Dell Precision M6500 MXM Graphics Card Swap

[SirTheo60]

So here's the picture. I have a M6500 Dell Precision with an extreme edition i7- 940XM. The thing is a beast I upgraded to 2 SSDs in it and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 at 1600mhz. Now I did did some modifying, swapped out the heatsink fan for more airflow for a more powerful fan for both the graphics card and the CPU. Unfortunately mine came with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory. I am looking to swap to one of these 3 for sure as they were all options from factory:

 

ATI FirePro™ M7820 Graphics with 1GB DDR5 dedicated memory (supports ATI Eyefinity multiple display technology5)
NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000M Graphics with 2GB DDR5 dedicated memory
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory

 

Obviously the Quadro FX 2800M is a step down, so that is already out of the running. Now I am curious since the Quadro 6000m uses the same connector type (MXM) would it be compatible? If not, which one is better? The ATI FirePro or the 5000M? I'm looking to make this decent mobile gaming rig that I can also do work related stuff and ArcGIS Geospatial Mapping on the go.

 

Thanks for your comments!

[SirTheo60]

On a side note ever hear about a 5010M? Would it be better?

[Samsonsuperco]

On 7/14/2016 at 8:53 AM, SirTheo60 said:

So here's the picture. I have a M6500 Dell Precision with an extreme edition i7- 940XM. The thing is a beast I upgraded to 2 SSDs in it and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 at 1600mhz. Now I did did some modifying, swapped out the heatsink fan for more airflow for a more powerful fan for both the graphics card and the CPU. Unfortunately mine came with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory. I am looking to swap to one of these 3 for sure as they were all options from factory:

 

ATI FirePro™ M7820 Graphics with 1GB DDR5 dedicated memory (supports ATI Eyefinity multiple display technology5)
NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000M Graphics with 2GB DDR5 dedicated memory
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory

 

Obviously the Quadro FX 2800M is a step down, so that is already out of the running. Now I am curious since the Quadro 6000m uses the same connector type (MXM) would it be compatible? If not, which one is better? The ATI FirePro or the 5000M? I'm looking to make this decent mobile gaming rig that I can also do work related stuff and ArcGIS Geospatial Mapping on the go.

 

Thanks for your comments!

I recently got an M6500. My specs are in my signature. Out of all the compatible GPU's, the Firepro M7820 is the best for gaming. I can play GTA V on lowest settings at  1920x1200 at about 30-35 fps. Also it isn't MXM form factor, its some proprietary dell card. Feel free to ask me any questions. Hope this helps!

[SirTheo60]

So is it worth the upgrade? From the 3800m. I took apart and rebuild it top to bottom replacing the thermal paste on the cpu and GPU to get slightly lower Temps as well as cleaned the heatsinks. Then I OC it about 300 mhz

[D2ultima]

On 9/13/2016 at 1:06 PM, Samsonsuperco said:

Also it isn't MXM form factor, its some proprietary dell card. Feel free to ask me any questions. Hope this helps!

MXM is a slot type. You must mean it's not MXM-B SIG, which is a specific card layout/size.

 

5 hours ago, SirTheo60 said:

So is it worth the upgrade? From the 3800m. I took apart and rebuild it top to bottom replacing the thermal paste on the cpu and GPU to get slightly lower Temps as well as cleaned the heatsinks. Then I OC it about 300 mhz

You may want to check out here http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/hardware-components-and-aftermarket-upgrades.27/ and ask what the best upgrade card for you is. You're looking at rather old and weak cards from your post and a newer, better card may be functional and cool-able. Probably one of the Kepler Quadro cards. If you get a mobile 780M quadro variant, you'll enjoy gaming a lot more (though your CPU will start bottlenecking you).

