Alienware M17x Upgrade!

Originally Posted by NFL 

Unfortunately laptop CPUs and GPUs aren't upgradable so your best bet is a new laptop...can't see specs currently so I'm assuming hardware is dated
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Originally Posted by identitycrisis 

Wrong...
To the OP:
Lots of people upgrade Alienware laptops... they seem to have the most spare parts available. I read a lot on Notebook Review, you might want tot ake a peak in the alienware sub-forum for your laptop model for info. Alienwares laptops seem to be the most upgradeable GPU wise over most laptop manufacturers. They seem to have good compatibility, and availability. For some reason alienware is more tolerant of newer gen gpus, as long as they're the same socket and of the same wattage/heat rating. Even over sager/clevo, as they stop bios support at product EOL, which effectively kills gpu upgrades past same gen GPUs, in most cases anyways. It seems that clevo writes support into the bios for cards, or something of that nature. Nothing is guaranteed though, so you have to do your homework.
The first thing you need to do, is figure out if your laptop is MXM 3.0 or not, which, I would bet, it is. And the socket of your current laptop (use something like CPU-Z to determine). So you should be able to put a couple of 5870s in there at the very least. Maybe even more if they are within the correct range for your laptops cooling/power capability.
I don't know why the guy above me went to an extreme cpu, I am sure you can find a slightly cheaper quad for that socket laptop of yours. I wouldn't go nuts, the GPUs will probably still be your limiting factor, but you definitely want to make sure you get some decent horsepower. Before springing for the extreme cpu, I would make sure your alienware has the capability to overclock in the bios., otherwise you might be able to save some money on a lower end quad.
Now, all that being said, it generally isnt cheap. But you have a good base for a laptop. I would seriously consider the cost vs the performance gain before springing for anything though.
**EDIT** There is a guy on NBR who went from an M17X-R2 (which I would guess is what yours is) with crossfire 4870s to 6970s. That would be a hug upgrade. But My guess is, used a pair of those would be $700 or more.
Hope this helps in some way.
ID