Sager NP9150 GTX 680m Upgrade

Hello,

I am considering buying a NP9150 and I was wondering if it would be possible to buy the laptop with a GTX 675m and then later upgrade it to the GTX 680m? The reason that I am asking this is that I don't currently have the money to buy the GTX 680m pre-installed on the computer.

Thanks!

 

The answer is yes, you can buy a NP9150 with GTX 675M and than upgrade to the GTX 680M.

 

Yes, but it's very expensive... In the realm of $600-700 depending on how much you can sell your 675m for.

 

Instead of spending in the near future $600, you should spend $100 now and make the upgrade from 675M to the 7970M, unless you especially want nVidia for 3D vision, or CUDA,...

the performance of the HD7970M is similar with the GTX 680M.

 

I just recevied my N9150 today, and it is amazing with the gtx 675m, there is no reason to upgrade to the 680m right now, as it is plenty powerful enough for games right now. I bet even around christmas / boxing day the 680m's will have come down some. Just an ex, even though blizzard isn't intense graphics, I've seen the max setting with aa 1920x1080p benchmark as 74 fps, I have everything at max and I'm getting 85+ mind you it does drop to 70's but jolts right back up.

 

that's true too. only some demanding games like battlefield 3 or metro 2033 (on ultra settings) can't be handled by 675M for smooth playing.

 

^ right, and even at that you'd still be getting around 40-50 fps so thats not even too bad! If you have to sacrifice some settings to get up to 60+ I doubt you'd even notice it unless you've got hawk eyes haha.

 

OK sounds good! I will purchase the GTX 675m now and wait until the price for the GTX 680m lowers to purchase it (if I feel it is important enough).

Also, would it be possible to upgrade from the Radeon HD 7970M to the GTX 680m? I am not sure if they have different sockets or if if there would be compatibility issues.

 

From my experience with previous upgrades on Clevos. Upgrading from 675M to 7970M will require a new heatsink for sure. 100%. Unless you are really handy with a rotary tool and get lucky and can modify the NVIDIA heatsink. The socket is the same.

To convert from 675M to 680M there is a high PROBABLILITY that you A) can reuse the 675M heatsink/fan for 680M or B) that a very small modification to it with a rotary tool will suffice.
And of course possible BIOS update for 680M which if necessary Sager/Reseller will provide.

 

The price of a standalone 680M will NEVER decrease in price - if you want one, just buy it now. Upgrading down the road will be costly, at least $700. You will also have a pretty hard time selling the 675M, who would want to buy last generations video card in 4-5 months.

 

Without the exclusive need for the CUDA cores, that would be utterly pointless since the two GPUs are comparable.

 

i read this :

seems that 680M has real higher performance than 7970M

 

^PAY ATTENTION. Most mobile cards are sold at full price for eternity. Just look at the RJTech GPU store, and organize it by price.

You WILL be paying $800+, if you wait and try to upgrade to the 680M aftermarket, even next year or the one after.

 

Untrue. That was a biased comparison wherein the system used to benchmark the 7970M was having a much slower CPU than the one benchmarking the 680M. After all, that bench was among the "legit" sites and provided by nVidia themselves. So what did you expect? I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong once some trustworthy third party entity such as a reputable person on this site conducts a thorough comparison between the two on identical machines, or preferably the very same machine. Also, several users here with the 7970M have managed to reach/break that benchmark score, since it is only synthetic. The real difference is left to be seen in games! The 7970M has tremendous OC potential, something that hasn't yet received real world testing on the nVidia 680M's end.

 

I was just about to place my order for a NP9150 with AMd 7970M but now maybe it's worth waiting for the nvidia counterpart?

