Geforce Go 7900 compatibility?

I have a Gateway NX860XL the came with a nVidia Geforce Go 7900 vcard. However, the vcard died recently. I see a lot of them on ebay but they are from Alienware and Dell machines. Would these be compatible with my gateway, or are they physically different?

 

no as those cards are MXM cards for laptops which can have their GPU's changed. I believe your laprop is not MXM, and thereforre you would need to replace the entire motherboard.

 

Not sure what you mean by MXM. But my laptop has a separate removable Vcard that looks like the units used on the Alienware and Dells. (I've taken out the Vcard already when testing). I just thought if it was the same model it should not matter the computer manufacturer. However, I was told that Dell often altered the specs on parts to suit their needs.

 

some laptops from ACER, ASUS, Alienware, CLEVO, Dell and HP have the video processor on a removable card ( MXM board ), MOST laptops however do not have it and therefore have the GPU soldered to the motherboard effectively making it impossible to upgrade or replace the video without replacing the entire motherboard

 

The cards you see on eBay are MXM boards/circuit boards that are removable from a laptop. The type of video card your laptop uses is not an MXM card. It is a chip soldered into the motherboard, thus requiring a new motherboard.

 

Thanks for the reply. But this model does have a removable vcard. I have already removed it. As I said in the post it looks just like the ebay items.

in fact here is the item from a similar laptop model for sale on ebay. GTW NX860XL NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 256MB VIDEO CARD - eBay (item 380255019192 end time Aug-28-10 08:15:37 PDT)

Dell, Gateway, etc, vcards appear in the pictures to be the same modules, but the heat sinks are different.

My question is, must I buy a gateway specific card, or will the unit from a Alienware, Acer, Dell work?

 

an Acer may work you may want to try the Acer MXM thread or ask in the gateway forum. that would probabally be your best source of information as Acer took over Gateway a few years ago.

if it is a standard MXM and not flipped like the some of the ASUS ones all that could be an issue is the v-bios in which I have no knowledge on for those machines

 

The MXM format is supposed to be standardized in terms of length and width, but the height of components can often vary, which means that a card from a non-Gateway might require that you modify your heatsink to achieve a proper fit (or do some careful arrangement of thermal pads). The other possible issue at that point is, as stated, the VBIOS, which might have specific settings for our NX860XLs that govern acceptable voltages and current draws.

 

Nicholas,

I too have an NX860XL laptop running Vista Home Premium, with a GeForce Go 7900GS removable video card. Have you had any luck in replacing it?

Bill

 

It's a shame really, my very first laptop had the 7900GS and it was pretty good for a midrange card. I seem to recall it got around 4,300 in 3dmark06 (for those who care). Plus it was compatible with ALL of my old games... good times. Unfortunately these cards were not built to last.
Sorry, just this thread made me a little nostalgic.

 

7900 surely was pretty high end back then right? Not mid range..?

 

The 7950 GTX was the high end brother of the 7900GS. Some people were flashing the 7950 firmware on the 7900 and getting near high end performance.
It was a good graphics card. Performance was great and it was highly compatible with old games as well. It ran pretty hot at times though, atleast on my system. Unfortunately the 7900/7950 were manufactured with at the time, Nvidia's poor quality materials that led to the whole Nvidia graphics fiasco (cards prematurely failing).

 

The 7900 GS was more midrange, mostly because it was limited in power. As evident in the GeForce Go 7 (Go 7xxx) Series on Wikipedia, the 7900 GS was limited to a 20 watt TDP with a reduced core clock. The 7900 GTX enhanced the core clock for a TDP of 45, and the later 7950 GTX boosted core and memory clocks for even more performance. I'm not as sure that the 7xxx series were part of the Nvidia fiasco, I thought that was more the 8xxxM series, but it's certainly possible that later manufactures of the 7xxx's used the suspect process.

 

Now I am scared for my GT 240m as it's already having problems with TDR and the nvlddmkm driver

 

The GT240 shouldn't be affected at all as Nvidia starting using proper materials again by the time they made 9600M GT onwards.

 

Got Rock CTX Extreme PRO with 7950 GTX Nvidia card.

1) The card in question is removable
2) it is not MXM
3) Its a custom format, and has special "PCI-like"slot which is not horizontal, but vertical (depends what exactly you got, this is just a personal knowledge)
4) it can be changed, however your field of choice is EXTREMELY limited for the exact parameter card from same manufacturer of laptops due to dimensions and placement of slot issues
5) You can fix the card using mine or anybody's else guide if it failed due to age as it goes in most cases with these cards.

If you are up for a challenge, let me know via PM the exact problem with the card and it looks like ( http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu5.jpg) then PM me.

I will be baking my 7950 GTX this saturday afternoon GMT +1.00 time if you want some direct advise and walk-through.

-Mel