upgrading GPU, is this possible ?

Hi there,

First i'd like to thank you all for helping me with lot of detailed answers & guides to my questions. I'm glad that i found this forum with such great people that are experienced.

So again i have one more question, I always thought that one of the reason why alienware is so expensive is because of you can upgrade most of it. like the GPU mostly. Am i right? is that possible to upgrade my gfx from 460m to higher one in near future ?

For your information i have m15x corei7 740QM with 1GB Gtx 460m



Thanks again

 

Well, at this point upgrading to a 6970m is possible as well. I'm sure as new GPU's come out, there will be those that would have similar achitecture as to the current compatible ones, thus allowing us to plug those in.

 

For upgrading to the ATI 6970M click here

 

I think i should've been more clear. I am planning to upgrade my gfx in future to GTX 560m or GTX 580m


is that possible with my current GTX 460m ?

Anyone else upgraded from 460m to different one ?

 

There is a possibility with replacing your 460m GTX with a 560m as they are almost identical. Performance increase won't be that great though. 6970m is still better unless you are a specific Nvidia user (fanboy )

 

Yes i am huge fan of nvidia So you mean there wont be much performance between 460 and 560 ? What about 580 ? is it possible to upgrade to that ? Or do you think i should go for 560 with 2GB or just stay with 460 and upgrade to 2GB instead of 1GB.

 

I put the 470m in the M15x, which is stronger than the 560m at stock. However it doesn't run perfectly, you need to modify the VBIOS to make it work and I had trouble overclocking it.

The 580m/485m have a very similar architecture, so chances are that it will need a modified VBIOS to work at 3d speeds too.

 

460-560 are pretty much the same card, 560 is just clocked higher. 460m can easily oc to same levels and beyond. svl manage to get the 470m working with a few work arounds, but so far no other nvidia cards have been test yet.

edit: svl you fast hahaha

 

Wha? You can't upgrade the memory amount on the GPU. The 460m is 1.5GB as is the 560m. The 560m may be more efficient so it will have a lower voltage with lower temps but they are essentially exactly the same.

 

No i meant to say upgrading this 460m which i have right now to 1.5GB 460m. So does that make any better with games ?

Also another question, i have 500GB SATA HDD and if i want to add 160GB SSD additionally, is that possible ?

 

No you will need to replace the HDD, not place for a second one. How come you only have 1GB mem on your 460m? As far as I know, all 460m's have 1.5GB... Care to give us a GPU-z screen shot?

 

The only way to have an SSD and a HDD is by replacing the optical disc drive with the HDD (you need a caddy for this).

1GB 460m? Doesn't make sense... unless it has a 128bit memory interface, never heard about this, except for the BB model of the Asus G73JW.

 

Could always use the E-sata connector, no?

 

Sure, this works very well.