M15x GPU upgrade

I'm looking to upgrade my GTX 260M, which came with the M15x when I bought it ~7 years ago. I just realized today that it doesn't support DirectX 10.1, which means I can't even start XCOM 2. I'm quite new to laptop upgrading, but it seems like the 7970M is a good choice. Are there concerns with cooling or other upgrades that need to be considered when upgrading the GPU? I'm quite comfortable with disassembly and reassembly of electronics - I work in an engineering lab and do that kind of stuff all the time - I'm just unfamiliar with and the considerations of upgrading a laptop. I don't want to accidentally brick it. Any helpful hints or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

Hi mate welcome to the forums.

Loads of threads on upgrades. The 7970m is a fine choice of card. As far as cooling goes. You may need to undervolt the card to keep the temps manageable but still beast of a card.

Some cards u gotta watch with the brackets. Possibly different thermal pads, and thermal pastes.

Oh and grab the dell version. If you buy one for a clevo or that it will come flashed with the vbios for that laptop. The card will work but u will need to control the fans manually because they will be on full pelt.

Also xcom too looks amazing.

 

I would suggest 970M. Smokes the 7970M.

 

If you are purchasing a 7970m, make sure it comes with an x-bracket because the bracket used on this model is specific for AMD cards. The screw standoffs for the x-bracket are quite tall, so for proper heatsink contact, you will want to file down those standoffs. I used a caliper to measure the height of the standoffs from my original 460m GTX card, then slowly filed down the standoffs with a metal file until the same height was reached on the 7970m's bracket. I recommend doing this with the x-bracket removed from the card. You also want to do this filing incrementally until the thermal paste spreads evenly over the GPU die after the heatsink is attached. Use a small dab of paste in the center of the die to see how well it spreads. Be careful not to to file down too much metal.

Another issue I found is that the thicker of the two heatpipes on the GPU heatsink makes contact with one of the 7970 VRMs (this was also an issue on the 6970/6990m). I fixed this on mine by slowly and carefully bending the heatpipe with a pair of needle-nose pliers. I've seen some people use hammers to do this, but I recommend a pair of pliers. You don't need to flatten the heatpipe, just bend it ever so slightly to achieve clearance from the VRMs.

As far as cooling: my card came flashed undervolted to .975V. I get a slight performance decrease, but it's worth it because the card runs much cooler. Mine idles around 35C and has never topped 66C after an hour and a half of a continuous loop of 3DMark06. I find that 1mm thermal pads on the VRAMs and 1.5mm pads on the VRMs worked fine on mine. Yours might be different. I am also using MX4 for the thermal paste.

 

True all 7970M can run stock clocks at 0.975V.

@kosti undervolting does nothing to affect performance. It is just that you wont be able to OC much without raising the voltage.

0.95V might also be worth trying. If your card is a good sample. 7970Ms have a habit of dying a few years into life.

I would recommend staying at stock clocks and finding it lowest stable voltage either 0.975 or 0.95V and then increase vram speed to 1400mhz and leave it. GCN loves bandwidth.

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Actually the firmware that's flashed on my card undervolts it to .975v but also lowers the clock speed to 715 and the memory to 900MHz. Do you have any links for firmware with stock clocks and undervolting?

 

Don't you have the vbios patcher? Can make any combo of clock speeds and voltage

 

No, can you link the vbios patcher?

 

Available to download at Tech Inferno if you're a senior member or elite member. I deleted all my AMD overclocking stuff when I got my 680M but I might have a backup copy somewhere. I'll have a look

 

I wonder what a M290X can undervolt, probably like 1v.

Guess i'll find out tomorrow.

