Precision M6500 video card upgrade

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

amelirry

Honorable
Feb 16, 2015
2
0
10,510
I have a Precision M6500 with quad i7 - X940 @2.13Ghz. - 32 GB of RAM (4 X 8GB) and the original ATI FirePro M7820 card. - with upgraded fast hard drives - Samsung SSD 850 Pro.

The original Dell documentation reads as follows:
Video type: Discrete
Data bus: PCI-Express x16 Gen 2 capable
Controller and Memory: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M (1 GB GDDR3 graphics memory)
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M (1 GB GDDR3 graphics memory)
*****AMD ATI FirePro M7820 (1 GB GDDR5 graphics memory).
Output 15-pin video connector -
DUAL MODE DISPLAY PORT connector

I wish to upgrade to AMD M6100. Is this possible, please?



 
Sort by date Sort by votes
T

thedavecason

Commendable
Aug 20, 2016
1
0
1,510
You can do it but you'd need to find a compatible part. You have one of the higher end cards. Here is a video of a guy taking out a lower end card and replacing it with what you have, an M7820:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQBno_gAoo

A FirePro M8900 may work and it is slightly faster, There are faster mobile cards, but you'd have to find one that fits in a similar Dell, like something like the next version up, a Dell Precision M6600 (and there are no guarantees those will work).

Compare some cards, here:
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FirePro-M8900-vs-AMD-FirePro-M6000/m9032vsm7770



 
Upvote 1 Downvote
P

peter_a_morrison

Prominent
Dec 4, 2017
1
0
510
So, I've done this, as I had a DELL M6500 Precision Laptop (17" Size) with the nVidia FX2800 graphics card with 1GB of GDDR Ram, that was running into the "black screen" shutdown issues. This was with Windows 7, and the system would just "black screen" requiring a complete shut down via power cycling, and then would return to some usability. There were some discussions that the problem could be traced back to the video card with nVidia (FX2800 and FX3800) graphics chips having thermal issues.

I used the videos online at YouTube to understand the replacement process, and while not for the faint of heart - you can replace the video cards for these laptops with a small precision phillips screwdriver and some patience. In the end, I selected the AMD ATI FirePro M7820 card (also there are the M7720 and others) and did a 1:1 swap, and reset the graphics drivers on the Dell M6500 laptop. The entire process took about an hour. Now the system runs well, and I have no "black Screening" issues. I am also able to run most modern graphics programs, and use the processors from the GPU on the FirePro to do virtualization.

> I wish to upgrade to AMD M6100. Is this possible, please?

No, on each laptop, only certain cards will work with the systems - for the M6500, the only AMD choices were the M7720, the M7740 and the M7820. But these were all very good cards compared the nVidia FX cards. The 6100 and the M7820 were comparable, but the 6100 has better processing bandwidth and memory, so it beat the M7820 by 2X. But by today's GPU benchmarks - the M7820 is at least one generation behind current gaming systems. You just can't 'insert" the 6100 into the M6500 - at least not that I am aware of. The M6100 was only applicable for the Dell model M6600-M6800 Precision laptops with the MXM card system.

See also https://www.notebookcheck.net/FirePro-M6100-vs-FirePro-M7820_5057_1899.247598.0.html
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom