XPS M1730 upgrade to 9800m SLI??

Hi, I currently have an XPS M1730, which has the 8700m graphic cards running in SLI. I would like to upgrade to the 9800m's.

Has anyone made this upgrade to their M1730, or anyone have any insight into how stable it would run?

Also, where to go to make the upgrade (dell,ebay, etc)?

 

If you can still get them through Dell then I would do that for warranty purposes, however if you want to save money then i would get it from ebay.

If you need videos of some kind to show you how to do the upgrade then i would look at youtube, obviously, as there are videos that show how to upgrade your video card.

Though I think another advantage of going through dell is that you can have a technician come over to install it for you. Again though, thats if you can stillg et them from Dell. Im not aware that you can but its worth looking into if you want that warranty and tech support. Just give them a call.

 

These are the options for your system.

XM888 = 8800M GTX
F979M = 9800M GT

K650M = 9800M GTX

Note that 8800M GTX = 9800M GT. If you want the best bang for your bug go for the 8800M GTX. The 9800M GTX is only 2-3 frames faster and much more expensive. Be careful with refurbished ones.

These cards are far superior over the 8700M GT. You will see a boost in performance.

 

I have an XPS M1730 that came with a 8700M configuration originally, and when that card died, I bought a 9800M SLI on ebay. The card is an official Dell one (and brand new, was sealed by Dell when I got it) but I'm having a ton of problems with overheating. The new card's fans don't kick in when they're supposed to, which means the temperature rises to 100C very quickly and the machine becomes unusable. I suspect this means the laptop (which has the latest A10 bios) can't control the fans correctly.

I'm on Windows 7 x64 with the latest Nvidia drivers and have tried all the fan control programs mentioned in all the forums I could find, including one from Nvidia, but with no luck. At the moment, I'm looking into getting a Cooler Master U3 in a desparate attempt to heat the thing from the outside. The only other solution I have in mind is to hardwire the fans on the card. Suggestions welcome

 

It can also mean the GPU fans area dead, I'd contact the ebay seller asap.

 

your fans are 12v. The yellow wire is tach, the red is +12 and the black is ground.
you should test them with a 9v or 12v power supply. you can do this most easily with 2 needles. just stick them into the plug holes, carefully.

I have a suggestion. Get a 2 standard laptop fans of 5v. splice the wires to a USB plug... or port. make sure its the usb power and not the data connection.
you will have 2 decent fans cooling your laptop internally no problem. fans move air, thats all. if yours simply arent spinning up then a quickfix like this is the easiest thing you can do.

 

Thanks for your replies! I should have noted I don't think the fans themselves are dead, because just after I installed the card, they were running at full speed. However, after rebooting (after having installed the latest Nvidia drivers), the fans stopped running and don't switch on when the card becomes hot. (They have, in fact, switched on a couple of times since, but it appears not to be triggered by GPU temperature and I can't reproduce it.)

 

Some progress: I have gotten the fans to kick in and keep the GPU temperature at 55C, but at this temperature, the CPU runs at a 100% making the machine unbearably slow. I'm thinking of trying to reinstall Windows 7 x64.

The Nvidia System Monitor reports the GPU Shaders to run at 400 MHz, GPU Memory at 100 MHz and GPU Cores at 200 MHz. Does this sound right?

(My apologies, btw. I didn't intend for this to become a debugging thread.)

 

I don't know much about the M1730, so is the 9800m a GTX, GT, or GTS??

GTX / GT should run at (core / shader / memory): 500 / 1250 / 800
GTS at: 600 / 1500 / 800

Sounds like your card is being thhrottled for some reason. Try running something like FurMark in the background when checking the speeds, to make sure they're not being idled.

 

Hi there. Just a quick update to let the interwebs know that the latest Nvidia drivers (260.99, November 2010) seem to have solved all the problems I had with this card. The fans now switch on and off as they should and I can even drive an external display while still using SLI, which is very nice. (I don't think you get great graphics performance on the second display but it's fine for having your email open while you're gaming.) The driver installation asked whether I wanted to remove all my existing profiles, which I did. The card is a dual 9800M GTX by the way. Thanks to everyone who replied! I'm very pleased that this is finally working.

 

If fans and temperatures are ok,crank the clocks of the gtx's to 600/1500/900 with something like evga precision or msi afterburner,youll be amazed how well those two little gems runs.
Also, you have to try drivers 263.00. Get them from laptopvideo2go website with modded infs.
Again this driver set performs amazingly fast and better compared to 260.99.

 

Take care, those speeds could be all right if you are not playing. I mean speeds change according to the power they need. If you are in the desktop the go slower, if you are playing faster.