Is it Possible - m14xr1 with external GPU?

[gtxvsradeon]

Hi everyone,

I have gone through a lot of pages of this forum (related to eGPU and overclocking) and they really are very useful but not able to find anything good for my laptop.

My laptop is Alienware M14Xr1 with following configurations :

Intel core i7 2860QM

Nvidia GT555m (3GB)

8GB primary memory 1600Mhz

750GB secondary memory 7200RPM (698.4 GB usable)

900p screen

I want to use a eGPU setup in my system.

Could anyone please tell me whether it is possible or not to use -

In my system there are following ports available - 2xUSB3.0, 1xUSB2.0, 1xHDMI1.4, 1xMiniDisplayPort, 1xVGA, 1xEthernet1000mbps, (I think none of these will be helpful in eGPU setup )

But i have heard that if you remove your wireless card then you can plug in your eGPU there. Is it true,

Please anyone share your experience with me related to this setup.

[angerthosenear]

Yes! It is possible, I've done it even.

You will need a mPCIe based eGPU adapter. To use it you have to open the bottom cover and unscrew the battery, pull out the wifi card and plug the adapter into there.... then you have the fun of having the cable come out the front of the laptop at the most inconvenient angle on the planet. But! It does work.

Honestly, it's far better to buy a m14xR2 motherboard (and heatsink), put it in the system, put a super awesome custom BIOS/vBIOS by @svl7 then OC the GT 650M. It's about the best performance you can get out of it for the price. It's what I did, you can see a link to it in my signature.

[_Drake_]

Perhaps a bit late but even with a Egpu you won't get close to the real life performance of a GT650m, tried it with a GTX660 desktop gpu but it ran games a lot slower due to the limited bandwith of the pcie interface.

Benchmarks like 3dmark11 show excellent results but bf3 ran like 40-50 fps at most with 786p.

[angerthosenear]

Perhaps a bit late but even with a Egpu you won't get close to the real life performance of a GT650m, tried it with a GTX660 desktop gpu but it ran games a lot slower due to the limited bandwith of the pcie interface

Well, 660Ti eGPU still blows away the 650M. It's hard to compete with a desktop GPU even if there is a bandwidth restriction.

650M:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3820QM Processor,Alienware M14xR2

660Ti: (old laptop even)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2620M Processor,FUJITSU FJNB231

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Even with the performance gap, I'd still suggesting just upgrading the motherboard to the R2 one with the 650M. It's the most cost-effective approach and you still get amazing performance out of it. And you won't have this unattractive mess coming out of your computer lol

[_Drake_]

As said before (although I've edited the post ) with benchmarkt it looks great but BF3 ran a lot slower on the E-gpu (p4l on a HP probook with a ivy bridge quad core).

[_Drake_]

And yeah I agree though on replacing the board with a R2 although boards are quite expensive on places like Ebay.