Installing DELL/HP FirePro W7170M in a Clevo P150 truly hopeless?

If this has been asked before then I am sorry but I could not find it on this forum.

So there been a huge influx of new and used FirePro W7170M, I am looking for an upgrade as usual but the AMD fanboy in me just keeps pushing me towards the AMD cards.
And there is good reasons for it, AMD has 14 bit colours nVidia does not, and I do video work.

The W7170M apparently works in a lot of models but never seen them in a Clevo so far, does anyone know?
There is HP versions and Dell versions of the card that I have seen so far, and some questionable custom ones on Taobao.

I might give up my Clevo P150 and buy an Alienware with 3rd gen Intel socket and transfer all the parts to that if the same case applies as usual regards of installing Dell cards in Clevo's. I am tired of being limited to Clevo cards only while MSI, Dell and all the others can just interchange like crazy and even use Clevo cards without issues.

Unless anyone has any miracle workaround because I just cannot find them, then I suppose I will never buy Clevo/Sager ever again in my entire life for their bad practises with the firmware crippling MXM upgradeability.

 

If you are going to have to purchase the GPU either way, why not just buy it now and if it doesn't work in your Clevo then move to plan B. You won't have to buy the GPU later. Otherwise, there is nothing to lose. It might work, and if it does you can saym "yay, mission accomplished" on the upgrade.

I don't disagree about the firmware crippling stupidity. That's never acceptable, I don't care what brand. However, there are no equivalents to a Clevo anywhere now, unless you take a risk on buying an older, potentially worn out, Alienware that no longer has any service parts available.

 

Neither does his clevo have any (fairly priced) service parts available.

 

Right... like going from frying pan to the fire. This is why I sold my mighty P570WM and all of my old Alienware stuff as well. Had they still been easily serviced and upgraded I never would have sold them because they were built like a brick house and extremely powerful machines. Even going from Kepler to Maxwell on the Alienware machines was a real nightmare, so it's not necessarily greener grass on the other side of the fence.

That's why I say try it first to see if it works rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water. Either way, at least is won't be a BGA abortion. If it doesn't work, no loss. If it does work, then there is no need to spend any money on another antique laptop.

@SMGJohn - just be sure you know if the GPU you are interested in supports LVDS. Many newer GPUs do not, and most of the good Alienware and Dell machines were LVDS, not eDP. Is your P150EM eDP or LVDS? There is a chance it won't work in either brand if the GPU only supports eDP. Good chance it may support LVDS since it was released in 2015. https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-FirePro-W7170M.151619.0.html

 

p150em is optimus I think, so even a pascal mxm could work

 

Fair enough, having scavenged the internet, the only reasonable thing I could find was MSI GT60 as a replacement that accepts 3rd gen CPU but that looks really bad construction wise, really cheapo plastic look.
I seen people have more luck with MSI cards in Clevo's, is that something you be familiar with?
I can get the 1060 for the same price I paid for the M290X... I am considering that but I can get the 1070 Max-Q version but its MSI card.

Further digging I found the Chinese already tried the W7170M on a Origin EON15 laptop basically a Clevo chassis with Clevo motherboard.
http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4462907783?pn=1
Refused to boot properly so my dream is in shatters since that is the only AMD card that is newest. So it will either be 1060 or the 1070 Max-Q version.

 

I honestly would just buy a BGA machine right now due to the parts/warranty issue. It's also makes more sense financially to do so as 1070s are running around 700+USD for the mxm version.

 

I know the Clevo GeForce GTX 1060 will work in the P150 as Prema got it to work and a lot of other people got it to work, some even in the P170EM.
My point is I had the M290X for a long time and its really unstable, when it works its great, when it does not its ruining my work because its not rendering things properly in Adobe and other programs.
7970M worked brilliant but only 2GB of VRAM is useless when doing 4k video work.

Hence 1070 as I stated in many of my earlier posts, I seen the MSI lower TDP version around, its expensive but if I can put that in and live with it for another 4 - 5 years its worth it, specially for gaming.
But will it work, I know Clevo P150 will do eDP as the iGPU does the switching so I technically could put a 4k screen on it but at 15 inches its just ridicules.

But I see so few forum posts regarding these issues, no one has tried the 1070 yet that I know off unless the Chinese did.

 

And yes if I lived in America it would be cheaper to just buy BGA computers every 3 - 5 years.
However in Norway its cheaper for me to just buy a new GPU even if it is 700 bucks specially considering how much I already spent on the damn thing with the mSSD, SSD and the 32GB of memory.
But its a big risk, 700 dollars for something that may or may not work.

