Clevo P150HM 6990m to GTX 675m?

Hey NBR,

My 6990m is officially dead in the water, so I need to do a GPU swap to something, preferably not too expensive. I came across a ton of GTX 675m GPUs on eBay for around 400 bucks, which seems to be the only option if I want to continue gaming on this laptop without forking over 700+ for a 680m.

I have a couple questions before I buy one of them, though. I have searched and read through all the 675m and GPU upgrade threads for the P150HM, but most of them were created in 2012/2013, so I want to ask now that there are more of you who have gone down the 6990m replacement road and could help me out:

1. Is any 675m of MXM 3.0 type B compatible with my system? Several threads and posts are saying yes, may need INF modification, but that is a piece of cake compared to physically heat gunning a GPU...
2. I currently have a 6990m heatsink. I am seeing conflicting reports of whether this 2-piece heatsink can still be used for a 675m. The 6990m GPU is a square, whereas the 675m GPU is rectangular. Eyeballing the thing, I think my old heatsink will work fine since it covers the silver part, but this is only a guess. Anyone on NBR here that had a 6990m that died and went to a 675m using the same old 6990m heatsink? If anyone needs a part number, they're 6-31-X510N-204 (GPU heatsink) and 6-31-X510N-600 (VRM heatsink).

 

I can't speak to the second question without taking a look, but in regards to the former question: Not exactly any MXM 3.0 type B card will work. It needs to be a Clevo 675M card, specifically. There's conflicting reports of Alienware cards working with a vBIOS mod, but it's far less convoluted to get a Clevo card working.

The INF does need to be modified as well, otherwise the driver will not install: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...675m-its-driver-clevo-p150hm-sager-8150m.html

 

Thanks Prostar, the main concern I guess is compatibility with the 6990m heatsink. From what I can tell looking at some pictures, the 675m and 580m use the same heatsink, which uses slightly thicker copper. I don't recall the 580m running as hot as the 6990m, and with the foil tape mod I might be able to make things cool enough to run. I might have to just buy the 675m and refund the thing if it doesn't pan out.

 

The heatsink should just require a repad in the right places.

 

Thanks Meaker, I have gone ahead and bought the video card, hopefully everything works without more than a re-pad and INF modifications.

 

Let us know how you get on. Be patient and careful when assessing the pad contact and placement.

 

Yes, follow up and let us know how it pans out for you.

 

I am going so slightly necro this thread to say:

IT WORKS (mostly)!! I can confirm that the 6990m heatsinks both work with the 675m after cutting new thermal pads and placing them accordingly. I don't know for sure where my GPU was originally from, but I am going to guess it was an Alienware because the seller on eBay sells a ton of Alienware parts and laptops. I haven't tested HDMI but I think it should work. To install the drivers, I downloaded the modded INF from laptopvideo2go and off it went.

Unfortunately it seems I can't adjust the screen brightness. I've tried using the hotkeys and also the Adjust Screen Brightness button after you click on the battery in the taskbar, nothing seems to work. I've tried versions 337.88 and 340.43, those two don't work. I think some people said 320.XX works but that's kind of outdated (1+ years ago right?). Worst case scenario I just live with the screen burning my retinas off, but it would be nice to hear from others if they have brightness adjustment working on a recent version of drivers.

 

Interesting, yours is the second example of an Alienware 675M working in a Clevo but screwing up screen brightness. See this other example here.

I'm starting to wonder if the Alienware 675M working in Clevo P1x0HM laptops is just a happy coincidence, or something unique about the Alienware 675M card or the P1x0HM series, or actually a general phenomenon, at least for the P1x0HM laptops.

 

Well, good to know I am not the only one.

I opened GPU-Z and interestingly, the subvendor is Clevo. vBIOS is 70.24.44.00.06 (P1314-0005).



I'll open up Tomb Raider and run the benchmark a few times to see if the system runs stable. At least I can watch YouTube HD without slow-downs.

 

I've got a workaround for the brightness issue! Go and get f.lux, and under Extras, checkmark "Use hotkeys (Alt-PgDn, Alt-PgUp, Alt-End) to control brightness", and voila, brightness adjustments. F.lux is awesome and it just got more awesome for me.

One slight annoyance is the brightness goes back to 100% when you restart. Oh well.

 

Congrats! Now I'm wondering whether that's an actual Clevo card, or the vendor simply flashed a Clevo vBIOS to it. Don't quote me on it since I'm not sure if the vBIOS can even be cross flashed without bricking the card.

Yeah f.lux is awesome, been using it for 2 years now, really helps to reduce eyestrain at night.

 

With the 6990m heatsink, the 675m reaches 83°C on Tomb Raider's benchmark, with the laptop placed flatly on my desk, no laptop cooler or anything to raise the bottom a bit. If memory serves me right that's equal to or just a bit cooler than when my 6990m worked. I used the Geforce Optimized settings and ran it, 55.5FPS avg, not bad for a 3-year old system.

I could try the aluminum tape mod and see if that helps any. There's very little dust inside as I took the opportunity to blast it all out and re-paste my CPU when swapping GPUs.

 

That seems fair enough for the 675M, prop it up a little and you should be good to go.