M15x - Plug & Play upgrades (New User)

Attached is a DxDiag report.

M15x has a AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5000. I am having troubles with just about any gaming. I need a simple Plug and Play solution for a upgrade. I see the 7970m is promising but there is modifications that need to be done. Has the fan issue been fixed? or does it require it to be set by user?

What is the best card to go with that I can drop right in? Any links to a exact card on Ebay would be fantastic.

 

The only ones we recommend are the 5870 and 460m. After that, any card needs modded drivers and sometimes BIOS mods to work properly.

 

Outside of officially supported cards it depends on your technical proficiency for how "plug and play" it is. My GTX 970m took about 2 hours including install, drivers and vbios with all the files prepped ahead of time, but if you're less technically proficient that could easily take much longer. Essentially all the installs outside of the officially supported cards will require extensive research on these here forums and probably over at tech inferno too just to make sure you know what you're getting into. Many of the cards are not straight forward.
Good luck.

 

Whats up with a 6990m? Whats required to install one of these?

7970m Is there a fix to the fan issue or does it require a controller program to run to manually set fan speeds?

Plug & Play is to install the card and DL drivers. Nothing else.

 

Unreal! I cannot believe you are being discouraged the way you are!

The 7970M is about as plug and play as it gets when talking M15X upgrades - ESPECIALLY for something that wasn't technically an official offering. You remove your original card, install the new one, apply thermal pads to the correct places (an image of the layout is on here) and apply thermal compound, install the heatsink and fire up the system. That's it. It works. Having said that, it's recommended for you to do a vBIOS flash to make the card run at a lower voltage, which will greatly help with temperatures. That's the ONLY reason to undervolt. As far as the process, there is a massive step by step process posted with all the tools and files you need to complete the process.

To give you an idea, I've never tackled a laptop upgrade ever, but have built and fixed many desktops. The process is simple and straightforward. The only major thing you need to do is read, read and read, do your research and buy the necessary items to support the mod: 1.0MM thermal pad at 100mmx100mm and IC Diamond thermal compound. Rest is understanding and knowledge of the process.

That said, once you get your video card upgraded, consider a 920XM or 940XM processor in the future with a 210 or 240 watt power supply to support everything. The 740QM will feed the 7970M well, but you will have occasions in certain games where the processor will bottleneck the videocard. Minor, but an issue with SOME games.

No other video card option will meet the 7970M for efficiency and easy of install. Ensure you buy a Dell vendor model. You can consider the 8790M as it's just a higher vram model of the 7970M. Alternatively the 970M from Nvidia is the current "beast" card you can buy, but not as "plug and play" as the AMD options.

 

I upgraded mine with 920xm and 7970m. Works beautifully and it was a straightforward install. Fallout 3 works nicely on Ultra settings so it's not too bad even on openworld games, but obviously may bog down on current generation games. Haven't tested them yet (GTA 5), but I've been occupying myself with Fallout 3 and Skyrim lately since I never finished those games from the past.

I have a gaming desktop so I play my current gen games on there and try to beat older games that I never had chance to beat with the m15x. Fun level is still equal!

 

Hi Sizz,

You didnt have to change your PSU and pin etc ?

 

Nvidia cards are just as plug and play. Onnly the needs a bit of modding.

This however is a piece of cake. As things stand there isnt much point investing in an AMD card if you are serious about gaming. They havent put out a viable offering since 2012.

Sent from my SM-A500FU using Tapatalk

 

It has already been confirmed from two sources that the Firepro m6000 is also plug and play. No mods of any kind are needed to get it working on the M15X.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m15x-gtx-660m-upgrade.784999/page-3

https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/5743-amd-firepro-m6000-and-m15x/

 

This is true. Modding the nvidia driver files only take 1 minute to edit though. The card itself is plug and play.

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Having done this for the first time on Saturday, I would say first time takes about 10 minutes to get your head round it then after that subsequent driver mods would take literally 30 seconds.