 

Personally, I'd pass on the 580m, unless you want to
a) wait longer
b) pay 300$ extra for what may be a marginal performance increase (at best)

The 7970 is supposed to be a great card, top of the line (at least for the next little while) performance

 

Personally, I'd pass on the 580m, unless you want to
a) wait longer
b) pay 300$ extra for what may be a marginal performance increase (at best)

The 7970 is supposed to be a great card, top of the line (at least for the next little while) performance

 

Thanks for the advise;

Well I can definitely wait longer as I want to buy and take delivery of a new gaming laptop 15' before 1st september;

But on the 300 bucks you got me as me too I believe, based on what we know today, there will be a little performance increase (even if with better driver support nvidia has shown in the past an increase in performance overtime);

Anyway I can say I finally see a great and sufficient increase in graphic performance (of a SINGLE card) over my old SLI set up for the first time since I bought my Dell in early 2008: which really makes me think for me it's this summer the best time to upgrade;

I will wait for REAL benchies of the upcoming 680 (which should be quite soon isnt'it?) and decide but you're right maybe I can get the AMD card + an SSD instead..

BUt will the amd run all games out now and out in the next year at max settings in full hd? (I know there is maybe no 100% sur e answer ..)

 

according to this ( GeForce GTX 680M benchmaked on MSI GT70 - Notebookcheck.net News) its a bit slower than 7970m.

 

The answer is yes. I mean, it's a full on desktop 7870, with lower clocks.

Do you like to overclock? Here's what you can do:

1. Look at all of the 1920x1200 charts in this 7870/7850 review.
2. Realize that the 7970M has already been proven to be overclockable to clocks equal to and higher than the stock 7870.

So what you see in those tests is the maximum of what you can expect from the AMD mobile card, except yours will be even higher because your screen is 1080p, not 1200p.

Both the 7970M and GTX 680M will be killers for the next couple years.

 

wait on it! get it on black friday deals in nov! get 680M for better driver support! I am having trouble with blue screens with 6970M! But the performance is just awesome for the price! I am looking at getting a 680M later this year unless the guys with 7970M have no problems!

 

Why is it that they never decrease?

 

Now that I'm thinking about it... With the absurd prices the Clevo notebooks are being sold in my country, I could probably sell the P151EM1 in a year for the same price I'm paying for it right now in the US, and then get a whole new notebook in the US with the money, if the upgrade to a better GPU is still too expensive in a year...

 

It would be nice to upgrade to a 680m in 2-3 years if my current 670m starts to show some age.

My GPU in my XPS m1530 lasted for 4 years and was nothing like the 670m was out of the box so I doubt I'll have an issues with the lower GPU for the life of the notebook.

We always need to catch ourselves needing the newest, fastest, biggest, bestest upgrades and hardware because in all reality most of the time it isn't needed it's just desired. The stock stuff is more then sufficient for most
People.

 

It seems to me from reading many threads that the difference will be about 5% either way. Since the performance of either card is so good and seemingly so close, you can get the AMD now and save some money, and not worry for a long time.

I have seen a lot of very happy users of the 7970m and it looks to be a great card. I am sure the 680m will also be a great card. I still love my 485. But unless you see something going wrong with the 7970 I don't know why you would want to wait and pay more. My Asus with a 5870 is still going strong. I don't buy either brand just to get the brand. I buy the one that I can get for the right price. I bought my Sager with upgrades from a Sager employee, and even with him getting a profit after his employee discount, I saved about $700 on it at the time it came out. When I bought my Asus, the 5870 was out, but the next nVid card was delayed, so instead of waiting for something that was probably going to be comparable, I bought a similar card, and it was cheaper.

I am a fanboy.... Of getting as good performance as I can for the budget I set. If 2 cards are going to be similar, and there are no apparent issues with either, then cost or timeliness makes my decision. One time it was timeliness, the next it was cost. But either way.... To quote a complete freak... "Winning"!

Sorry for TL;DR but as said earlier, you won't need to upgrade from the 7970. So if you get it, enjoy. If you wait, then later enjoy. But until we actually see real users with real testing, everything comparing the 2 cards is just conjecture.

 

Because AMD and Nvidia do not sell them directly to end users in bulk, like going on Newegg for a desktop GPU.

 

And this policy should be changed...

I found this topic to be very interesting:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ng-gpu-upgrade-package-m18x-perhaps-m17x.html
If they get enough votes in Dell's IdeaStorm they could get them to sell GPU upgrade packages for the Alienware notebooks.

