Area-51 m15x and Nvidia GTX 280M

I've recently talked to an AW Rep about the 9800M GT. this upgrade would definitely be worth it...

I believe that AW sells the heatsink for the 9800 (which would be the one you'd need for this) for around $50ish? but you'd need to convince them to sell it to you without the card, which would be significantly harder, due to the fact that it would mess up their purchasing manager...

forgiving that, you should be able to get the cooler from AW relatively inexpensively, and the 280M is currently worth about $490. everything said and done, probably less than $600 for this upgrade (but don't quote me).

this is opposed to the additional $350ish of the 9800M GT from AW.

if you want a safe, more affordable option, get the 9800M from AW, with cooler for ~$400, if you want power, 'cause you're an alienware owner, go for the 280M for only a few hundred more.

 

Actually, JDELUNA, why don't you use RMclock to undervolt the CPU all the way to about 1.2V? I have X9000 and I will undervolt it at about that range to keep the laptop cooler.

 

I currently have a Intel P9500 @ stock 2.6Ghz and that does not even get that hot. If you look on my first post, running the Crysis GPU test 60 times in a row looping at my max resolution of 1440 x 900 with 8AA got a high temp of only 52C degrees. I would like to upgrade to a X9000 in the future. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Yeah, Wizzo sold me a heatsink for the 9800gt. It should be here by monday or tuesday and my 280m gtx will be del tomorrow. YEAH, I cant wait

 

Hmm the 4850 has been announced for the M17. Who is going to try to get one for the M15x?

 

Kevin Jack2.0,

I prolly wont bother with the 4850 cus I dont really like ATI anymore. I'll stick with my 280m GTX once it arrives in about 2-4 hours.

 

Yeah my new notebooks is coming with a GTX 260M, so I'll have to see how it measures up versus the 4850 and 4870.

 

Kevin,
Did you order the AW m17x? I think that one offers dual 280m

 

no he got the Clevo 15 inch

 

My 280m GTX just arrived at my job, I'm so F&^&ing excited. YEAH

 

now if only you could cool that sucker

 

Yeah really, the heatsink I bought from you should be here by the mid-end of next week. Thanks for hooking me up man, I truly appreciate it.

 

yeah. tracking indicates it left switzerland last night, so it'll probably be in paris now, waiting for the plane.

 

bump... shoot2kill keep us posted!

 

I will come up with a new thread describing how I got with the FX 3700M in Alienware M15x. I just got the card today. Jdeluna, what's the nTune version you used such that you can have stable OC? 5.05.54.00 gave me BSOD.

 

I just recieved my 280m GTX at work. I will switch out the heatsink and the current 8700gt as soon as I get home and gte my kids situated. i'll post some pics and bench marks prolly tomorrow.

PS, for some reason when I tried to run 3dmark06 on my current 8700gt over the weekend, it kept stating the " required res of 1280x720 was not supported" What the hell does this mean. I ran it on my desktop just fine. Does anyone know how I can over come this? I wanted to take some bench marks of the current 8700gt and with the new 280m GTX.

 

Angelakers,

try using "rivatune" It works perfectly for me. Everytime I used ntune on vista after sp1 it BSOD on me. I really like rivatune because you can create short keys to oc the vid card as need. For example, when I'm ready to game I press alt+G and my card oc's to 650, 1230, 800. When I'm done I press alt+E to return the card back to default setting.

ALso, I hear the driver for that card do not go well with gaming. Let us know how it does for you.

 

Just found that I could use nVidia system tools 6.03. Thanks a lot. By the way, what's the Nvidia driver are you using? I am having another problem coz the 182.05 gave me some 'snow' in the screen. I am not if it's the problem of the screen or the drivers. I am still trying to get into it. Anybody else has this problems before?

 

Some of the Nvidia drivers give me errors, etc. I have been using Dox 182.46 drivers. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

All the drivers I have tried will not install. It gives a error message stating the system can not detect the supported the hardware. hmmmmm, very strange.

 

I have decided to revert back to my 8700gt for now due the enabliliy to get any drivers working correctly. Does anyone have any suggestions as to way I cant get any nvidia and Dox drivers to F&^( install? PLease help....

 

Did you try Nvidia's latest 185.85?

 

The 185's do not work with the m15x for some stupid reason, even though it is "supported".

 

Dox 182.46?

 

You guys have to remember that the DOX drivers do not install like regular drivers, you have to follow the instructions on the website in order for it to work correctly. You have to download that .INF file and place it in the directory where the DOX drivers are unzipped. Then you have to right mouseclick on the video card in Device Manager and choose update drivers, choose the location, go to the directory where the DOX drivers are unzipped and it should find it either as the 180M or the 280M, choose that and then it will try to load it, it will give you an message saying that it is not Windows certified or something similar, choose YES, then it will install the drivers. This is the brief version. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

I think it the guy motherboard. I remember a few that had he 8600 or 8700 grapics cards and they had to upgrade the motherboard before having the 8800gtx or 9800gt to work. I know this becuse I had to with my laptop.

 

I sure hope AW offers this as some sort of upgrade option down the line. I'm tempted to do this upgrade, once the 9800M GT has lost its power, of course. Though I'm curious, where exactly would I get my hands on a 280M or 260M even?

 

JDELUNA,

I dont see any ini file downloads from the site I got the dox 185.46 driver from.
http://laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=23485

 

Go to this page:

http://laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/3


Scroll down to the section for the DOX 182.46 drivers. Choose your Windows version. Since I am currently using Windows 7 64-bit I chose the drivers for Vista 64-bit. Once on that page you should see a link for the modded INF file. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Btw, the latest driver, 186.03 is out. Maybe you should give that a whirl and see if it works this time.

 

@Jdeluna

Would you mind trying out furmark? I'd like to compare the max temp on load, I'm getting scorched with the furmark. Please and thank you.

 

I have run Furmark for about 30 minutes straight and I my temps rise up and hold to about 97-99C Degrees. You have to remember that none of the games you play will ever stress it as much as Furmark does. My friend has a Toshiba Qosmio F55 with the 9700M GTS and he ran Furmark for 3-4 hours straight and his hit and stayed steady at 100C degrees, but when he games it never reaches that high. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Why not get some software that can watch the temp while you play a high end game. Max out. Go in areas of the game that stress the gpu alot.

 

Gophn has a guide to use riva tuner to display in game temps

 

Does not Furmark stress the GPU than any game out there ?? When I looped the original Crysis GPU test for 60 passes my according to the program HWMonitor the highest temps hit about 92-94C degrees and that is at the highest resolution I can do of 1440 x 900 with 8X AA, everything on the highest settings. When I ran the DMC4 test using the 1440 x 900 ALL settings on Super High, DX10, and CQ16X AA my temps got to a high of about 84C degrees. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

shoot2kill what is different about 8700MGT'heatsink and 8800MGTX'heatsink?

 

Currently downloading the demo of Crysis for benchmark. Anyway, I reran the Furmark @ 1680*1050 8X AA. Because after 80 runs of crysis Warhead framebuffer's benchmark, the temps stood to a stand still at 83c. This time, my temp maxed out @ 82c after 30 minutes of furmark.

I think this has gotta to do with me placing the laptop elsewhere since when I was running furmark there was a piece of rug underneath it?

 

I have finally been able to get the drivers working correctly for the 280m GTX thanks to DELUNA. However, I use rivatuner to oc my cards in the past and used it on the 8700gt that I replaced with the 280m. I need to clean the reg because the 280m auto oc's to 630, when I start gaming and pushes the temp to 92-94 within 3-5 minutes. Once I clean the reg and uninstall rivatuner is should be fine. My idel temp varies between 49-54c. Havent been able to determined the gaming temp because the card auto oc toooooooo high thanks to rivatuner. I'll clean out the reg tonight at work if I have time.


Thanks DELUNA for all the pointers regarding how to get the dox 182.46 drivers to work.

 

PS:

I can say this so far. On idel, the temps are a lot better on this 280m compared to my 8700gt. Idel temp on the 8700gt was like 55-58, on the 280 its 49-54 without being in stealth mode and vista set to high performace. I'm pretty impressed at this stage in my testing. More to come later.

 

woolgather

I beleive the difference is the copper, and the positioning or shape of the sink itself. I tried to see if my 8700gt sink would fit on the 280m and did not.

 

DELUNA,

For some reason, my card does not show up as a 280mGTX, it show as a 180m gtx in device manager, rivatuner, GPU-Z, 3dmark, etc.... WHat gives? Does you card say Nvidia 280m GTX on the chip like the one nvidia's website "http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_280m_us.html"

 

ya i have seen some talk on this issue too...But, it's normal to show up as 180m gtx...can't tell you why though

 

I was lookking on nvidias sit and on other forums and it appears there is no 180m gtx is this true? I just hate to think I paid all this money for a card thats not the one I paid for.

Thanks for replying so fast KY BULLET.

 

their is not 180 m gtx quit worrying

 

It is normal. Depending on the drivers I have tried it will show up either as the 180M or 280M. I thought I read somewhere that at first Nvidia was going to originally name it the 180M but instead ended up renaming it as the 280M at the last minute. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

Awesome. Did you do the copper mod like Jdeluna? Anyway, just like the others said, don't worry about the naming, it's nothing. I guess Nvidia changed the name to make it more appealing, although technically, it's not that so.

So, I was once a 9800m GTS user, so I do see a significant performance boost, what about those of you coming from the 9800m GT? Do you think it's worth the upgrade and all?

I heard that AW will be producing the newer ATI cards, like the 4850. Heard that it performs as good as the GTX 280m, but runs cooler.

 

4850 is already out, and has been out

 

But I don't think they're sold individually by Alienware for upgrade yet, no? I do know that MSI GT725 is using it.

 

4850 has been cancelled by AW - period.
no upgrade available for the m15x officially for any GPU aside from the 8 series to the 9 series or the 38xx ati one.

any other upgrades at this time are just m15x owners self upgrading.

 

yup

but the 4850 would be nice but not better then the 280 or 260