M15x 880m 870m 770m

Hey guys. So I have an 8970m that works great in my m15x but I've run into an issue. I have a m18x that I take with me to a job site but it's big and clunky and hot. That's why I got the m15x in the first place to find a lighter cooler laptop to put in my lap. Well the exhaust is very uncomfortable and burns my knees (I'm in my car for about 8 hours a week at this job site). So I am gathering resources as to the coolest running video card. I've been unable to find any heat comparisons for 880m or 870m's in the m15x. I almost bought a 970m but without a dell vbios yet it will most likely be a big waste. The 8970m under heavy load will hit about 72c to 86c and that exhaust is ridiculous. So I wanted to stick to a higher than 2gb card. I have 2 780ms and I know it runs too hot at full load so I am holding off on that. The 870m and 880m run hot too so they may not be an option but I can't find anyone putting one of these cards in a m15x. The 770m maybe the best option. The fact that the tdp is 75w must leave a ton of headroom for overclocking to make up for the drop in clocks but who knows I have no hard data on the 770m in the m15x. So as to heat and compatibility how are these cards in the m15x? I know people say it's compatible with all cards but I can't find anyone putting a 870m or 880m in their m15x so I'm willing to blaze that trail but measure twice cut once right? Thanks guys for any input.

 

You might want to try GTX 765M. Its ashame that the GTX 860M 2GB Maxwell edition was only SoC and never MXM card, that would run super cool in M15x. GTX 770M is a good option as it has 3GB VRAM, which should increase performance in games like far cry 4. I think there is a 770M for sale in the marketplace at the moment.

 

yeah I saw that. I pmed the guy but no response yet. I am hoping to get some input as to whether or not anyone has tried these other cards yet. I am also considering giving a 970m a go even without a vbios it might be worth a try.

 

I've read GTX 970M has a similar TDP to 870M i.e. around 100W as the maxwell architecture is efficient and cooler running but they turned it up for more performance. Might be interesting if it works undervolted but I think the GTX 770M which is a 75W card (design threshold of M15x...originally) is a better option.

 

880M was tried and tested by SVL 7 and works in M15x. 770M has a lower TDP than the 680M or 8970M but not substantially. The only perk is the 3GB vram.

It will loose pretty badly to even a stock 680M. If you want to match the stock 680M you would have to OC it to the point where it becomes a hotter card than the 680M. If I were you I would undervolt that 8970M right back to the lowest stable voltage at stock clocks (or minor OC) and leave it until Q1 2015 which is when AMD's HBM cards are hopefully due to release. It is very possible that we will get 970M performance in a 75W tdp envelope very soon.

Then again the 680M is pretty cool if you run some cooling mods. at 966mhz on core and 1125mhz on mem (stock 720/900) I get max 63C playing FC4. The wonderful part is I can do these clocks on stock voltage.The powerful auxiliary fan underneath reduces load temps by nearly 25C! Without it the stock cooling runs to 86C max in same game at same clocks! Clock for clock I would reckon the 680M to be about 100mhz ahead of the pitcairn equivalents. IE you would need 1066mhz on your 8970M to beat my card at 966mhz. Kepler is just that much better and more efficient(3d voltage is 0.98V vs 1.05V on 7970M for example). Even the 8970M would need more than 1.05V to probably go much above 1000mhz. From experience that is NOT an option as the heat goes up ALOT when you overvolt the 7970M which means same/similar for 8970M also you would trip the power supply unless you do a dual PSU mod.

The 680M 4GB is the best price/performance/watt choice at the moment. It beats out the 7970M/8970M/M290X cards and the new Maxwell offerings are too expensive to compete in the same category. Besides if what fatboyslimerr says is true then the 970M wouldn't run any cooler anyway. Although you could downclock it I suppose. The one weakness of the 680M is that NVidia neutered it in terms of memory bandwidth. A shame. Pushed hard you would be lucky to reach 1200mhz stable in games. I can't on my 680M Still Kepler is powerful enough to still compete well enough if you find the max stable MHz on the vram in this day and age. If it wasn't for this limitation the 680M wouldn't have been far behind the 780M or 880M at all. Nvidia like to milk so that is what we got.

 

SVL7 is running 980m and 970m in m15x in tech inferno forums so 970m should be perfect upgrade if the money is no problem.

 

Thumbs up alberty! Nice find I didn't realize he had tested already in the M15x. It was pretty much a given it would work considering the M15x track record with past cards.

Amazing stuff really! I might have to PM him to share some info about thermals with those cards on board compared with the older Kepler cards.

I would still recommend waiting for HBM cards from AMD to release though. Besides the 970M and 980M prices will have dropped by then. The 8970M 4GB is more than adequate for the coming few months.

 

Is there a link to his post? I can't seem to find a thread where he tried the 970m or 980m on the m15x. I've decided to try it out and see how it performs. I'm buying it today and I'll make a new thread to share the process.

 

Here is the link. Im also thinking to buy one if i find a good price. Good luck mate.

 

Which the 970M or 980M? Either one I am excited to see the results. The 680M isn't enough for today's poorly coded games.. FC4 urgh...

 

Yeh man! I'm waiting for further driver optimizations on 7970M. Hopelessly stuttery at the moment even on a mix of medium and high settings.

 

The 680M is clearly better as I can run very high with no stutter. However at ultra the game eventually becomes laggy and unplayable at 927/1134mhz. The reason is I have set max pre-rendered frames to 3 as it really makes the game much smoother and that eventually eats my GPU alive at 927mhz. Higher clockspeeds are not quite stable enough to last before the card throttles back to 760/900 and when that happens the game crashes. 980mhz seems to be the sweet spot.

Tonight I will flash to 1V and test again at 980mhz-1ghz should be stable. With fan mod running I get max 62C at the moment and ambient temps are falling fast here in Japan so I should be fine with a little more power!

 

Hi.Can somebody tell me what temps should i expect from 880M GTX installed into M15x? I'll be thankful for that. I dont mind if 880M will work on 780M's clocks and with lowered voltage.