G73SW upgrade to different Asus GPU

Hello.
I will try to answer as precise as I can. But many of your questions are selfpointing. Meaning with little clever thinking and help from google you could find answer. Anyhow.

1. No. I first used gpu heatsink of g73jh and copper plate to cover VRM's but that was not enough to cool 680m when playng most demanding games. So I modified same heatsink in way to ad aditional 2 heatpipes to it making it have 4 instead of 2. You have pictures on earlier pages. And it hold temperature under 90c meaning no thermal throttling.

2. No. Asus 780m is much wider then even that of asus 460m so it wont fit inside of chasis.

3. this is only possible to answer by trying. Becouse different vendors use different types of vram chips and vram size. And that has to be acounted in vbios. So if asus used 4gb samsung chips in his 980m for example and dell or clevo used hynix 8gb chances are it wont work with simply flashing asus vbios on them.

They are all mxm 3.0b but heatsink solutions are almost all different, means pipes are placed so to fit exclusive body/chasis of laptop they are meant for (selfexplanatory)

4. Good question. There is no place to order. Best place is here or TechInferno asking people like prema, svl7 and others with knowledge about this kind of things

I hope thishas answered your questions. However I dont recomend to start with this kind of modifications if you are not absolutely sure what you are doing as smallest mistake can render your laptop useless.

 

Sorry, my questions should be directed to yoshey791 instead as he installed 780m.

Thanks for your reply and time you spent. U r right, maybe I could ask less questions if I had more time to google for answers. Unfortunately I am restricted with this option as presenty I am using satellite internet and have very strict time/traffic usage policy.

So, giving me some answers is a great help and I appreciate.

I have an option from 680m and 780m both new for Dell. So I am thinking to try or not. I didn't know that simply flashing vbios with Asus ver. might be not enough((
So if I choose with 780m (I have an offer for GTX 780M 256-bit 4Gb GDDR5) maybe yoshey791 migth help with vbios? as looks like making your new card to work on your G73SW is the most tricky, not modifying the heatsink)

by the way, what would u say about upgrading 2630qm processor with 2860qm?

 

No problem. 780m is much safer as there is no asus version of 680m so you would never get it to work anyway. Dell 780m should work fine. As long as you have asus 780m vbios flashed on it. As for 2860qm it is nice upgrade and straight forward. I have it in my g73sw for over year now and performance wise it is almost on same level as i7-4700HQ/MQ

 

Thank you. People offering me 780m promise they can flash it with any vbios I like, incl. unlocked versions for precise OC. They confirmed they can flash it with Asus version with no probs. But I am not quite sure. They also can offer 2860qm for some 270$.. I know they are spesialazed in Alienware laptops - they sell completely custom versions of Alienware u request. So, maybe they really can flash vbios I need.

 

Its peace of cake to flash another vbios so thats no brainer. As for gaming and 2860qm you wont see much improvement in performance

 

Thanks mate!
Any improvements in increasing RAM capacity? Looks like 2630qm supports only 16gb, but 2860 32gb. Seems motherboard should support 32gb as well.. But I don't know if bios v2.05 supports more than 8... Any advice on that?

And what drivers r u using for your card, looks it's not the latest nvidia 344.75? Are you using some custom driver?

 

I have to mod inf file every time when installing new driver, but that is not big hassle. And you will when/if you install 780m. I am not strictly following new driver relases.
As for ram not much improvement in real world there either I have 16gb (2x8gb) now, could test if 32 gb works as I have 2 sticks laying around. Speed is much more important mine are 1600mhz 1.35v.

 

what kind of mods you do with inf files?
Have you overclocked your RAM? Or u became able to use pc-1600 after upgrading the cpu for 2860qm? Sure 2630qm can't work with pc1600, but I thougth this chipset is only capable to work with pc1333?

The seller promises to flash with Asus version vbios for 780m before selling. So, I am now just before buying the upgrades. The expenses will reach around 1k$ for graphics, cpu, 240w psu and ram. Well, not so cheap. Hope I will not regret about. Maybe someone will say that it's more easy to sell your g73sw and buy g750 with 780m already installed...

 

By some reason previous message has been duplicated, but I can't find how to delete a post)

by the way, I found 780m is pci3.0 is it no problem that 460m is pci2.0?

 

PCI-E is backwards compatible in either case. A 2.0 card will work in a 3.0 slot and a 3.0 slot will let a 2.0 card run. The speed of the link is of course limited to the slower of the two but for a single card this will have little to no impact.

 

can i have some advice from you? btw i have ASUS G73SW and GTX460M on it. and i've been thinking of for upgrading my gpu to the lastest model, like GTX 970M, or at leat 870M, but i didn't know if it would fit my chasis or not, anyone have advice for this? or maybe the lastest model possible to upgrade is just 770M? i'm interested on this model " http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeFor...item3ced3e125a " , is there anyone had successfull upgrade with newer gpu than 770M? like 8xx series or 9xx series? thanks

 

That listing has been removed, the 970m is an extremely fast card compared to the 6, 7 and 8 series.

 

It is awesome to hear that the 780 (at least bios wise) seems to be fairly easy to install. I have been debating this for a few years but the custom bios work held me back. I may have to look into getting a 780 now to wake this old pc up, the only thing I may hold off for is if a 900 series would work. As some others have said some pictures of the heat sink mods would be amazing. Thank you for your work guys.

 

The 9xx is just such a step up in power efficiency and performance, but the 780M is still a sweet upgrade.

 

Hi all,

Has anyone had any luck to get the HDMI working when upgrading G73SW gpu to GTX780M (DELL)?

I thought I read somewhere that it is working without sound using the ASUS vbios but can't find the post again.

BTW: thanks to all the members who have been posting on this and other forums about G73SW gpu upgrades. Iv'e learnt a lot in the last few days .

 

Has anyone a GTX680M card to recommend and the bios to upload? I cannot find any vbios.
Does Dell card (from m18x r2) currently working?