Precision 7510 (7520) GTX965M 4MB card - succesful installation (+overclocking +Dell power throttling notes)

Background

Successful instal and overclocking of a GTX965M card in a Dell Precision 7510. Card was bought on eBay at a good price, likely (not sure) an ex-Clevo card, MXM-A "half-size". I have flashed it both with a stock Nvidia vBios and my own custom over-clocked vBioses - all fine

I would assume therefore it will install in a Precision 7520, M4800 (maybe M4700, not sure)

Summary / Key points

Runs fine and fast, see points below -

Existing Nvidia driver 369.36 for GTX965M installs out of the box (no driver mods). Theoretically it this was a version for Microsoft Surface but it installs fine, including working with Optimus. I have also tried later Dell OEM drivers (Alienware 431.53), these WILL require driver mods but work too

There was a huge performance (50%+ FPS) difference after I upgraded my PSU from 130W to 180W

I have overclocked it stable up from 925 Mhz GPU Core / 1150 Boost Mhz up to 1326 MHz Boost, Memory overclocked up to 1722 x 2 (= 3555) MHz

3DMark Firestrike benchmark is about 5800 (stock) and 6350-6400 (over-clocked). That's pushing same-generation gaming machine levels (Alienware, Clevo) on a non-SLI configuration. In comparison, overclocked M2200 cards on an i7 are topping out at about 5000 on Firestrike

Limitations

Dell Bios limits the power feed to the card to 1.0370v even with the 180W PSU ... whereas the gaming machines can push it to 1.2v+, so there's a theoretical upside. However I don't want to get into Dell Bios modding and brick my Precision!

The card runs significantly hotter than my old M1000M (and I'd assume hotter than an M2000M, M1200, M2000 etc)

Overclocked, it cycles Valley Benchmark (Extreme HD) at about 80C to (max) 82C for example. Hot, but well within 100C limits on the system

Other CPU points (for interest) from optimising it

The CPU supports Intel Speedshift (hardware-level CPU throttling) as opposed to Speedstep (software CPU throttling). This is not visible in the Dell Bios but can be accessed and turned on at boot via QuickCPU or Throttestop

Enabling Speedshift and disabling Speedstep via QuickCPU (not in Dell Bios though) seems to result in a notably more responsive system in daily activities - browsing, Windows Explorer etc

As I downgraded to an early version Dell Bios  for the 7510, I also found there is the abilty to under/over-volt the CPU (at least on the Xeons), via Throttlestop. I believe Dell disabled this somewhere along the Bios versions, certainly I couldn't do this is the latest Bios I had. Undervolting is certainly not a risk, overvolting is a risk, normal caveats apply

Conclusions

Dell Precisions 7510/7520 are amazing value (now), last forever (I still have my old M4700), and very hardware upgradeable ... I bought the 7510 second hand 18 months ago, have upgraded to 32MB memory, a Dell OEM 4K panel, backlit keyboard plus now the GTX965M MXM-A card

GTX965M card works beautifully with a 180W PSU but of course it won't run fast on latest generation 3D games anymore than an Alienware R15 of the same generation will