How could I upgrade and would it be worth it?

Hi guys. I have never really ugraded a laptop or pc before. I'm not that tech savvy,, think the most I have done in the past was changing the RAM and applying some thermal paste lol.

I am off down the Falklands in a couple of weeks for a 4 month deployment,, and might be able to save a little while I'm away.

I was wondering about buying new. We dont really have a desktop in the house,, but at the same time my laptop is now 6 or 7 yrs old. Funny enough I got if after coming back from the Falklands the last time in Jan 11 lol.

However it also occurred to me that these gaming laptops are designed to be upgraded so it might more sense a hell of a lot of cash to just upgrade a few things.

My current setup is:

i-7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz 1730Mhz
BIOS A8
SM BIOS Version 2.6
8gb RAM (witch is says is the max)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M
500Mb HD.

My drive seems to be playing up these days but someone suggested I might be as well removing it and putting in an additional Hard drive in place of it. Most of my games these days are digital downloads and all my movies are now either streamed or saved onto external drives. I also see the newer gen laptops done have them anyway.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

 

It's not worth it I'm afraid. The CPU is simply to old and bad. The first Core I gen is just so bad in any way possible, it has low clocks, runs insanely hot and has no overclock potential at all. Even if you would upgrade ur GPU, it would be bottlenecked severely by your CPU.

 

These laptops are definitely upgradable. However you will have almost as much money in it by the time you do it as you would a more current model with roughly the same performance. This really comes down to how much you like the M15x. I upgraded one and gave it to my daughter. Can't pry it out of her hands.

First, update the BIOS to A09.

You can pick up a 920XM for around $70 and overclock it to 3.2GHz pretty easily with ThrottleStop. This is a MUST for today's games as the weakest link with this machine is the CPU. Don't bother with a 940XM unless you get a better deal on it than a 920XM as they overclock the same.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...449409?hash=item3619e19a01:g:UDMAAOSwlndZNwhm

GTX 970M is pretty much the high end graphics card for M15x. There are plenty of other choices (in random order).

GTX 680M
GTX 970M
AMD 7970M
AMD 8970M (no native fan control, it will always run full speed unless you use a program like HWInfo64)
FirePro M6000 (about $90, performs about half of a 7970M)
FirePro M6100 - a bit faster than M6000, probably no worth the price difference unless you get a good deal.
Quadro M4000M runs well in this machine. I bought two of them. They are $400, so pretty pricey.
Quadro M3000M might be a good choice as well, still pricey though.

Stay away from these cards.
GTX 880M (and 870M?) run too hot (and they pretty much suck)
GTX 780M runs hot

I have a thread on the cards I have tested in the M15x here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/deadsmileys-m15x-gpu-comparisions.801458/


The machine will take 8GB RAM modules. I have put 16GB in a few of these. You may not need it, so put this last.

Lastly, an SSD will make the machine boot and load games faster. Some put this at the top of the list, but it won't generally help you in games like a CPU and GPU will.

 

This is such a bad and misinformative post! The 920xm is old and hot yes but it does overclock very well indeed.

920xm has base clock of 2ghz on 4 cores with turbo of 2.16ghz BUT it is perfectly possible with throttlestop software to bump this base clock across ALL 4 cores to 3.3 -3.6 ghz depending on how well binned your chip is. Furthermore the 920xm features above average cooling for the CPU that allows overclocked to be done.

When I used to overclock my 920xm would run at 3.73ghz on 3/4 cores and 3.86ghz on 1/2 cores perfectly stably. When I bumped the voltage I achieved over 4ghz across all cores although the cooling needs modifying at this point.

Please don't post when you clearly haven't a clue.

 

You are the one posting a misinformative post. I'll clear up.
FIrst of all lets start with the basics, the 920XM already stock clocked is much warmer than the CPU's that would get released after it. Not only does it have compared to newer CPU's a lower clock speed, but it has also has the problem, that due to the very outdated architecture it's simply not very overclockable either. You even said yourself, if you are lucky you can get it up to around 3.6ghz without doing major cooling mods, which is low compared to newer CPU's.

Also, the clockspeeds are not everything either, 3.8k ghz on your chip is not the same as 3.8kghz on lets say a 7280hk chip, you cannot compare it since there are way more factors to consider as well, such as cache, bus speed, architeture, memory bandwitdh and even instructions like AVX etc.

There were huge improvements from the c2q series to the 1. gen I7 series, then another huge upgrade from 1st gen to sandy bridge and the last bigger improvement was made on ivy bridge. Anything that came after ivy bridge, were minor improvements. Anyone who has an ivy bridge these days does not need to upgade his CPU, since the upgrade from ivy to kaby wouldn't be big enough to justify paying a decent amount of money.

I know u don't like to hear this, but ur CPU is completely outdated and gets outperformed by basic clocked sandy bridge i7's and even low voltage CPU's from 5th gen+, which are build into ultrabooks or very cheap notebooks. I am aware that u're proud of your Alienware, I'm aware you don't want to accept the fact that your CPU is very underwhelming to this date, but there is no need to mislead other people.

Basicially what you're suggesting is, that he spends money into a notebook, that already gets bottlenecked by his CPU in many titles, so that future releases might get even more bottlenecked and you want him to do major overclock as a person who clearly has no idea what he's doing instead of spending money into a new machine or a used one that has way newer and more futureproof technology. I don't think I need to point out why your suggestion and post is ridiculous.

