The adventures of M9750 and a GeForce 9800M GT MXMIII Card

I just got my M9750 last week and spent some time reading up on possible upgrades here and elsewhere online. It so happens I have a 9800M GT MXMIII module (512MB) laying around at a friends house so I thought I would toss out the 7950 GTX SLI and see if I can get the 9800GT card to work.

If there is interest I will document my win/fail process here for everyone to see.

As far as I have been able to read up there really does not seem to be any hardware 'reasons' to not trying this out as the module specs for the 9800 card seem compatible with the Alienware motherboard and drivers should not be an issue but I guess we will see.

If I succeed I understand that even a single 9800M GT 512M card would be a fairly significant improvement over the SLI config of 2 7950 GTX cards, not to mention the DX 10.1 support would be nice.

Any interest and/or opinions?

edit: Just realized that the current consumption for the 9800 card is 60-65W while the 7950 is around 45W. Hm, well I guess we'll see what happens

 

Heat is the only problem I can think of, you may even be able to do SLI here. The cards will only be DX10 though, NOT 10.1

It would be easier/cheaper to get a pair of 3870's in there though (and still perform pretty well). There will also be the issue of MXM 2.1b type III vs HE

 

2 3870's would be like 300$ from aw so go grab a pair

 

well he already has the 9800m gt moo

 

I actually already have TWO 9800m GT cards, with an SLI bridge so if this works I may just have the snappiest M9750 on the forum in a couple of days

But yeah, my first thought was using a 3870 (Single) but the 9800M GT gives me close to 3870 SLI performance on one card, produces less heat and seems like a more interesting option, not to mention free of charge in my case.

 

I was also considering picking up a M17 refurb from AW this week since they have dropped to around $1.100 with 3870SLI and I just can't justify an M17x price-wise even though I can afford it. I am also a big fan of the Skullcap/Ripley all black design and not so much the new color scheme of the M17x.

 

the M17 is pretty nice, I just have champagne tastes and wanted the best

I loved my whitebook while I had it though (same model just under OCZ name - and I even installed a SkullCap lid on it haha)

 

The m17 rocked. It was just so loud it was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard while gaming to me IMHO.

 

that is where a good headset comes into play haha

 

lol, true, but what about the woman, daughter and others all staring daggers and wishing to drop kick my Whitebook while I try to innocently play WoW in the living room?

I used to have a Thermaltake 948 Heatsink/Fan combo for my AMD FX-60 back in the day, and the whine of the Whitebook/m17 was very similar. I never thought a notebook could be that loud....

 

Actually with the latest drivers, 9800M SLI is only a hairline faster than two 3870s. (By the way, two or more ATi cards together is Crossfire not SLI )

In terms of raw power they are both extremely close, but the main reason the 9800M was more powerful to start off with was poor drivers and poor crossfire support...that problem is now almost all gone, with brilliant drivers and a lot more crossfire support now.

As scook9 says.

IMO the M17's not really that loud. Then again I usually run the CPU itself in power saver and it's the CPU fan that makes all the noise, the GPU fan is actually fairly quiet. The only games I run the CPU on full speed for are Crysis and The Last Remnant. Running it as I do background noise is only slightly above that of my Xbox 360