Is the 9170's GPU upgradeable/replaceable?

Likely a stupid question. Been out of the PC game for years, just had a 9170 built for me. Currently has a GTX 670MX, and it plays BF3 great, but looking at a little longevity for gaming on this machine.

Grabbed the I7-3630, not sure if that matters.

Thanks :thumbsup:

 

replaceable with another mxm 3.0b type card, upgradeable in the future if new cards use the same configuration

 

Clevo machines always need to stick to clevo cards as well. The heatsink design means you can usually get away with using a different arrangement of thermal pads rather than a new heatsink being required.

 

Outstanding, thanks. Looks like the 4GB 680M is good to go then. We'll see what else comes out in the next year or two.

 

Well the 7 series will likely not be worlds apart from our current gen, same process and some tweaks for performance.

Things will get particularly interesting again when we hit the next refresh unless Nvidia's refresh of the GK106 does something interesting.

 

AMD refreshes their high-end cards annually.
Nvidia likes rebadging and bottlenecking more. Why offer the customers the maximum, when you can just throttle it to the competition's levels.

But hell....I hope AMD performs a miracle (or just removes enduro), because people are definetely disappointed this year.

 

If Nvidia had come in with the 680M, 675MX, 670MX and 660 people would have been less dissapointed.

I think they originally intended to go with a 670MX sort of chip for the high end but got surprised by the 7970M which did set the bar high.

The numbers were great especially in the likes of the 16F2 that I put it in, but then the enduro issues came to light and that got tarnished too.

Hopefully we get some more competitive products from nvidia in the refresh and enduro get ironed out and they can duke it out so the customer wins

 

The only downside of replacing GPU on laptop is the price. I think currently, the standalone 680M card is about $800.

 

We can only know for sure all the current options will work so putting in a 680M is fine. Future cards may work but we'll have to see once they are released.
While a new card will cost a bit you can also sell your current card and help make up for some of that.

 

Thanks guys, you all rock.

How did I do with my initial buy though?

128GB Crucial SSD
750GB as secondary HD
I7-3630
GTX 670MX
16GB RAM (Added 8 myself, hoo-ray Amazon holiday sales)
Grabbed the IC Diamond cooling compound or whatever for the hell of it.

 

$655 + SH actually

 

It's a fairly balanced setup.

Any extra money you spend will give you more performance but it's no slouch as it is.

 

Majority of BF3 setting are Medium or high. I think it automatically setup one or two at ultimate. Looks great, runs smooth, don't really care if I'm at 50FPS or 65FPS. Doesn't matter to me as long as its smooth.

Meaker, what would you do to improve it, down the road?

 

Looks like a sweet build to me. I grabbed a Crucial SSD and 16GB of RAM as well after building my NP9170.

 

Ok something to consider. Balanced setups are great as they stand but upgrading them can be hard, when I started building systems I deliberately unbalanced my system to create an obvious upgrade path to maximise the effectiveness of the money I spent.

I am going to assume you want to improve gaming performance? Then the graphics card is going to be your focus, you could keep an eye out for someone selling a GTX680M which should be a slot in upgrade, I would not bother with the 675MX when you already own a 670MX.

As for now you can look into overclocking your 670MX if you want more performance immediately, it should be cool enough running to have head room (though be aware of the warranty situation of any such tweaking).

 

I've never overclocked anything. Don't have the first clue on how to do it. If I wanted to game the last 6-7 years, it was console due to the price of PC gaming. Graduating from college has greatly cleared up my funding, believe it or not. Hah.

If it matters, I did get the IC Diamond compound stuff.

 

That will help a little with temperatures. If you download MSI afterburner and operate within the basic limits of the included video bios you should be safe and get a boost, going further would require a bit more effort and lead to more risk.

However get the machine first and decide if it's needed.