Video Card Swap

I know you guys are going to jump all over me and tell me to search, but I have and found nothing that will help.
I have a G71GX-A1 with a GTX260m and was wondering if I can swap it out for a GTX460m and where I would get the card?
Any help would be great as I've been reading these forums for a week now and haven't found what I'm looking for.

TIA

 

I don't know exactly about the G71... but chances are that it uses a proprietary, non-mxm standard GPU... Asus style.

Here you can see what I mean:


Have you ever disassembled your system and inspected the GPU? I really doubt you can exchange the card... in case you have some pictures of your card I'd really like to see them.

 

No. Mine looks like neither of those cards. It say it's MXM type 1, so I think it's swappable.
I'll try to get some pics for you tomorrow.

 

What's your current GPU anyway? You can't put in a 460m, cause that would be MXM 3.0 type B, seem like you have a older revision, MXM 2.0 or maybe 2.1, I don't know your system.

But I guess your out of luck, most older Asus systems have the connector inverted.

 

The notch in my card is way over by one side. Can you get a 460m in different MXM? Does anyone know what would be the newest card I could get? I'll post some pics of my current card as soon as I get it out again.

 

Here's some pics of my GTX260m. So can I swap it out for a GTX460m? I'm running A G71GX-A1 with Q9000 CPU.

 

I don't think so, iirc the vbios is integrated on the bios of the g71 ... but that's just from memory.

 

Definitely won't work, physically. Look at the connector, not MXM-conform at all, quite an abomination of a MXM card. That's asus style, there's nothing that would work.

 

Well that sucks!!! So I take it you've never seen a card like this? Does ASUS do this a lot? Well I guess I'm stuck with a GTX260m.
Thanks for your help.

 

Also the GTX 460m is of a different size and shape and the heatsink is also specific for each card so the cooling wouldnt work properly. All this on top of the MXM being the reverse type (meaning only Asus made GPUs fit in it and those arent sold separately, but only as replacement parts if you can provide a valid laptop serial with the specific GPU in it) and the Bios almost certainly not supporting the 460m (as its not made to be upgradable).
Pretty much all Asus laptops are made like this, theyre not meant to be upgraded.
Laptops that can be upgraded are more of a rarity and of higher price range - Clevo/Sager, AW are some examples. Those are made as barebones with upgradability in mind and the warranty also covers/allows CPU/GPU upgrades.

 

It's not even MXM 3.0... Look at the connector, it's the old one, probably MXM 2.1, and it's inverted, like HellCry said... which makes it impossible to put a regular card in your system.

And anyway, the best MXM 2.1 card is a GTX 280m if I remember correctly... but it won't work anyway because of your inverted connector and the completely different layout of your card.

 

Ok I guess I'm stuck with the 260 then. Thanks for all your help and input guys.

 

Not completely true i have seen a GTS 360m slapped into a G51VX but thats because they use the same style of board and the location of the video card is in the same exact spot even same heatsink placement except for 1 tab just kinda hangs out in la la land over nothing, but that was direct replacement from a g51jx so if it was the same model style is some what possible but on a g71gx your kinda stuck with what you got.

Plus i've never taken a look at the g73jw's 460m very long other then to slap some thermal paste on it and put the cover back on it. But most likely its not possible due to the board design. Now if it was to turn your g73jh into a g73jw that would more possible because its the exact same laptop just you would have to replace the heatsink with the nvidia one.

 

Yeah, that's because the G51 was offered with a 360m. So you have equivalent layouts, and similar cards. If you want to do the same for the g71, you'll have to pick a card that was available in the g71, and get the asus branded one. Basically, you're changing the cards between computers that were all designed specifically for those cards.

Asus prevents you from putting in something that wasn't designed for it, in certain models. The g71 is one of those models.

Also, many others have reported that the G73 JH and G73 JW have oriented their cards differently. So that might be a tough switch, since they're not even similar on the inside...