New to Alienware. Worth upgrading?

So I received an m15x for free last weekend, I always loved the looks of these older Alienware laptop, its a 2009 I believe?

Anyways, I'm not looking to run everything on ultra, I have a high end desktop. One thing I do want to play with it is CSGO, doesn't do to well. It plays WoW classic (free servers) great. What do you guys recommend? I did order ram already.

Also if csgo is a no go, haha, what do you guys play on here? The battery wont charge as well, just replace im guessing?

CPU - i7 820q
GPU - 260m
Ram - 4gb

Thanks!

 

920xm/940xm, 2x8gb ram and gtx 970m. Also you might need a new battery.

 

Cpu upgrade really worth it? Also reading around on older posts seems like a lot of issues with getting the 970m to work on these things, is it over kill for such an older machine?

 

No any issues with 970m, just INF mod for graphics driver and mod vbios reflash i you wanna run this card colder. 920/940xm are overclockable, and cold run up to 3200-3500MHz across all cores on this machines.

 

Maybe consider getting an SSD. If you don't use your CD drive or use an external drive, you could get a caddy for pretty cheap and have two SSDs

 

I definitely put an ssd in already, was to slow lol. I bought the 920xm, now I think I might go with the 770m. Is it plug and play on these laptops? Or how do I get these drivers and mod these inf files I see people talk about.

 

I had a 970m in my m15xr2. The important thing is doing a pin mod with an L shaped adapter in between your power supply and the laptop. For some reason without this the laptop won't fully power the 970m and cpu at the same time. All you do is buy an adapter for dell laptops from amazon and take pliers and break off the pin inside. After that no power throttle issues. 970m runs like a champ in it.

 

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if we remove the centre pin, is the battery still can charging?

 

No it wont charge the battery if i remember correctly.

 

Correct. Removing the center pin disables battery charging.

 

But dont break the pin on the charger itself just on the adapter you buy from amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ETQHV4?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

 

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i have order this one i think is the same right?..


https://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-7-4MM-x...m=521342498029&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

 

980M is the best GPU you can get, but it runs too hot and throttles and is bottlenecked by the i7 920XM @ 3.3 GHZ, the 970M on the other hand is perfect in all of those ways.

 

For you, I recommend a 8950M (Firepro M6100) and a 920XM plus and an SSD/New battery, all you play is CS GO anyways, that will run you about $200 or less