M15x upgrade/install advice

Is thee a 4 ram card available for the M15x or no?

 

Why are you so hung up on vram? the core is what matters, way more than vram......a 2gb m6100 will outperform a 4gb k4000m any day of the week and the k4000m is twice as expensive. by the time you get to 4gb cards with the same performance or better than the m6100 you might as well shell out for the 970M

 

Yes, i7-920xm CPU.

 

It’s already stock clocks since I just replaced the mobo I haven’t oc’d anything. I’ll try the stealth approach though! It almost seems like the cpu is working too hard and the gpu isn’t working much at all. Do you think reseating them inside would work?

 

No, M15x board design has it so the CPU can consume all the power it needs, but the GPU starts getting starved if the board total starts exceeding 150W. You need to undervolt the m6100 and reduce your CPU multipliers to reduce total power draw.

 

Oh, okay. The 920 + m6100 can exceed 150w?
I’ll try using my 240w psu tonight and see if that fixes it then.

 

Oh yes easily. 920XM at stock is a 55W CPU and exponentially increases power consumption when you overclock it. 3.6ghz pulls north of 90W when all 4 cores are stressed, very power hungry chip.

 

So the m6100 is that good aye? I am "hung up" on ram because I thought the more ram, the better and stronger performance. Why else upgrade the video card if your not going to get better performance from it I would think.

 

I don't know where you got that notion from, and if you've been around computers as long as you imply you have, you ought to really know this by now. This applies to desktops and laptops alike. The core is far, far more important than vRAM. Don't believe me?
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...M-vs-AMD-FirePro-M6100-FireGL-V/m8941vsm10287

The 7970M is also "only" a 2GB vRAM card, and the gap widens further...
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-K4000M-vs-AMD-Radeon-HD-7970M/m8941vsm9441

vRAM only matters if you need to store more textures for high resolutions, vRAM becomes slightly more significant at those high resolutions like QHD or UHD.

 

Dude, chill already, im not questioning your knowledge or what your saying, but you like to "attack" me because I said I worked on computers years ago. I am here trying to get help and make friends, not get snooty ass remarks like your making to me.

 

A little light reading on your end would answer many of your questions. The fact I posted exactly why vRAM doesn't really matter in terms of performance earlier in this very thread and you circle back to asking the same question is irritating. Putting 920xm into google instantly shows you it is in fact a CPU

 

If everyone did reading about this, there would be no reason for these chat forums. And the reason why I asked the same question twice in error is because I was taught that more ram/memory/vRam, etc will give better performance to a computer on which ever part your upgrading. Thta's why people upgrade to a 8 gig video card in their desktop computers, to have more power and performance. Are you saying that vram and regular ram on a video card are not the same thing and do different things to the graphics?

 

video ram = vRAM and its function is secondary to that of core function. Some cards have slower cores and more vram because it is a marketing gimmick similar to that of megapixels in cameras. core is the most important thing. It just so tends to be in desktops that higher performance cores comes with more vram, but this is not always the case in laptops. higher resolutions, like I said before, need more vram. M15x is not going beyond 1080P so vram is really secondary. 8GB+ vram is needed by people who run 4K displays because it takes an exponential amount more space (vRAM) to store all the textures needed at that resolution. So we circle back to my original recommendation of the M6100 as a solid, cheap upgrade to the M15x since it seems you are on a budget

 

Yeah, I am liking your idea about the M6100 for sure, that will be the route I go. Am I stuck with my 1600x900 graphics on this laptop? Anyway to upgrade it?

 

Yes, there is a 1080P panel that was made for the m15x, you can grab a refurb panel here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-A...886947&hash=item3d493f0f76:g:jnwAAOSwAj5ZxDu-

 

wOW, thats a good deal for that, only 60 bucks....Thanks Raid

 

Running the 240w psu with stock clocks on everything. no luck

 

Are you running m6100 or 970M?

 

Yeah, the 920xm + m6100

 

Did you try toggling stealth mode on/off a few times?

 

Yeah I did. I also made sure my power settings were on performance, drivers updated, and I flashed my bios to A09 since I just replaced the mobo and it came installed with A08 (which after I replaced it now I’m having these problems)

 

I’m at a loss then, I never had this kind of problem with Nvidia or AMD

 

I’m getting the 970m today anyways so I may just end up selling the 920xm + m6100

 

It's very strange, AMD is not usually the one to have any sort of throttling problem. I certainly never had a problem with the 7970M or 8970M in the M15x I don't see why the M6100 should be any different.

 

Could it have anything to do with not having the center pin pulled on my psu maybe?

