Alienware 17 r3 GPU options to upgrade to Quadro?

I have a new Alienware 17 R3 with a GTX 970M GPU and it is not working for what I am trying to do with Autodesk Revit and Sketchup modeling. Based on the performance monitoring it looks like the gpu is maxed out the whole time i am in the program and performance is awful. Looks like my card is great for gaming but not so great for pro work. I have read some threads here and it looks like I can replace the GPU.

I am not sure how to find the following information:

-What cards are supported ( A lot of reading has led me to the Quadro family for what I am trying to do )
-Where can I find a mobile GPU that will work
-What else do I need to accomplish this (based on some other threads it seems more involved than just a swap)

Thanks for any help in advance, here are the specs on the machine I have:

AW17R3-3758SLV
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M
3GB GDDR5 dedicated video memory
Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
8GB DDR4 2133MHz memory
17.3″ 4K Ultra HD LED-Backlit Anti-Glare display with IPS
1TB HDD and 128GB SSD
Windows 10 Home 64-bit

 

GPU is soldered here... if you want a Quadro machine, get a Clevo P771DM with quadro card etc...

 

If you wish to keep your 17 R3, you could get a Graphics Amplifier and a desktop Quadro card (like an M4000 or K4200). However, this hasn't been attempted before, so success is uncertain.
If you don't wish to keep the 17 R3 (return it), then Dell, MSI, Clevo, HP, and Lenovo have some laptops (workstation laptops, or just regular Clevo laptops) that use Quadro and/or FirePro GPUs that you can consider.

 

Thanks for the info. Can you guys tell me where you found this information? Everything I have been able to find gives the impression that it is removable, but that after the m17x R2 only a single MXM card can be installed as compared to a dual card setup in the previous models. I have not been able to find any specific information relating to the model I have.

I am trying to find something specific to reference in hopes of figuring out which AW17 can handle which cards because I am really happy with this laptop for everything other than the 3D modeling software, and I would like to stick with something similar if I have to swap the laptop.

 

You're thinking of the m17xR3, which was released in 2011. The m17xR3 uses Sandy Bridge mobile processors and came with a GTX 400m, GTX 500m, or HD 6000m series GPU. It can go up to a GTX 780m / GTX 880m and HD 7970m / R9 m290x unofficially.
The 17" laptop you have is the 17 R3 (no m, no x), released just recently. Uses Skylake CPUs (soldered), GTX 970m or GTX 980m (soldered), and is compatible with the Graphics Amplifier.
You should have looked in this section ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/2015-alienware-13-15-17.1119/). The m17x and 17 section here excludes the 2015 17" laptops.

 

I am not familiar with the Autodesk Revit and Sketchup modeling and the associated workloads you are putting on your GPU with those programs, but you say the performance is bad. Are there any options to enable/disable hardware acceleration, I'd be checking that hardware acceleration is enabled. I know that for AutoCAD and Inventor this make a huge difference to the performance.

Again I'm not sure what your exactly trying to do or your program configurations, its just a thought.

 

Nvidia is boosting these programs only when using quadro cards at purpose. Quadro cards are slower than normal GPUs but they use drivers that boost them in some professional apps.

If you would have Radeon 6990M then you can flash it by vBIOS to FirePro but with Nvidia it's not that easy.