New M9750 Videocard?

Hi guys, I've bought my Alienware M9750 about a year ago.. It has the NVIDIA 7950 GTX with SLI video card. Now I would like to upgrade it, but I'm no wiz kid. I want a new video card, best of the best.. Also with SLI if possible.. What videocard will I be able to put in this rig?

Thanks in advance!

 

really long link, click here

 

I the 8700M GT with SLI that much better than the 7950 GTX?

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

yes, it may be noticible performance increase. it'll depend on other system specs.

good luck finding one though. you best bet is to contact Alienware. I know that the LCD connector for my 7900 (dell inspiron 9400) is completly different than the connector for the 8700M (Dell XPS M1730)

 

actually, in terms of performance, two 7950GTX will be faster than two 8700m-gt. the only advantage the 8700m-gt has is the suport for DX10. otherwise, the 7950 will perform better.

 

He didn't say there were two 7950's...

 

yes he did

 

I love posting constructive things

edit: bah whizzo beat me to it

 

Keep it clean guys.

 

You're at the end of the line in terms of upgrading; the 8700M GT as whizzo noted is not as fast as the Go7950GTX.
There's no true DirectX 10 games out right now, and based on what we have been seeing, there won't be any for some time.

 

this makes me kind of sad as an 8700 owner (single)

 

Maybe you should look forward to replace those cards with the ATI 3870. I remember someone tried them and they worked. I am not sure if crossfire does though.

 

yeah if you can put a ATI Mobility 3870 in there without any modifications that would extend the life of your laptop to play the mid to highend games for about another few years. If it does fit and work with the 3870 could there also be a possibility that the ATI Mobility 4850 or 4870 *may* work ?? Would be nice !!! God Bless

 

yup i second that i think it was ichime that put the 3870's in there

 

But where are you going to get a pair?

 

loads of m17 owners will be scrambling to unload their HD3870s when the time comes to upgrade to two HD4870s.

 

Yeah but I can't say buying used cards from m17 owners and voiding my warranty would be all that attractive for a card that performs between an 8700 and 9800.

 

umm you have no option other then the 8700 to keep your warrenty

other then that anything you put in there will void it and the dual 3870's run any game just about maxed out they perform very well

 

I know, it sucks.

 

Forget the warranty. Just keep the old cards and when anything happens just put them back in. Alienware shouldn't know that you changed the cards anyway. It's your laptop. Do with it whatever you want and it's legal, trust me .

 

lol could go with that to and the 3870 is a pretty good card for the price unbeatable

 

Thanks for all the replies guys!
But does the ATI Mobility 3870 fit in my M9750? Does this card come with SLI? Can I put two of them in my laptop? And.. Is that card really THAT good?

Thanks again!

 

it's estimated to run closely with the 8800gtx, perhaps a little under, which is just the same performance as a 7950GTX SLI setup, though, you're avoiding SLI rendering issues with one single card, and probably using less power and generating less heat, thus perhaps extending the life of your laptop as well as playability (the card supports DX 10.1).

now, with a 3870X2 setup, you might perhaps be able to crank out little bits of additional power, though, it really hasn't been tested too much on the m9750, so i don't think we really know what the 3870X2 can do for the machine, but one 3870 should suffice for the future. i opted for the one year warranty, and that is already out, so come time people are selling their 3870 be sure to note that i will provide whatever benchmarking i can because i'm going to buy at least one.

 

Hmm thanks for the advice!
I really want to max out my games.. Got this laptop over a year ago.. It ran all the games back then smooth as hell, COD 4 is no problem.. But now.. With the new games on the way (Empire: Total War) this beast is feeling like a little puppy now..

 

lol i maxed out fear 2 and fall out3 max aa and af and grid

 

try downloading some new drivers via www.laptopvideo2go.com

try out Dox's custom forcewares. 180.84.1 and 185.20 are pretty good. i'm using 182.5 right now, and the 185.20's performed better.

also, try installing the new audio codecs and chipset drivers found in the M9750 tweaks and drivers thread (the first sticky under this subforum).

clean out your vents, and try undervolting your processor then perhaps OC it a few mhz. also try out nhancer as it works well with many sli profiles.

you can also change the resolution size for games, but disable nvidia scaling which makes the resolution smaller but keeps it native looking (IE, a smaller resolution would cause black bars around the screen, though, keeping the picture very crisp and letting you run it in higher detail)

 

Thanks for the advice.. But where can I download the chipset drivers for my CPU? All I see are drivers for Desktop boards..

And what does forceware do? (sorry.. I'm no computer guru)

 

look in the m9750 stick here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=203797

all drivers and apps update every thing prolly needs it

 

1440x900, right? Because Grid and Fallout 3 on my rig at maxed settings runs like garbage. Gotta turn a few things down to get 60fps.

 

yea 1440 couldn't afford another 200 wish though wwish ...

 

the forceware allows a different driver to operate your video cards. certain drivers have better performance because they are designed much better, which is why new drivers come out all the time - people keep trying to make tweaks to graphical rendering for gpus. another thing that the new drivers allow is better communication for SLI setups, thus, allowing you to maximize your SLI performance which will help you get smoother and higher frame rates, and quite possibly allow you to set up the detail level in game.

from the bone stock alienware drivers to the DOX's custom forcewares, i believe i've increased about 900 or so points in 3Dmark06 (which is a benchmarking tool that helps give an estimate of graphical rendering power... the higher the number, the better... the stock drivers gave me about 7800 marks, but with newer drivers i can achieve 8700 marks. now while it doesn't tell you real world gaming performance, generally the higher the marks the better and smoother your games will run)

considering 900 points is a bit more than 10% total increase in performance (for free) benchmarking wise, you could estimate that you should get a noticeable increase in framerate and performance stability in games.

reason is because over time, programmers are going to be able to develop much better and more efficient means of running the SLI setup you have (though it's getting dated, so who knows how much longer the cards will be supported, however, they are the best DX 9 cards available for laptops so performance won't be sub-par by any means for a while). so since the stock Alienware drivers are probably from 2007 or so, you've got a good year and some of development that has gone by in the laptop community, and performance has increased significantly.

so go out and download new drivers and test which ones work best for you! i suggest starting with DOX's 180.84.1 drivers. they work very well and are very stable.