Laptop Video Card Question

[Obiron]

I have a friend's laptop that I've been working on because she was having some issues with the video. I'm fairly certain the video card is the culprit. No output from VGA/DVI, weird artifacting on the screen, screen stays black much of the time. I've even opened it up and noticed the thermal pasted on the vid card looked brownish, as if it had been burnt. I put some new Arctic Silver on it, but it looks like the damage has already been done.

So, on to my question: I know very little about laptop video cards. Do they use any standardization as far as size/connectors go? It would cost about $300 to replace this card, which is hardly worth it for an old laptop. Would it be possible to find a cheaper model that would fit in its place?

For reference, it is a Dell Inspiron 9300, the card is an Nvidia 6800 Go (Dell part# W5373).

Thanks BG!

[orinthia]

In nearly all cases, laptop vid hardware is not replaceable, that is, you need to replace the entire laptop board to "fix" it. Even if you were comfortable with replacing individual chips, you'd have a hard time just getting the raw parts (would have to harvest from other laptops most likely).

If you do have the rare case of it being replaceable, you'd have noticed a horizontal slot that the vid hardware is connected to and be able to completely remove it from the rest of the mobo. You'd then just read the documentation to find out what kind of slot it is and good hunting on ebay/etc. That would be the only way as modern, individual vid chips have pretty much never been as user replaceable as individual cpus.

You'll probably just need a new laptop in any case... To be a little more certain about the problems, I'd boot from a boot disc or a linux live cd and see if it's not just windows where it acts up.

[Obiron]

The vid card is removable, I've already opened the laptop up and pulled it out. I'll do some searching on eBay to see what comes up there.

The problem isn't Windows specific, it's been happening during the BIOS screen, during Dell diagnostics, and I even booted in to Ghost yesterday to grab an image of the drive and the video was messed up there too.

[orinthia]

Wish I had actually bothered to search your laptop make, yes it certainly is one of the rare replaceable ones (so lucky). Third link in my search found a similar problem to yours too. Was solved by replacing the vid hardware (though the OP went ahead with a new laptop, someone else posted they had theirs replaced free under warranty). Here was that search result: http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...eath-pics.html

I just did a quick ebay search and found a fair number of buy it now options for ati and nvidia hardware for your laptop. Expect to pay around $60-$100, which isn't too bad. Be careful about not buying a dead card as well lol, as I saw one auction on there for a dead card (read descriptions thoroughly before buying).

[Obiron]

Yeah, I've run across a couple already that say they are not working lol. I'm not in a big rush though, so I'll take my time and watch for a good one. Thanks for the input. :D