Want to upgrade GPU or CPU, but technically illiterate and not sure if even possible.

I have a Sager NP9170, and I love it - here are my current specs.

GPU - AMD Radeon HD 7970m
CPU - i7-3720QM 2.60GHz

I've heard upgrading laptops is significantly more difficult than desktops, as well as often impossible, so I've come here.
I use the laptop quite a bit for gaming, specifically MMOs, and it's been struggling significantl more with a recent title compared to what I've played recently up to that point. Looking to improve it.. My GPU seems to score lower on benchmarks than my CPU, however, MMOs are from what I know really intensive CPU wise - so I'm not totally sure which between the two I should upgrade (if even possible.)

So, Sager owners, is it possible to upgrade the GPU/CPU in the 9170s? If so, what are some upgrades that are compatible?

On a sidenote, I've looked around to for mobile GPUs, and they're seemingly impossible to purcase stand-alone. Not sure how I'd go about finding a GPU if upgrade able, but yeah.

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

 

People seem to ignore my threads, but I'll help you with yours.
Clevo and Sager laptops aren't actually too hard to upgrade, just make sure you follow basic precautions.
Modern MMOs are quite GPU intensive, if I were you, I'd overclock the 7970m, as it still in fact is one of the most powerful available cards, an upgrade will most likely cost you at least $400USD, for a small gain in performance.

MSI Afterburner: MSI Afterburner
is a very easy to use overclocking tool for GPU, before you consider overclocking, have MSI afterburner running while playing an intensive game for a while, and alt-tab to check GPU temps (Should be on the right pane).
I'd say if it's below 85c, there's room for overclocking. To apply clocks, simply press the apply button on the bottom right, after which, you can press "save", and click a number, in order to have a profile that MSI afterburner will remember, so you don't need to re-enter values.

I recommend 900 for core clock, and 1300 for memory, initially, but 950 and 1450 are also stable, although keep in mind, the higher you go, the higher the temps get.
1000 for core, and 1500 for memory seems to be the max clocks you can use without issue without modifying voltage, which is approaching the somewhat dangerous territory.

Overclocking should offer a decent performance improvement, if it's still not enough, you're going to need a Crossfire or SLI capable machine, such as an NP9370 (Clevo P370EM) to run the game as smoothly as you wish, a laptop with crossfire/SLI on good cards, is roughly equivalent with a reasonable gaming desktop.

As a side note, the AMD 8970m is quite literally a AMD 7970m with 4gb vRAM, and overclocked, it will offer about as much performance as your 7970m will when overclocked, perhaps a small amount more.
The next real performance boost for a single card setup would be an Nvidia 780m, which is quite expensive, and unfortunately not compatible with your machine.

If you really think that a CPU upgrade is necessary, I believe a i7 2920xm comes fairly cheap, and is quite overclockable, you'll have to search more on ebay at different processor options if you feel you want a more powerful one.
This is an "Engineering Sample", but should run the same as a standard chip if a few forums are to be believed, it is quite cheap:

Intel Sandy Bridge Mobile Processor I7 2920XM CPU ES 2 4GHz Q15G Free DHL | eBay

Watch a video on laptop CPU replacement before trying anything.
I'm not the most knowledgeable on these things, as I've only inserted SSDs, replaced a GPU, and RAM on any of my machines, but I myself have a 7970m, so you can trust me with the overclocking information.

 

*accidental repost. Apologies.

 

Appreciate it. I might look into building a desktop this summer, then. I downloaded Afterburner, and I can't set the clocking bar past 850 for core clock, or 1200 for the memory clock. In the user manual it says that one is able to enter their custom values in the field at the end of the drag bar, but each time I enter the numbers, it reverts back to 850/1200. Not sure if those are constaints from my CPU, or simply a result of a setting I in Afterburner I haven't checked yet. I'll look for more in the manual.

*edit: Did some more searching. Found something about enabling "unofficial overclocking" to be able to clock past Afterburner's limits that involves going in config files and changing a few things. Sound right, possibly?

 

There's a beta build of it floating around somewhere that has toggles in the settings for enabling "advance overclocking" or whatever. However, for the latest official release, you have to go in to a text file in the install directory and change a few lines at the bottom, basically agreeing that if you blow stuff up it's your fault, and MSI is not responsible. The google result you found seems about right.

 

Your build should still be up to most games, and if you did upgrade you'd see marginal improvements. Have you updated the GPU drivers? When the computer first came out they some underutilization issues. The newest drivers from AMD should fix most if not all previous issues.

 

I read about some under utilization issues, as well as something having to do with enduro. I have catalyst control center, and downloaded AMD's auto detection software as well. Not sure if I did something wrong, though; I had an older version of catalyst control center, and after looking up and installing the newest version, when I open up mine, it appears unchanged? Same version number and everything.

Any way to tell if my GPU's underutilizing?

I went in and changed the .cfg filed and Afterburner now lets me go above the values I mentioned before, however, whenever I try to save presets, they revert back to 850/1200. So I'll save, say a gaming preset with 900/1300, and then when I load the preset later, it's back at 850/1200. Not sure why, but looks like I might have to manually set them every time.

 

Use a program like msi after burner to monitor gpu usage.

 

Just played for a bit.

Clocks were 900/1300

GPU temperature stayed around high 68 with a high of 73.
GPU usage stayed around 48 percent with a few highs of 58 percent.

 

Try downloading the latest drivers from the amd drivers, install them and try again.

 

turns out I was going about updating the wrong way. Spent some time on it to figure out what I was doing wrong, updated. My FPS has literally doubled.

Thanks a bunch everyone.
I must look a tad like an idiot with how simple of a problem it was, but none the less, I really appreciate it.

 

One more quick question - the newfound performance in my GPU has caused it to run significantly hotter. While playing earlier, it maintained a steady 85C, with a few spikes to 88. While I know those temps are technically safe, they still get me a little nervous. I turned on Vsync and my temperature stayed around 75-78. Would those numbers be considered healthy?

I saw a lot of people say to use manual an controls if your GPU gets too hot, but the option isn't available in MSI for me, nore is there a "fan" tab in the settings.
Don't have the option in catalyst control center, either. I'd like to know how incase I need to.

I saw that some GPUs were flatout unable to manually control fans, not sure if my Radeon HD 7970m is one of them.

Gonna clean out any dust tomorrow as well, see if it helps a little, although it hasn't been too long since I last did.

 

Those are normal, just make sure you do proper maintenence and clean the heatsinks.

All notebook fans are controlled by the machine itself and don't have anything to do with the card installed.

 

80's should be fine, but personally I would keep the vsync on to keep it under 80. Cleaning your vents and some good fresh thermal paste will probably help too. Gelid extreme or arctic mx-4. Or some noctua nt-h1.

Sent from my SM-N9005