I think we should make something similar for Clevo and their retailers, we saw some results with the GPU upgrade compatibility petition for HM models, so since there is no "IdeaStorm" for Clevo we could make a petition for GPU upgrade packages for Clevo notebooks, this way we could show them the number of people with interest in this.

Besides this could give them a great advantage over AW if they do it before Dell do...

 

GPUs kits for Clevo machines have been easily obtainable for years, at least in the USA.

 

You mean through RJTech and eBay?

 

You could get them in the EU as well from reputable resellers and even third parties. Still they are very expensive.
I have thought about starting up a project for selling MXM upgrade kits, but there are so many problems with compatibility, the small market for them and finally the fact that most producers dropped MXM support a few years back. Now only high-end video cards still have MXM support and even those need special vBIOS to get recognised.

 

In EU too, many resellers offers them now.

 

Err, prices on the Nvidia rarely drop. A GTX 485M is still more expensive than a 7970M. If the 680M was the same price as the 7970M would be different. But as is, it's nearly $300 more. Which is just insanity to me.

And don't really get why it has to be 680M. PhysX is actually hated by the biggest movers in the gaming industry. 3D is just not taking off, no one wants to glasses and experience nausea.

As for drivers? 9/10 times it's user problem not AMD. At least my experience reading on NBR and Guru, it's almost always either a CF or user problem, not a real driver issue. AMD drivers do not cause blue screen for one.

 

Are the prices of the GPUs for Clevo uniform in the market? I mean, do all the resellers and ratailers sell them for about the same price (meaning, are the prices always similar to those seem on RJTech)?

I understand that universal GPU upgradability would be very difficult right now, since making an universal mobile GPU who could work in any notebook is not something feasible at the moment... But is it so hard to make the GPUs made for the notebooks from one company be interchangeable between notebooks of this same company?

Another thing I don't understand is why won't they openly divulge the GPU upgradability as a product by openly offering GPU upgrade packages?

This alone could make their sales increase a lot, because not only would a lot of people who own a Clevo start to buy the upgrade packages, but the number of Clevo notebook buyers would also increase a lot, since a lot of people who don't even know that this is possible in notebooks would be attracted to this possibility, and the easy access to the upgrade would make a lot of people who buys from other companies who sells gaming notebooks (ASUS, MSI, Alienware) start to buy from Clevo instead.

On the customer side, the increase on GPU sales and the competition between Clevo retailers and resellers to offer the best deal would make the prices begin to drop. And when other companies catch up to Clevo and start to sell their own GPU upgrade packages for their own notebooks, a competition will also arise between companies to see who can offer the lower prices for these packages to bring more buyers to their side.

The way I see it, whoever starts doing this first can have a great advantage in the market, and Clevo already has almost everything necessary in place, so why not do it already and win a lot more money?

 

1. one company gpu is already interchangable. MSI, Clevo, and Dell/AW already do this. It is a MXM so the connector is the same just if it will fit is the main question.

2. Is it about money? if that's what it's about they are already doing the right thing and making money. If the resellers want to be competitive they can. It's not like the resellers aren't making a profit from custom builds or they would go out of business and your support will go out the window. Resellers could push the modular products more, so it is a could. Some people prefer MSI, ASUS, AW... or whatever so regardless of performance people go with what they feel comfortable with and clevo might not be it.

 

If they allow you to upgrade your own GPU every 2-4 years they might lose money on people upgrading their whole laptops in that time frame. The current lifespan for a gaming laptop is 3 years. If you replace your GPU at 3 years and you could very likely get 2 more years out of your laptop maybe even 3 more!

In the end it's a money thing for the companies and it doesn't make sense for then to allow you to easily and cheaply upgrade the most important component for gaming on your own without paying a premium.

I think it sucks and they are screwing the consumer yet again (look at the Clevo bios update issue) to not allowing people to upgrade GPUs.

MXM is the standard socket but bios support for the upgrade and cost make it very unlikely.