Recommendations for upgrading my old laptop gpu

[ista]

Hello
I have an Hp zbook 15 g3
it currently has a
i7-6700HQ
AMD W5170M
16 gb of ram

it supports MxM type A but not B
what should I upgrade to?

I am taking Official and Unofficial cards as well

 

[eidairaman1]

Laptop firmware have white lists of what cards are compatible, with that you would most likely need to have a good knowledge of how to modify and properly flash the bios of the motherboard so it will properly communicate with the card, without bricking your laptops motherboard bios.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04944564

There's the list.

TechPowerUp

Graphics card and GPU database with specifications for products launched in recent years. Includes clocks, photos, and technical details.

www.techpowerup.com

Also the MXM B 3.0 cards while mxm a compatible are just physically larger, so they most likely won't fit in your unit, or you wouldn't have a large enough cooling solution or fast fan to support it.

Mobile PCI Express Module - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[ista]

Ok thx

 

[Ferrum Master]

I've seen China Intel Arc MXM a modules...

Intel Arc A380 MXM Card Surfaces with 50-75 W Power Limits

A Chinese OEM put a desktop Intel Arc "Alchemist" A380 GPU on an MXM board for notebooks and mobile workstations with upgradable graphics. This isn't the mobile A380M, but rather the desktop A380 that has been designed into an MXM 3.1 type-A board that's capable of PCIe Gen 4 x8. The 6 nm...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[ista]

dose a gtx 1650 mxm module exist ?
i would rather get it instead of a 1050 ti or quadro m2200

 

[Caring1]

I seriously doubt you can just put another Mxm card in and have it work, the Bios would need to be altered.
You are better off looking for an E-GPU enclosure and a desktop GPU to put in that to connect to your laptop, IF it can be used with such an old laptop.

 

[P4-630]

You are better off looking for an E-GPU enclosure and a desktop GPU to put in that to connect to your laptop, IF it can be used with such an old laptop.

Even then, that CPU will become a bottleneck...

 

[dgianstefani]

Hello
I have an Hp zbook 15 g3
it currently has a
i7-6700HQ
AMD W5170M
16 gb of ram

it supports MxM type A but not B
what should I upgrade to?

I am taking Official and Unofficial cards as well

Recommendation - don't spend money on this. It's a skylake quad core.

For £350 delivered I bought an as new Raptor Lake 10 core laptop with two years of warranty left, and Thunderbolt ports that allow usage of an eGPU if I wanted to game on a laptop.

Any $ you put into upgrading what is now more than an 8 year old laptop will be money down the drain.

Intel Core i7-6700HQ vs Intel Core i5-1335U

Intel Core i7-6700HQ vs Intel Core i5-1335U. Benchmark, test, review, comparison and differences between these CPUs in Cinebench 23 and Geekbench 5

www.cpu-monkey.com

For reference, the 15 W CPU in this thin and light is essentially twice as fast as the 45 W CPU in your ZBook.

GPU options you have are also not great considering the hardware whitelist.

Again, it's more than eight years old, and laptops do not have an infinite lifespan, the power delivery circuitry, the cooling, even the silicon itself will have some degradation at the temperatures these laptops run at.

Do not waste money on it.

3x the memory bandwidth and twice the PCIe bandwidth, on a thin and light with 1/3 the TDP.

Sell or repurpose the laptop while it still works. I wouldn't trust it under any gaming or other heavy load.

 

[P4-630]

Even an i3 1315U is crushing that i7....

 

[ista]

i have explored egpu options and concluded that though feasible will require a budget i dont have (i am 15)

 

[ista]

i got this laptop as a gift 3 years ago and i am trying to expand its usefulness until the end of high school

 

[ista]

getting a new laptop is out of the question

 

[P4-630]

You can always play minecraft...

 

[ty_ger]

Laptop firmware have white lists of what cards are compatible, with that you would most likely need to have a good knowledge of how to modify and properly flash the bios of the motherboard so it will properly communicate with the card, without bricking your laptops motherboard bios.

