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what graphics card will fit my area-51 m7700?

post #1 of 3
5/1/07 at 11:20pm
Thread Starter 
hi. i have a area-51 m7700 with an nvidia geforce go 6800 ultra 256mb graphics card and im looking to upgrade that as well as anything else i can on this computer as much as i can. i currently have 2, 1gb ram sticks, ddr2 533, and the pentium 4 3.8ghz. i just would like some advice about anything i can do to make this computer run faster, and will take any suggestions and would appreciate as much detail as possible and possibly places i could purchase this hardware. everything is stock, untouched since i bought it.

i'm also open to advice about maybe purchasing a different laptop, if it would cost about the same amount of money or if it would be worth the difference. i'm running xp right now and am looking to run vista. i am an architect and run programs like photoshop, illustrator, 3ds max, maya, autocad, flash, etc. and am just looking for a faster machine because this computer is behaiving a bit sluggish as of late due to the high use it is under. i am maxing out the 2gb of ram doing modeling and rendering tasks just to give you an idea.. thank you so much for your input ahead of time! -Ahdom
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post #2 of 3
5/2/07 at 1:45am
The cards you will be able to upgrade to depends on your motherboard revision. After the 6800go, the voltage requirements for the newer vid cards required mobo revisions to be able to deliver the increased amount of voltage to the vid card slot. You can find the revision of your mobo by opening the memory bay in the bottom, and reading the sticker.

With the programs you're running though, I'm not sure it's worth it to invest more in the 7700. AW's new laptops are all dual core systems (as soon as the m9700 is retired) and dual core will seriously speed up the applications you listed.

The hot Alienware system at the moment is the m9750, a dual core intel machine that supports up to two 7950gtx video cards in SLI. SLI is mainly for games, but you can also order an m9750 with a single video card for your apps. Not sure SLI helps with non game apps that aren't written for it.

Here is the configuration page for the m9750. Note the current order ship dates are in June. It's a new model that hasn't started shipping yet so there may be delays.

You can probably get a pretty good price for the7700 on ebay.

You could upgrade the 7700, but you're at the top of the processors it can handle already. If your mobo is the right revision, you can add a vid card, but that's it besides hard drives for performance... The applications you listed are cpu dependent more than vid card dependent anyway, so I don't think you'd be happy with the return on investment for the upgrade. I think you can order the m9750 with 4G memory also, 2 2G sticks. The Clevo d900t has been discontinued, it's the base platform for the m7700, so parts will be hard to find soon, so I wouldn't invest any big money in it at this point.
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post #3 of 3
5/2/07 at 2:15am
Thread Starter 
thats exactly what i needed to hear.. thank you so much for your input. alienware told me otherwise about the graphics cards so i appreciate your advice tremendously
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