 

No, I don’t pull the pin on mine and I don’t have any throttling

 

Hmmm, I’m out of ideas. I’ll pull the m6100 tonight and put the 970m in and check if that runs correctly. I’m wondering if when I had the 920xm oc’d and it was running the m6100 at 100% all the time if it somehow got damaged. I’ll play with it a little more tonight before I swap the gpus.

 

Unlikely that it was damaged, if it was you wouldn’t be able to get back into windows

 

so for this 970m do I put it in, boot, and then install the driver? or install the driver before I put it in?

 

Install the 970M card first. You must modify the INF before you can install the driver

 

Alright, ive got the file modified. but, its not allowing me to save it due to "not being an administrator" when i am?

 

I extract the installer to the downloaded directory, mod the INF there, and run the installer from there.

 

I managed to activate the admin account, mod the file, and it’s installing now ☺️

 

This 970m runs so good and stays SO cool it’s ridiculous. Ahhhh

 

@Raidriar im trying to re-install a modified 970m driver again after a system restore (I successfully did it earlier) but now for some reason when I download and save the file and it runs the install which will obviously fail because I haven’t modified it yet, after it fails it immediately auto removes the driver files I need to modify. Any idea what’s going on here?

 

Honestly I feel nVidia's drivers now are worse than AMDs because of this moronic crap they are pulling to try and stop people modding the inf files (which shouldn't even be needed in the first place). I've heard the only way you can do it is to copy the extracted driver folder once the installer starts to run, once you have copied it you can close the installer. Alternatively, try and download the older version of the drivers.

 

Cant you right click, extract the installer?

The older versions allowed that with either 7zip or winrar.

 

No I can only open the installer.
@Arrrrbol thats garbage, I figured it might have something to do with them trying to “enforce” the modifying of their files. I’ll try the copy method and if that doesn’t work I’ll give the older ones a shot too. What a joke this is.

 

I have 7 zip and I can right click and extract the exe and get all the folders and the installer..

 

My mistake, I must’ve screwed it up. I’ll try that when I get home later tonight.
I’m just clicking extract files then correct?

 

Yes, extract into a folder, mod the .inf, run the setup.

 

Wow wo stop this is misleading. No the M15x is not EC limited. You can push well over 180W. In fact I have run (and still have it to this day) dual 210W Dell adaptors and achieved a power draw of over 280W when I had the 920xm clocked to 4.2ghz across all 4 cores and a 680M overclocked to 1ghz. This when playing Wolfenstein 3D New Order years bac in 2015

The thing to consider is that the M15x will "limit" power only when the center pin on the power adaptor isn't disabled. Having a charge adaptor (the 150W will do) and a gaming adaptor with pin pulled out solves the issues and allows you to pull power to the limit. The stock adaptor you can use to charge the battery.

Also the CPU can handle 970M easily not just a 8970M. Don't write off the 920xm that easily. Without overvolting or additional cooling (things I did to achieve clocks mentioned above) you can run 3.3-3.6ghz across all 4 cores which put it on par with a 2860qm chip in terms of performance.

As for cooling liquid metal TIM is the best way to go although it is both expensive and will not allow multiple applications without wrecking your heatsinks.

 

Also don't get a 240W adaptor they are badly built and will die on you in no time. If you want to game and overclock 210W Dell all the way.

 

Awesome man I got it to work, modded and installed no problem. Thanks for solving that for me! +rep!

 

I know about the center pin, and you're right. You can fix it by isolating the pin.

No, we did a test, the 940XM is to weak for 970M, we have seen considerable performance downgrade in multiple games.

 

Not true, Delta 240W is a solid PSU. Flextronics 240W is the garbage one.

 

Hello again @Raidriar, not sure if this is relevant or if you could help me, but my M15x is still running great since the 940xm + 970m install. But, I’m curious as to if there are any MXM alienwares that actually have supported drivers for the 970m. Was thinking about upgrading to a later model than the M15x to try and get away from the 1st gen i7’s. And before anyone bashes me for not just upgrading to brand new or desktop or stop wasting money lol, I enjoy playing around with these older machines.

 

Also, if there’s a correct forum for 970m supported laptops. Please point me in the right direction so I’m not in the wrong section. Thanks!

 

Alienware 18 for sure, Alienware M18x R2 maybe, as 980M is natively supported in Alienware 18 and M18x R2

 

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Ok cool thanks, I’ll probably just stick with my 15x until maybe something like those pop up cheap and broken kinda like the m11xr2 I scored for cheap just to play around with. Also, everything seems to be running correctly on the 15x but I’m curious after the more reading I do about custom BIOS and VBIOS. Would I benefit from something like that on my 15x?