Replace vid card: Where to purchase?

Howdy, first, sorry if this has been covered elsewhere. I searched the forums and didn't find anything directly answering my question. Also, google hasn't been much help either.

I need to upgrade my video card. I have an older Sager NP5760-C (M57U) which I purchased from Powernotebooks.com. The laptop is about 3 years old.

I've looked online before for laptop video cards but have never found any definitive links to places that sell. I even read before that NO PLACE sells laptop video cards. A few posts I searched for seemed to insinuate that people have purchased and upgraded their cards, but I did not see any mention of where they purchased them from.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm worried my video card might totally die soon

 

I have read several posts on the Sager forum that mention several notebook
graphics card sellers-I believe Eurocom is one of them.

 

Thanks for that. It seems their "parts" page isn't up yet, so I'll fire them off an email. In the meantime does anyone know of any other places? I'd prefer to shop around if possible.

 

AFAIK, ive read before, you can contact a reseller such as Powernotebooks or XoticPC, and ask them to sell you one.

 

Ya, I just kinda realized while I was doing all this that maybe contacting my reseller might be a good idea. My guess is it'll probably be marked-up a good amount but it might be my only option. Thanks.

 

How is it that you think your video card might die soon? are there any tell-tale signs i could lookout for myself?

 

Well, I'm 99% sure it's damaged. When I first got it I forgot to clean out the heatsink (intake looked clean, so I assumed it was all clean).

The biggest sign is graphics tearing/artifacts in games or on your screen. What this means is instead of the normal looking game/whatever, you see these big long jagged geometric shapes of a solid color (usually black). It's also good to watch your graphics card temperature and see when these errors occur. In normal use my card hovers around 38C. When I do anything that uses the card, temperature goes up to about 42C with fan on high. Even at that (relatively low) temperature I get artifacts and tearing

So ya, watch your temperature and watch for screen tearing. Those are two good things to watch for.

 

Have you tried more than one game and gotten these problems?

What card is it anyway? And Tearing can be because of V-Sync. Try Enabling/Disabling that.

 

Nvidia 7900GTX. Had tearing in WOW and L4D (about all I play). Also gotten graphical artifacts/frozen pixels during normal usage and even in the incredibly system intensive Fallout 2 (note: TWO, not three).

Flipping v-sync on/off will resolve it for a moment, but it soon starts again. I get the same results if I switch between maximized/window mode, which is what I normally do.

I've been monitoring the heat for over 2 months now, and there's a definite connection between the two. As noted above, once the GPU temp hits around 40-42 I start getting tearing/artifacts.

If there is any (other) definitive way to confirm that my vid card is going bad, I'm all ears. As I'd prefer not to spend money on a new card if it isn't the card. I fear though that it is. The card puts out a TREMENDOUS amount of heat and I took poor care of it my first year of ownership, which has probably resulted in the damage that is causing the issues now.

 

Hmm, i see.

But that tempuature is nothing to be worried about, If youre playing a game and its only in the 40s, thats excellent. Most get in 70s and 80s.
Actually... Being so low... Maybe your card is being downclocked. So,tat would make it unable to handle the games.

Try Overclocking your card a little bit with RivaTuner, and Try youre games again. Monitoring the temp. See if itll go higher. But make sure it stays under 90C. Keep trying that, overclock it a little more each time you make sure it stays under 90C, and see if the problem gets better.

Good Luck.

How to Overclock
How to Monitor Temps While Gaming

 

Hmmm, I'm very hesitant to try that. I've had the temp hit the 50s before and things just went to crap, I've also had it blue screen on me before prior to the 50s. In other words, there seems to be a very positive correlation between temp and the card crapping out.

Or are you saying, that the card is detecting the high heat and downclocking itself? If that's the case overclocking it seems really dangerous. Frame rate isn't really ever an issue (which I would assume a plunge in frames is a tell tale sign of downclocking), it's just I get the tearing and all that at higher temperatures.

And god... if my vid card hit like 90C I think it would melt. The thing is hot enough as is (painfully so at times) I almost don't believe the temp that Riva is giving me... think I'll stick my instant read thermometer next to it sometime and see.

So ya, any other suggestions? Sorry to kinda shoot that down but overclocking this already hot gpu just seems like suicide

 

Ok. I understand.