So I'll quote you.

 

Since when did I ever compare the 920xm to a modern chip you aggressive turd. I was simply telling you that on its own it overclocks well and in terms of real world gaming performance actually performs at 2860qm levels and even non overclocked 2920xm (WHEN heavily OCed I must add). The chip is from 2009 and based on technology than debuted in 2008. Not bad at all.

Aside the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips offered very good improvements in terms of IPC, efficiency and clock for clock performance as well as much higher clock rates resulting from above. I never disputed or dispute that. I simply dispute you saying the 920xm is complete rubbish.

Again yes I agree that the CPU does bottleneck any GPU 980M and up but there again it largely depends on the game you play what fps you get. 970M is a great chip paired with the 920xm and the upcoming E9260 will be even better.

 

The 920xm is in my opinion bad, low voltage CPU's get same performance, it doesn't get close to newer gen. i7 CPU's, generates more heat and has relatively low clock speed and performance. You have yet to make a valid point as to why the 920XM is not rubbish. Also I am pretty sure even GTX 780M and higher would get bottlenecked in titles like GTA, witcher and AoS.

Relative to the OP's needs, which is gaming, the 920XM is rubbish. I don't care how much you like it, how much you can overclock it, fact is, it's bottlenecking games, which you admit yourself, meaning it's rubbish for him since it downgrades his performance combined with very good hardware. According to his text he wants to spend a good chunk of money into either an upgrade or a new notebook, whereas the upgrade is not reasonable considering that his experience would be downgraded.

Anything that is designed to do a task (which in this case is gaming), and cannot do the task anymore is bad in my opinion. I am not saying the CPU is unusable, but for the purpose of playing new games it's bad. If the CPU is fine for you, then good for you, be happy with it, all the power to you, but if OP is asking for advice for a new upgrade which he wants to spend quite some money on and some guy like you come across telling him how awesome something is, despite not being able to fulfil the Op's needs, then you're wasting OP's time and money. Relative to (his and) my needs, the CPU is rubbish, no question about it, relative to your needs, the CPU is fine.

So please do not shove your oppinion into other peoples face because most gamers do not have the same requirements like you.

 

Never did "shove my opinion in anyones face" that is you above. I simply stated the fact that the 920xm does overclock well because your original post said it doesn't OC at all. In fact the 920xm OCs better than sandy bridge in terms of percentage OC because the base clock can be upped so much.

I REPEAT AGAIN I never said the chip is comparable to new chips nor did I tell the OP to waste his money upgrading. I REPEAT AGAIN I was simply correcting your incorrect post. Anyone that has owned a laptop in the past (or now) with a 920xm will agree with me and disagree with you.

Quite simple really. Anyway OP. My 5 eggs upgrade only if you want and if you don't plan to play just AAA titles. Also don't drop a lot of cash down on the M15x. It is a great laptop but it is sadly past its peak by a few good years. That said don't throw it out. It is a reliable piece of kit and still a good multimedia machine. If a component breaks it is cheap and easy to fix unlike a modern BGAbook.

 

You guys need to get a room.

 

Cheers guys for all your passionate advice lol. Prob going to look at a new desktop when I get back (the mrs nagging we dont have one for the house) and try and get something that will suit her and me for gaming as well. Quite a lot of sites that can give you to order similar specs to what the Alienware desktops are offering right now at fraction of costs.

I might still try popping in another Hard Drive tho as the disc drive is knackered and most games etc now are digital ,, is that something thats quite easy to do ?

 

Build your own desktop, don't ever buy prebuild!

 

In 2017, it is hard to make the recommendation to upgrade the M15x. It is extremely dated at this point, and you would likely be much better off putting that money towards a new laptop (or better yet, a desktop.....the laptop game is over these days). Figure about 70-100$ for a 920XM (which is adequate today, but is extremely power hungry and hot, overall generally inefficient), and another 200 for a decent card like a 7970M or a 680M if not 300-350$ for a GTX 970M + 50$ for the 240W PSU to run it all, you'd be in 350-450$ at that point. Plus it would be adviseable to install a SSD (though limited to SATA II) and to buy an expresscard to USB 3.0 adapter (can be flaky at times). If you are a die hard M15x enthusiast, go for it, otherwise just save money and find a different computer.

That being said, your laptop options left in the same vein as the Old Alienwares is limited only to some high end Clevo units, otherwise, everything else is soldered these days and you have zero path of upgradability. I've stopped the laptop game and when these in my signature die or become ineffective at doing what I need them to do, I will move to desktops.

 

There are some pre-builts that are good. I bought a system for my son's friend from Microcenter for $1200. It is an MSI system with good components, GTX 1070, 512GB NVME, 16GB, i7-7700K, Gigabyte Z270 motherboard. I literally could not buy the components for this price.

Normally, I would agree with you about build your own. With the price of desktop graphics cards these days some pre-builts are are very good deal.

 

I feel you. My P170SM-A bit the dust. I have a couple of M15x's that I don't use. My daughter-in-law is now on a desktop as she doesn't need mobile.

I am on a desktop too, but have my M17x R4 for travel, which I am very thankful for because I have been out of town 3 of the past 4 weeks. Lots of time to kill at night and Fallout 4 was on my Steam wishlist for a long time.

 

M17x R4 is still a beast, leaps and bounds above the M15x.