M17x R2 full internal cooling mod - huge improvement!

[nzgeek]

Will a pair of 480Ms work in the R2?

No. The immediate problem is power. The MXM 3.0b standard says that the maximum power draw for a single card is 75W. The 480M requires 100W of power to run, so the laptop just can't provide enough juice. The power requirement could be dropped somewhat by only using 1GB of RAM instead of 2, but I don't think the drop will be quite enough.

After that comes the heat problem, with the card running hotter than most. A big chunk of this is the memory (DDR5), and dropping the memory may help. But it'll probably still run hot enough to cause headaches.

[Lozz]

that's not true, we don't have power consumption figures, the 100W is a TDP number, which is the amount of heat that must be dissapated.

[Ashtefere]

ANNNND... the graphics card does not dissipate ALL the energy it receives as heat, meaning the graphics card could consume more (I think thats right, isnt it?) than 100 watt.

Plus the bigges issue is the 480m has ramchips on both sides of the card, where as the mxm 3.0b standard requires only one side of the card.

If there was some kind of gtx 470m (1gb ram, ram on one side of the card only, lower clockspeed) it would almost certainly fit.

-Ash

[Lozz]

it obvisully can work in a MXM3.0B slot considering that it's being sold in a MXM3.0b laptop with no visable additional power connector. That would be a collosial error on nvidia's part if they were to design a card that requires a special power source. It's a 100W thermal design power card, Watt can be used to measure heat and energy but the units are not interchangeable. It needs a HSF that can dissapate 100W worth of energy, but that doesn't mean it needs 100W worth of power.

[nzgeek]

the 100W is a TDP number, which is the amount of heat that must be dissapated.

It is hard to say how much power the card needs. We don't know whether the +25% TDP (over the 5870M) means +10%, +25% or +50% power draw.

Whatever it is, I think it's safe to agree that it's more than a 5870M. Given that people with CFX 5870Ms and the i7-9x0 CPUs are already running into power-based throttling, a 480M SLI config would probably be even worse.

[TurbodTalon]

Is this a motherboard limitation, or a power brick limitation? If it's the power brick, I would just string two together in parallel. You've also got to remember that the current 240W power brick trips under extreme overclock conditions, not during any kind of typical use.

[Lozz]

Is this a motherboard limitation, or a power brick limitation?

If there's any limitation it would be in the mainboard, but only in the extremely unlikely event that the 480M's need an additional power source (although there's no information available that suggests this). I can't see it being hard for dell to get their hands on a bigger power brick for their mainboard connector however. It's a 3 moffset mainboard, so it can probally handle 300W, but without the datasheets for the moffets there's no certainty in that.

[Ashtefere]

Yeah, we would need 2x 480m's with sli cable and another powerbrick for any kind of testing.

Good luck finding a 480m by itself though.

-Ash

[TurbodTalon]

Agreed. I think this will be pure speculation for quite some time to come. It might be a cool upgrade a year or so down the road when the 5870s are starting to show their age. And it will be a spendy project for sure. Lozz, do you mean mosfet?

[Ashtefere]

Hahah... we are about to see 6xx0 cards be released by ati.

If they manage to sort their drivers out... I think we will be laughing.

I would even hazard a guess that by the time nvidia brings out 480m gpu's to the mainstream, or even 460m to the mainstream, ati will have working silicon of the desktop 6870.

And then a mobility product will only be 2-3 months away.

-Ash