Looking for Upgrade Advice

Howdy. I have an m15x with an i5 540m CPU and a 5850m GPU. I mostly use this computer for gaming, surfing the web, and Word document stuff. The i5 540m has hyper-threading and a turbo mode that just breaks the 3.0GHz mark. It seems like this CPU should be fine for gaming, so I was thinking that I should maybe upgrade the GPU first. If I stick with this CPU it would seem that I would have plenty of juice left over for the 7970m GPU. You guys don't think that the i5 540m would bottleneck the new GPU do ya?

I'll get to the point. It's not practical for me to build a monster desktop computer just yet as I'm going to be moving around a lot, so would I be better off for gaming if I upgraded the CPU or the GPU, or should I wait and see if the next 8XXXm graphics cards are compatible?

I appreciate your advice. I'm learning more all the time!

 

I've got a GX60 with the A10-4600M and 7970M, and I barely notice a CPU bottleneck. Allegedly a low end i3 is more powerful than the A10, and I still pull solid playability in games like Far Cry 3 with everything on ultra. DEFINITELY go GPU first, but if you don't need to upgrade right away, I would hold out for the 8xxx series - if nothing more than it will drop the cost of the 7970M and maybe you can get a new CPU as well for whatever price you are looking at now. The new high end 88xx and 89xx series is due in Q2 2013, so it's a little ways out.

FYI the A10 benchmarks about the same as the most powerful Core 2 Duo Extreme, to give you an idea of how little the CPU bottlenecks gaming.

 

What games are you wanting better performance in? What kind of fps are you getting with your current gpu? Honestly, ive thought of upgrading my gpu as well, but for some reason my 5850m is still running new games on high/ultra settings 1080p at 30-60fps with a 750/1100 oc. So im still holding off on the upgrade til nextgen.

 

I like to play games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and Age of Conan. FPS varies from game to game and which graphics settings I select of course, but they're generally not playable on the upper settings.

I haven't really been able to run any games on ultra settings except for really old ones. I play Guild Wars 2 on lower end settings, but it still looks pretty good. Skyrim and Diablo 3 are played on mediumish settings. Age of Conan didn't play on very high settings either, and it's not the newest game around. I'm glad that my laptop can even play these games, but it would definitely be nice to be able to crank up the settings a bit. Some of these games look stunning on Ultra/High settings.

I remember being glad that I didn't spring for the 5870m back when that was the upgrade that everyone seemed to be doing. It seems like these newer beastly GPUs keep rolling out and our M15Xes keep on being relatively compatible. I just wonder how long our M15Xes will be able to support these newer generation graphics cards. I'm beginning to lean towards maybe waiting a year or so. I hope parts like the 920xm/940xm CPUs and the 7970m GPU will still be available a year from now at a reasonable price. Not that I have found a 940xm at a reasonable price yet.

 

Get a 7970m or 680m (probably 7970m) for now and see how it performs. From there on you can upgrade the CPU. If you do it the other way, you'll still be GPU bottlenecked. When getting a cpu upgrade, you'll want something like a 820/840QM minimum, but I'd recommend a 920XM. I'm running a 920XM/7970m combo and it's not bad for a laptop from 2009. The difference between my old 260M and the new 7970m is vast! You'll see similar performance. Since your 540m has hyper-threading, it should help keep up with the 7970m hopefully. I'm actually curious to see how it performs since the CPU is only 35w. Most people with a higher end GPU are running quad-cores.



If you guys are running games maxed out(everything on ultra with max AA) at 1080p with 60fps, then your games aren't demanding or it's not "maxed out". Most of my games make my GPU suffer at 1080p maxed out.

 

With my gpu the only things i lower are shadows an things like msaa. Other than that everything else is on high or maxed. To OP, is you 5850m running stock?

 

A cheaper upgrade to consider might be the i7 640M. It is still an i5 but it clocks impressively high (up to 3.46ghz!). On the whole a fast clocked i5 is more than the enough for gaming. This chip might be a great partner for the 7970M being only a 35W tdp chip.

While a little fsb tuning to bring it's speed up even higher!

The i7 920XM can stably run 3.6ghz at on 1 or 2 cores at 27x. This isn't alot more than the 640M while a fsb tweak could bring the 640M to similar speeds. However the power consumption difference between the 2 chips is vast! The only thing I see in the 920xm's favour is the 1333mhz memory it can run on, while the 640M can only use max 1066mhz. Also naturally if a game uses 4 cores efficiently then naturally the 920xm will charge ahead.

The main problem I envisage is ENDURO. All i5's and the i7 620/640M have a built in IGP. This means the 7970M will try to switch between the chips. I heard Enduro is a bit of a mess. With the 920xm there is no IGP so that also means no enduro issues. On the next gen 8000M I suppose enduro will be alot better.

 

I don't think spending money on a dual-core processor is wise since the difference between a i5 540m and i7 640m won't be too much. (I had both on different laptops and there wasn't much difference I can visually see.) Also price on the 640m is a bit high. You can get a quad-core for the price the 640m is selling for. I'd say get the gpu upgrade before the cpu, see how it runs and then get a new CPU, preferably a quad-core. The 920XM will give your m15x new life. Enduro is definitely something that can be a problem so getting another processor with an IGP before a GPU upgrade wouldn't be good either since we don't know if the m15x will have those issues.

 

I think that it should not bottleneck it. The 7970 should be a very good option.

 

To khetik- I sometimes overclock my GPU a bit for gaming, but I've had problems keeping it stable if I go beyond 690 core clock. I have even worse luck with memory clock OCing. I've tried a bunch of different OCing software too.

To King of Interns- I actually wanted the i7 640M originally, but that was no longer an option when it came to selecting the parts for this laptop.

I don't have a lot of time to research Enduro because I'm in the process of moving, but a guy here---> AMD mobile graphics switching "Enduro" technology has problems... - TechSpot Forums says that Alienware can bypass Enduro switching. If so, that would be great. I'm thinking I'll upgrade the GPU first and see how that goes. It would be nice if I could couple the i5 with something like the 7970m or better so that I don't run into power starvation issues and need to underclock the GPU. An i7 920xm might have to come a little later down the line if I run into issues or just decide to go with a four core.

Thanks for all of the advice!