[Samsonsuperco]

On 9/23/2016 at 10:06 PM, SirTheo60 said:

So is it worth the upgrade? From the 3800m. I took apart and rebuild it top to bottom replacing the thermal paste on the cpu and GPU to get slightly lower Temps as well as cleaned the heatsinks. Then I OC it about 300 mhz

IMO the upgrade is worth it. I had a Precision M4500 and it had a Quadro FX 1800M, which has DDR3 vram. It couldn't run GTA V at a playable framerate. I'm pretty sure its the DDR3 vram that kills fps with these cards. The FX 3800M also has DDR3 vram. The M7820 is GDDR5 which helps immensely.

 

20 hours ago, D2ultima said:

MXM is a slot type. You must mean it's not MXM-B SIG, which is a specific card layout/size.

 

You may want to check out here http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/hardware-components-and-aftermarket-upgrades.27/ and ask what the best upgrade card for you is. You're looking at rather old and weak cards from your post and a newer, better card may be functional and cool-able. Probably one of the Kepler Quadro cards. If you get a mobile 780M quadro variant, you'll enjoy gaming a lot more (though your CPU will start bottlenecking you).

Well considering the laptop is from 2010 (before the 700 series gpu's) I highly doubt newer cards will work in this laptop. Newer cards weren't made for this laptop. Also the form factor is proprietary as far as I can tell. Here is a picture of what the M7820 card looks like:

 

Without heat sink

 

With heat sink (top

With heat sink (bottom)

 

[D2ultima]

20 minutes ago, Samsonsuperco said:

Well considering the laptop is from 2010 (before the 700 series gpu's) I highly doubt newer cards will work in this laptop. Newer cards weren't made for this laptop. Also the form factor is proprietary as far as I can tell. Here is a picture of what the M7820 card looks like:

 

Without heat sink

700 series cards being usable or not would simply have to do with the system BIOS, and since Dell used proper MXM specifications, they're basically all plug and play until Maxwell came out. M17x R1 sold with 260Ms could plug in a 880M and boot without fault. However...

 

That thing doesn't look like it's MXM. It appears to be something else entirely, going by the connector. Odd. Oh well. 

[SirTheo60]

I overclock the 940xm processor in it to 3.3 gigahertz so I doubt the processor will be much of a bottleneck. Nevertheless once I pulled apart everything I did notice that the graphics card uses a special proprietary connector not a standard MXM connector. I am trying to figure out what kind of connector it is but nothing online is turning up anything

[D2ultima]

1 hour ago, SirTheo60 said:

I overclock the 940xm processor in it to 3.3 gigahertz so I doubt the processor will be much of a bottleneck.

A 940XM at 3.3GHz you could probably compare to a 2GHz skylake, give or take 100-200MHz. It'll bottleneck like there's no damn tomorrow, lol. 

[SirTheo60]

Not if I'm using a 700 series or 800 series card

[SirTheo60]

Update for folks reading this down the road. Out of the 4 cards that shipped with the laptop:

-ATI FirePro™ M7820 Graphics with 1GB DDR5 dedicated memory (supports ATI Eyefinity multiple display technology5)

-NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000M Graphics with 2GB DDR5 dedicated memory

-NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory

-NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 dedicated memory

 

The NVIDIA Quadro 5000M was never actually included, it was only ever proposed and then never released in this generation of laptop.

 

The ATI FirePro M7820 ran well temperatures wise and performance wise and I used it for a short while.

 

One day I happened across a card called the ATI Mobility HD 5870 which was essentially a shrunk down laptop version of the HD 5870. They made a card that fit the proprietary form factor of the M6500. I purchased one from eBay and installed it, pushing resolution to 1920X1200. Crimson Drivers and newer game drivers available and it was DX11 compatible 

Specific part:

Dell GC63V ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB Graphics Video Card

This card rocks. I was running DOOM 2016 (admittedly with Vulkan) on 1080P. All modern DX11 games. This card brings it up to speed (it is still dated never the less) but still a great upgrade since they sell on eBay even now for less that 70 bucks with heatsink.