 

I contacted the guy I bought the card from. He told me the current vbios is probably the best one he's tested on the M15X so I'm just gonna leave it alone. After a DOA 5850m and a cracked die on my m6000 I better not push my luck. This thing is already running great

 

You havent had to much luck lately with gpus lol .Im currently watching a few 7970s on the bay for bidding, if they go cheap ill buy and fire it on my credit card and flog the m6000. Not that its not a good card just want something ill have in this for a good year or too and be able to play most stuff on high settings. And that dont break the bank

 

Hate to say but 7970M won't cut it at high settings @1080p in modern releases. You'd be looking at medium settings in the new rise of the tomb raider for example.

Really, you'd do better to invest in newer tech such as 970M. I'm considering selling my 680M to get one as it should be only a £100 upgrade if I get a good price for it.

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Much would u get for the 680m. Cheapest im seeing a 970 is nearly £350. Where as the 7970m im seeing for about £160. I know twice the price much better card

 

@kosti 715mhz on core and 900mhz on vram is seriously underwhelming!

Get that back up to 850/1250 minimum at 0.975V. My 7970M didnt die. I sold it

@FATBOY I thought you were happy with 680M performance it is truly underrated!


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I am happy with it in current games but I can't add more shader cores or increase memory bandwidth which will be needed in newer games. Just got to face facts, its an old card.

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Indeed. 780M is still good!

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780Ms seem to be going for $300 so that would be a £40-50 upgrade.....interesting. Wonder what thermals would be like given my cooling mod.

 

Thermals would be ok I reckon. 880M is the one with issues

 

M290X is today, if it undervolts to 1v or less I'll be happy.

 

M290X should undervolt to minimum 0.975V at stock considering it is better binned than the 7970M. Questions is can you change the voltage on it easily?

Another thing I noticed on the 7970M back in the day was that if I downclocked the vram it would never go below 1200mhz even if I flashed the clocks lower.

I would actually recommend leave it at 1V M15x can handle that. See if you can hit 1ghz on the core stable.

 

i honestly cant wait till i can put some more money into this laptop after watching all you guys.

I was really interested in the full gpu copper heatsink the custom one svl7 was doing until it got messed up. See how much heat the laptop could take.

No need to down clock or vent mods and such, always thought it was interesting

 

The problem with the all copper heatsink is that you would still need a fan mod.

The sink would absorb lots of lovely heatsink and along not exactly radiate it. The M15x simply wasn't designed for 100W+ GPUs.

Original GPU's for the laptop were 75W with headroom up to 100W. 680M and 7970M pushed that. 780M is a bit over that, 880M and 980M stupidly over that!

Once I receive my 210W adaptors cand HOPEFULLY confirm my problems are gone. I will apply CLU and see how it goes. One has to be careful with the M15x heatsinks as only the core contact point is copper and the rest aluminium but it should prove very effective!

Then I have no more mods in the pipeline whatsoever! 32GB ram is something interesting though and I will follow that with interest. The 32GB kit from Corsair only came out last month so perhaps lower CL ram will release at some point and of course prices will hopefully drop too.

Having that much ram might come in handy. Considering 920xm has fairly low IPC maybe the ram can be used to speed things up somehow...?

 

ram disk cache to speed up our measly sata 2.

 

Also M290X is in and is working good.

 

Any mods required for the 290 or does it fit fine, I presume cause its just rebadged with more mem it works fine

Tried undervolting yet ?

Yeah the copper heatsink was super cool shame about that never thought about a fan mod but surly it wouldn't be a massive undertaking

I've been looking at other laptops with beffier cards to see how there cooled and the heat sinks look alot smaller than the m15x ones . some just a small copper shim over the core or that's what it looks like from some images

Ram disk cache would be cool . can't wait to see if someone ever tries it see if it works with 32gb

 

Running at 1.025v right now, will go down to 1v later today.

 

Is it an 8GB vram model? Does it have ram chips on the underside of the card? Did it fit OK? Got any thermal pads or anything on underside?

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4GB, no ram on the bottom and you need to sand just like the 7970m.

 

just a standoff sand down. That dosent seem to bad. Looking forward to seeng your benchmarks and more importantly the temps lol.