I had a clevo (sager) laptop which I upgraded from a Gtx 580m to a Gtx 680m. It worked fine, but the only problem is that the laptop gave it a bogus device ID which would cause the NVIDIA driver to error during install. All I had to do was modify the NVIDIA driver to add a Gtx 680m with that bogus id.
Worked that way for years through multiple driver update procedures.

Just a FYI.

 

[eidairaman1]

i got this laptop as a gift 3 years ago and i am trying to expand its usefulness until the end of high school

Ok so what is usefulness in your mind? Also start saving up.

 

[ista]

rendering and modeling

I had a clevo (sager) laptop which I upgraded from a Gtx 580m to a Gtx 680m. It worked fine, but the only problem is that the laptop gave it a bogus device ID which would cause the NVIDIA driver to error during install. All I had to do was modify the NVIDIA driver to add a Gtx 680m with that bogus id.
Worked that way for years through multiple driver update procedures.

Just a FYI.

i have worked with modding software so no biggie

I had a clevo (sager) laptop which I upgraded from a Gtx 580m to a Gtx 680m. It worked fine, but the only problem is that the laptop gave it a bogus device ID which would cause the NVIDIA driver to error during install. All I had to do was modify the NVIDIA driver to add a Gtx 680m with that bogus id.
Worked that way for years through multiple driver update procedures.

Just a FYI.

i have worked with modding software so no biggie

then again i could use lossless scaling

 

[eidairaman1]

rendering and modeling


i have worked with modding software so no biggie


i have worked with modding software so no biggie

then again i could use lossless scaling

I suggest you start saving up for a newer mobile, your unit is like 10+ years old.

 

[Ruru]

Even then, that CPU will become a bottleneck...

Maybe... 4/8 Skylake is still somewhat capable if you don't except too much

 

[Dr. Dro]

i got this laptop as a gift 3 years ago and i am trying to expand its usefulness until the end of high school

Looks like your laptop is a hand me down, or new-old-stock then. That laptop should be around 8 years old, the W5170M is a 10 year old mobile GPU.

I have a 3 year old laptop I use for studies (read: discreetly play Star Rail during those boring, politically charged lectures at law school) with a Ryzen 5 5600H/RTX 3050, you should look into purchasing one like that instead of a dGPU for your laptop. How much are you looking to spend, realistically? Laptop MXM cards aren't known for being affordable anyway, the aforementioned ThinkPad might be a great idea in the end.

 

[kiddagoat]

MXM Modules are notoriously expensive nowadays, and you can't just put whatever in the system. As noted, it has to be on the whitelist of supported cards. Also, you will need a heatsink that will fit the card, adding the cost.

From the perspective of an old repair technician, HP MXM modules are hard to come by. As someone noted, you have to have a HP vBIOS on the card (good luck finding one) and then also the motherboard BIOS has to have a record of that card and vBIOS for it to work.

Upgrading to unofficial cards is always a risk. Your motherboard and power supply may not be able to deliver the proper power for the graphics card to function properly, resulting in damage to the MXM module and/or the laptop motherboard.

HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo were always very specific in that only their parts would work in their machines. Dell/Clevo/ASUS/MSI were interchangeable varying from model to model.

 

[eidairaman1]

MXM Modules are notoriously expensive nowadays, and you can't just put whatever in the system. As noted, it has to be on the whitelist of supported cards. Also, you will need a heatsink that will fit the card, adding the cost.

From the perspective of an old repair technician, HP MXM modules are hard to come by. As someone noted, you have to have a HP vBIOS on the card (good luck finding one) and then also the motherboard BIOS has to have a record of that card and vBIOS for it to work.

Upgrading to unofficial cards is always a risk. Your motherboard and power supply may not be able to deliver the proper power for the graphics card to function properly, resulting in damage to the MXM module and/or the laptop motherboard.

HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo were always very specific in that only their parts would work in their machines. Dell/Clevo/ASUS/MSI were interchangeable varying from model to model.

Hence the bios white listing, it all depends if it has a chunky heatsink and chunky fan or a weak thin ass heatsink and fan.

If anything I miss laptops from 2004.