fx3700m vs 4870m

Hi, I'm just wating to recive ocasionally bought Rock xtreme aka Clevo d901c with defective 9800m gt. I see basically two options for me now: put there two fx3700m, which I can buy for about 200-220£, and run them in sli, or buy here on marketplace from Table21 set of 4870m for 250$, plus shipping, duty and taxes, which will be probably about that same like for quadros. Which option will be better? Obviously cards will be overclocked. Anyone could tell me what kind of performance I can expect from quadros and especially from 4870m's in 2.1 mxm format. Gauging from the Saltius expierience: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/616042-non-bridged-sli-runs-successfully-d901c-rev5-2-a.html, quadro config can do probably about 9000-1000 vantage and 14000-1500 3dm06. What about 4870m?

 

I didn't realize Quadros could work in SLI...

Also are you sure the 4870m's can even fit in the D901C? I had a d901c with 9800m GTX's SLI, and I never remember any options for ATI cards in that generation of notebook. Clevo cards generally differ from cards made by other manufacturers.

 

FX3700M's cannot SLi unless you flash them to 280M's, just so you know. I had an FX3700M in my M9750, and it was a great card.

 

that setup is very oold, any mid range card today would beat it just get a new laptop

 

Actually I'm not sure. But I believe that they should fit after some modification to the heatsink. The main problem migh the be third big smd choke which isnt present on quadro: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/DarkMaster_MX/IMG_0222-1.jpg. I didnt even know that exist other 4870 mxm III, then black asus w90, which actually is mxm HE. But if we put aside fitting problems, which option would be more powerfull? Damm, I just remind myself something else, what someone bring up, i think on clevo forum, that actually clevo laptops have poor compatibility with non clevo cards. And since I dont remember reading about any attemps with ati cards in d900c , then You understand that this is very risky bussines.

 

Someone tested the 4870 from the w90 on the d901c and it didn't work. I've tested them on my m860tu and it worked fine. However they didn't work on the area-51 m15x which seems odd so maybe you should try it.

BTW MXM 2.1 type III and HE are the same.

I just think CF often has more to do with the chipset and stuff? Not sure.

If you really want the best performance you might want to try 2 Lenovo branded fx 3700m with yellow caps, although they are p612 board they can probably be flashed to something. They can be overvolted and overclocked to 700mhz core or so.

In general though I'm not sure this will be very possible with any of the high end cards, 3700m and ATI cards don't tend to function well on the d901c.

The newer Quadro cards wont be able to run in SLI unless its possible to flash some of them to a 580m, since they are 256 bit and most are gf104 based.

 

If the FX 3700M is a variant of the 280m it won't even SLI if you flash it. The 2xx series was never SLI capable in the D901c.

 

Seeing as I recently had a d901 with sli 8800m gtx and wanted a performance boost I'd stay away from the 3700m since they can't sli even if flashed to 280m. The d901f bios doesn't support it, the 4870m won't work either I believe since it's an Alienware card and was never offered. Best bet is to get a couple 9800m gtx's or just buy another set of 8or9800m's. To the person who said not to waste the money, he may be on a tight budget and replacing his cards is a much more viable option than forking out more money for a whole new gaming laptop. The 8800m gtx combo may be old but it certainly still has a lot of power in it especially in 1680x1050 resolution. The vram actually holds the cards back more than anything and a good overclock allows more settings to be turned up comfortably

 

Non-bridged SLI is possible if FX3700M is compatible with 9800mgt/9800mgtx vbios(no one made such test though).

To make things complicated, there are at least five kinds of FX3700M(ES excluded).
a. Clevo FX3700M P398 Qimonda memory.
b. HP early FX3700M P398 Qimonda memory.
c. HP later FX3700M P398 Samsung memory.
d. Lenovo early FX3700M P612 Qimonda memory.
e. Lenovo later FX3700M P612 Samsung memory.

They are of different compatibility.

If you can find somebody help you do BGA resoldering,
there is another option —— get two G92-751-B1 chips and make your dead 9800MGT into GTX260M 512MB MXM2.1.

G92-761-B1(GTX280M), N11E-GTX1-B1(GTX285M) and N10E-GLM3-B2(FX3800M) chips should work and can be taken into consideration ,though no sale on ebay right now.

 

I remember you once mentioned that Lenovo FX3700M was compatible with 9800MGTX vbios.
(BTW:Which Lenovo FX3700M exactly?The early version with Qimonda memory chips or the later version with Samsung ones?)

If that is true, it may be possible to run 2 Lenovo FX3700M as 9800MGTX(128sp though)SLI on D901C rev 6.x.