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Alienware 15 Upgrade Graphics Card
I purchased an Alienware 15 manuf. date of 2/22/2015 with the NVIDIA GTX 970M It seems that my card is only a 1GB GCPU. But, with the intensive graphics of AutoCAD, Sketch Up, Revit to name a few. I need at least 4gb and would like to know how I can upgrade my card.
AndrewSi
901 Posts
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August 7th, 2015 03:00
Hi, I think the 970M is actually 3GB.
That being said, your GPU is soldered to the motherboard, so an upgrade requires the entire motherboard including CPU to be replaced.
A cheaper option may be a Alienware toaster (Graphics Amplifier) I think they retail for around the $300 mark, it connects to the large port at the rear of your AW15, with that you'll have the added power of a desktop GPU
msseb01
6 Posts
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August 8th, 2015 00:00
Andrews,
Looking at CPU-Z I have an Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics 3072 MBytes and the NVIDIA GrForce GTX 970M 1024 MBytes. Do both of these GPU's work together to independent from each other. I use highly intensive rendering programs and trying to maximize the GPU or use the best one.
Game7a1
727 Posts
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August 8th, 2015 09:00
CPU-Z messes up the graphics information. If you want more detailed GPU information, I would use GPU-Z. CPU-Z mixed up the VRAM information from the information you gave us.
The laptop uses Optimus, a switchable graphics software used when the iGPU is the display GPU, which is true for the laptop. Once an intensive task is being ran, the Nvidia GPU will kick in and do the workload. The two do work together in that sense, but you'll end up using the 970m more than the HD 4600 in the intensive programs (by more, I mean a lot more).