 

Never had to sand my 6970M, 6990M, 7970M, 680M or 980M in the M15x.

What exactly are you sanding? It should not be necessary!

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I've also never sanded down 6990M, 7970M or 680M. Just need some proper screws.

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Yeah I don't know I think my screws are unusually long or I got sent the wrong backplate, I had to sand the backplate down to get the die to even touch the heatsink. I removed C-clips too.

 

He's referring to the M290X I sent him, the same exact one I had in my M15x, which I never had to sand either. I've had the 6990M, 7970M, R9 M290X, and 780M in the M15x before I sold it, and none of them required sanding (including the one I sold to Gofspar). I don't know what his situation is, never had it happen to me. May be worth mentioning I had a ATI 5730 shipped stock with my M15x, and all I had to do was remove the c-clips on the screws to get it to make proper contact with the heatsink.

 

I think I either have a funky set of heatsink screws, or my heatsink is just genuinely broken and not dissapating heat correctly.

ordered a new heatsink, what backplate do I need?

 

I am not aware of any differences or alternate backplates between any of the Dell 6990M, 7970M, 8970M, or R9 M290X. I've never had to sand any of them to get them to fit.

 

Welp since I get I destroyed my backplate time to spend $35 on one, damn it.

 

What did you do to the old one??

 

its a 460m backplate and wont work, will put pressure on the transistors on the back

 

I mean the backplate on the M290X, how did you destroy it??

 

sanded it, wouldnt work right anymore if i used standard length screws

 

That is the problem. Always source correct screws. Hunt for them. Scrounge around for them. Heck even buy them on ebay.

I personally believe sanding is not worth it and a likely cause of gpu damage. So many gpus proven to work with zero sanding needed it is just a question of having the correct parts. Namely xbracket and compatible screws.

I would love to slap CLU on my cpu and gpu right now but I know I must first test the new psus that will take a month to get here.

So I will bide my time and patiently get things done perfectly

New gpu and even used decent mxm gpus cost a pretty penny. An xbracket with matching screws might seem like an unnecessary extra cost but it is worth every penny!

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I was told stock screws without c clips would work fine, didnt not work at all.

If someone has a 7970m installed tell me what I exactly need then, I just bought ANOTHER full M15X GPU heatsink with screws and a 6990M x-bracket what else do I need?

 

The 6990M x-bracket definitely works as I used one on my 7970M. You'll also need decent 1.0mm thermal pads and thermal paste obviously.

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I have Thermal Grizzly kryonaut that I use for subzero, should work fine and Phobya XT pads.

Did you use stock screws?

 

whats clu ?

Im currently watching a 7970 on the bay that has the bracket missing, im guessing the one from my m6000 would fit it ok?

When i had the 6970 before it died. They didnt fit to great either. The screws left such a large gap. I didnt take the clips off or change the screws. Maybe if i had they wouldnt have died. Killed 2

 

CLU: Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra. It is liquid metal paste.

Destroys aluminium though. Both gpu and cpu heatsink in the M15x have copper core contact point BUT the rest of the construction is made of aluminium.

I will be taking my sweet time to apply this properly to ensure NOTHING gets onto the aluminium part of the heatsinks! Thing is the difference between this stuff and the best thermal paste is large! Something like 8-10C under load or more difference. Really worth it!

 

I had CLU on my 920XM, and it helped sorta.... 3.6ghz around 85 degrees, but I think it was nehalems fault. I really have been spoiled by the 2920XM/3920XM, which I had before the 920XM, so it was real tough to go back and eventually I had to sell.

 

Hopefully USPS is quick, Raidriar shipped my backplate and the guy form Ebay shipped my heatsink, hopefully here by saturday.

 

Well no contest really. Sandy bridge alone is already a very decent jump in performance, IPC and efficiency. Since then not so much. Still though Nehelem is "good enough"