) and 920xm(qs) required fan control with hwinfo. 920xm is a beast, well worth the money, runs cool in the m17(for me anyway).

 

Don't waste your money on an XM processor if you don't plan overclocking it. There's simply no point getting one without OC-ing it. As i read your description, the 840qm sounds like the best choice in your case, it will give you pretty much the same performance as a non OC'd 920 or 940xm.

Now the GPU, the 7970m is a serious bit faster then the 670m. Seeing the price difference I would say this is a no brainer, save a bit on the cpu by taking the 840qm, and spend a little extra on the GPU.

However... The 7970m will require to manually control the Fans (also with a non xm or even your i5). Is there no HWiNFO equivalent for Linux?
Alot of upgrade cards require this and it will seriously narrow down the gpu's which will suit you due to this. I don't know if the 670 needs fan control, i think it doesn't with the correct bios.

And the heatsink will fit

 

Thanks for answers, now I know there is no need for new heatsink.

Hmmm, I wonder what causes fan control loss, I thought it was just because i7-9x0XM CPUs and HD 7970 GPU...
Anybody who had i7-840QM can tell me if fan control was needed by HWiNFO?

Just to claryfi i meant 675MX (Kepler) that is supposedly much better performer than 670M (Fermi), at least that what I read here

Dont't know anything about fan control in linux, that's why i mentioned it here hoping for some answers from more experienced users.

 

The 675MX is also very picky when it comes to what system it's in.

 

Are there any indicators what could be affecting that?

BTW I'm in Edinburgh too

 

Hi meaker, just out of interest in what way do you mean "picky" had no problems installing my 670mx (Kepler core 104 i think) booted first time. Other than fan control had a problem with brightness +- Fn key cured with the new drivers........but do agree AMD 7970 is more cost effective, might need a gpu bios flash though.

Something to do with the way the gpu temp tables are read by the bios....no one is sure, but wouldn't expect a fix too soon. But there are a couple of versions of the card.....one is the clevo no fan control but hdmi/ video out works and a Dell version fan control works but no hdmi/ video out. I think that's right, do a forum search to confirm.

And my guess is if the 820 has no fan control then the 840 will be the same. Good luck with the upgrade, it's a brilliant laptop:thumbsup:

 

Maybe the dell ones not so much but msi and clevo ones have the latest bios versions and swapping them into other models is just a headache.

 

Ah right, been a good couple of months since I upgraded mine so yes new vbios can be a headache.

 

I just went through upgrading my m15x only to find out they have power related issues and cant support all the fastest components together at the same time. The M17x2 does not have this problem. If I had an M17xR2 instead of M15x I wouldnt have had to buy my new R4.
My tips are:
1. UPDATE YOUR BIOS!! Most of the video cards you are looking at will more than likely have issues with that old of bios. Do this before you upgrade anything. Its very rare that a bios will update will do more bad than good. In your case it will solve a lot of issues you might have with upgrading before you run into them.
2. In your shoes I would buy a 920XM QS as you can usually find them here on the forums for 220-250 range. (I have one if you want to arrange something.)
3. Get a DELL 7970m. if you make sure its a Dell OEM one. the fan control seems to work perfectly and the performance of the 7970m stock is about 15-20% faster than the 675mx. The other reason I say this is the Kepler cards are very hard to find in original OEM Dell versions. Which means it'll be hard to make your fans work properly especially in Linux.
4. Dont waste your money on a top end SSD as the SATA controller in the M17XR2 and M15x is only SATA2. Which means it will max out at 300mbps. Anything over that in read and write speed is wasted. I put a corsair force 3 GT 240g in my M15x and when I moved it to my M17xR4 it was more than twice as fast.

From personal experience this is what I recommend. The M17x has far better cooling than the M15x and I had no issues with the 920xm at stock. most people can squeeze 3.7ghz out of the 920xm/940xm in your laptop which makes for a very impressive upgrade in that machine.

Lastly I hope you have the 1200p LCD in your machine. If you do then every penny you spend on this laptop is worth it. with an overclocked 920xm or 940xm that laptop can still keep up with the R3 and even some R4's.

Good luck and I hope this helps!

 

Well the R2 does have power issues if you try overclocking dual cards in it IIRC so it's not totally immune from power issues,

 

Sorry that this could pour cold ice in your upgrade blood, but a thought comes to mind.
not the expert, but dont you have single GPU?
If you do you might have the lower power PSU.
If you again do, you might have problems with a lot more powerful CPU and GPU needing more power. (7970M would need entire PSU alone if that was an option)
Not sure if the PSU upgrade is an easy one. (just replacing with another or needing to change ID chip.)

Think its worth finding out. What PSU you have is the easies.

 

Just tried updating to A10 and it went bad as you can read here ;/

For some reason I cannot send PMs... I guess it is low-post-counter related...

Thanks for tip on GFX, still not ordered, will think more about 7970 then...
As for SSD i already ordered 840 Pro, I don't mind not using it fully, good thing is that I can move it to any other computer with sata3 and will perform brilliant.

Unfortunatelly I have normal 1440x900 screen, but using most time with external monitor anyway

 

I have 240W PSU so there should be no problems even if i decide to go for Xm CPU, as I will not go for double GPUs.

 

Then its noprob
Have fun upgrading.
Didnt think I would do any overclocking etc myself. Just to find out, I was wrong. Luckily i bought the 940Xm since at the time it was about the same as the 920.

 

Thanks!
As of this moment I have bricked machine due to bad BIOS reflash. Not bricked per say, but cant start W7. This makes me think that maybe I should not upgrade anything.... "why changing it if it's working..."
Will receive SSD next week so will see how new OS will work, but it's wery weird that BIOS messes with Win7, even after reverting to previous A02...

 

SSD disc and GPU was my favorite upgrades

Have had probs with my disc at times, stopping the computer during startup looking like bad GPU. Had to re-install windows 7.
its as if the computer had lost power during somekind of upgrade of GPU SW or Driver.
Have u tried new windows install?
Try that first on your new SSD before cloning the disc, Just to see if the problem could be drivers.
I use the "cracked" A10.

 

Did not reinstalled system as there are few things I need/would like to recover from current OS.
Will do new install when SSD arrives, was planning new install anyway instead cloning, but did not finished migrating all data and settings yet ;/
Still not sure if stay with win7 x64 or try win8, reading about advantages and disadvantages of latter one.

Is there any difference with modded A10 if you do not overclock?

 

You basicly have all unaccesable options unlocked.
If you don't use you don't have to use them but why not do it anyway?