Do This... Download HWMonitor, and post the recorded temps. Or a screenshot.

 

I have a 5793 and a 8800m gtx and have the same problem. At 40-42 deg C my screen flickers then I get a blue screen. I've tried EVERYTHING and am concluding that my card is dead. Sager wants $745 plus shipping for a new card.

 

Ask if they'll sell you a 9800M GT instead, it's exactly the same card, but usually cheaper under the 9800GT name.

 

They say it'll only work with a 9800m GT S. Lame they still want $450 for this card. I'm looking around trying to find a better deal.

 

The 9800M GT will work with the 5793, the 9800M GTX is untested.

 

Op returning. I made some contact with Sager (I was a little disappointed Powernotebooks.com just passed my email to them, but I guess they don't do the tech support so eh) and they basically said that there are no more Nvidia cards at all for this model of Sager. When queried they said that Nvidia doesn't make them anymore.

I'm a little perplexed by this, as I'm not sure exactly what they meant. Just like a desktop, shouldn't pretty much any card work as long as it fits the slot type? In that case there should be cards available that I can use, though perhaps I can't use them to their full potential. Or has there been some technical change between my laptop and newer ones that makes it impossible to plug in a new card?

Input would be appreciated.

 

Unfortunately something has changed, your laptop uses a proprietary clevo slot design, whereas everything since (starting with the M570RU & D900C) uses the standard MXM III/IV design. You can still get compatible cards from ebay.

 

Brilliant fricking luck... Is there a particular name for this proprietary design so I can look for it? Or some place else other than ebay that might offer it?

Also, are the suitable cards (wherever they may be found) good to go as is? Or does something need to be done to make them fit?

Thanks for the input.

 

Can I just plug it in and that's it? Or is there more I need to do to make it compatible?

 

It does not have a specific name, but any card from an M570A/U, M590K/KE, D900K/T, Alienware M7700.

There are some 7800GTX's on ebay, but the only 7900GTX I can find is in the UK (I don't know where you're from, this might not be a problem). I cannot find any 7950GTX's.

You may need to blind flash the correct vbios onto the card before it will work, this would mean getting hold of someone with the M570U with the correct card and getting them to send you the vbios.

Ensure you update your notebooks bios/kbc to the latest version first, and if the cad didn't come from a clevo (eg M570TU) be prepared to do a blind flash with a correct (eg M570TU) vbios.

 

Quick question. I've found a few cards on ebay, they appear to come with a heatsink assembly. Are these cards (generally speaking) able to be safely removed from their heatsink housing, installed into the heatsink that my card is in and then installed?

Here is a link to one of the cards I found http://cgi.ebay.com/Alienware-mALX-NVidia-7900-GTX-512MB-Video-Card_W0QQitemZ370223683815QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Video_TV_Cards?hash=item56330d18e7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1234|293%3A1|294%3A50

(If linking to ebay pages is not permissable, sorry. Please inform me/delete the link and I will simply post an image of the card). Does it look like this card would work in my NP5760?

 

in theory that card should fit, you should be able to remove the heatsink assembly and put yours on, just make sure to have some thermal paste around when you do. You may well also need a 7900GTX bios from an m570u to flash onto it. Anyone around here got one?

 

Few questions for you Theriko (if you don't mind)

1). That linked card should be the same as mine, so do I need to update the bios? Or is the problem that that specific card is still going to think it's in a different laptop (and is that a problem itself?)

2) Since I've now found some replacement cards on ebay, what if I was looking for an upgrade/replacement. Can my laptop take any higher end cards? You mentioned that it used a proprietary interface so is the 7900 the highest I can go?

Thanks again for all your help.

 

1) The card may have an alienware bios on it and may not interface properly with your computer, this is a maybe, not a certainty

2) The max you can get is a 7950GTX (basically an overclocked 7900GTX)

 

Thanks. So is there anyway to extract the bios from my current card and flash it to the new one if need be (since they are both 7900 gtxs)? I'm fairly ignorant on bios aspects

 

Nibitor will do it unless you are using vista/7 x64, if you are then you will need to extract it using gpu-z, and ensure that you open it with nibitor and resave it as a .rom, otherwise nvflash (the gpu flashing tool) won't recognise it)