 

I'm confused. Your opening post made it sound as if performance was important, and you'll have a sucky piece of trash if you buy something with Max-Q. That is not a high performance product line. It's a compromised consumer product for gamer kids that don't know any better and have an OCD issue with wanting absurdly thin and light anorexic notebooks. High performance and small/thin/light form factors are incompatible objectives. I seriously doubt Max-Q is going to do anything nice for you if the video work you mentioned is taxing.

It used to be a no-go using MSI or ASUS GPUs in Clevo or Alienware. Some of that changed with MSI being more compatible than they used to be. I think the ASUS MXM stuff is still proprietary.

You're in a unique position of needing better compute function for a business purpose, and that is the ONLY place where an AMD GPU actually does something better than an NVIDIA consumer card. You're trading compute performance for a downgrade in everything else, including durability and performance. I've had really rotten luck with AMD GPUs being unstable, fragile and unreliable ever since AMD bought out ATI and ruined everything. ATI was awesome, and AMD destroyed the good thing they had going in graphics performance. ATI used to be the best.

Personally, I would never buy an expensive "high performance" BGA turdbook. That filth is a total waste of money... just disposable garbage. That's fine for a mainstream consumer notebook with pathetic performance in the $500 or less price range, but it's worthless if you actually care about quality. If you really need the compute function and do not have to travel to do your work, you would be far better off building a desktop and just walking away from notebooks rather than compromising everything with BGA feces. There are not more than a few new notebooks model available that are actually worth a damn (meaning no BGA GPUs or GPU).

If you honestly need a portable workstation, look into a 16L13 (EVOC 16L-G-1080 / Tornado F5) with 7700K and a Quadro or FirePro graphics card. Reach out to @Donald@HIDevolution or @woodzstack and see if they can hook you up with that or a 17-inch P870 with 7700K and a single mobile workstation GPU. Don't settle for any gamer turdbook with soldered CPU and GPU crap. That would leave you with no ability whatsoever to do what you asked about in the opening post. If the GPU dies, you'll be looking at a more expensive motherboard, so BGA sucks for service without even taking upgrade possibilities into account. And, on top of the hardware design limitations, their performance is stunted with those soldered pieces. Those machines are literally inferior in ever measurement.

 

Thanks for the mention.

Actually theres been a small rush in bitcoin/mining lately so a few workstation options have been on the radar, theres even a rackmount with like dozens of mobile (like 980M sized MXM 3.0 size) videocards...

we have a few mainstream laptops as workstation variants with subtle extra's. Like stronger hinges or extra TPM for encryption or workstation cards or different panels (for the artists that need better picture, the real expensive stuff)

Like the F5 can use a XEON CPU, just a quad core, but it's effectively capable of being on 24/7 under load, as a mobile server. Great for LAN parties IMO!

 

The Max-Q as far as I understand is a limit TDP version of the same card, the 1070 Max-Q is effectively 10 to 15% slower than the 1070 laptop version.
I am not sticking 150W TDP card into a Clevo P150, I am not insane.

However Eurocom's 1070 is 120W according to their pictures anyway, this is more reasonable as you have to understand here the heatsink in the Clevo P150 is only rated for maximum 125W MXM card.
Anything higher would require me to design an entirely new heatsink and have it manufactured out of pure silver which will probably cost more than the entire 1070 and the computer combined.

Yes I am putting together a desktop for workstation application, but the Clevo P150 is nice and light compared to a desktop even as small one as I am building.
The P150 I can transport with me to university or work with no real issue, I can carry it in a bag with one power adapter and that is about it.
Its also really nice gaming kit, I can sit in a comfy chair gaming while the workstation is situated in its regular place.

The P150EM still has to be capable of pulling its load, the M290X is nice card for gaming, useless for workstation application because AMD keeps bugging OpenGL and OpenCL all the time.
Since W7170M wont work, then I must use 1060 or 1070

Here the Chinese put the MSI 1060 in the Clevo P170 and it worked.
http://www.hkepc.com/forum/viewthread.php?fid=84&tid=2362739&extra=&page=15

And yeah trust me, I hate BGA with passion you probably would not believe. The only BGA machines I own is this old Dell XPS M1210 which is a 12,1 inch, its a wonderful machine, anything below 15 inch can be BGA because the form factor technically would not even allow MXM 3.0a fit in there with proper cooling.