Upgrading Laptop Graphics Cards

[TacoTaru]

Just a couple of questions about this: I've always heard this was impossible to do, but after doing some quick google searches I've either been lied to or been mistakenly told wrong. That being said, the bigger question is it worth the effort? Mostly this idea is based on the fact that my fiancee loves her laptop, loves playing Final Fantasy on her laptop (and soon to play XIV on her laptop) and has no desire to ever migrate back to a PC; so "worth it" for me is cost and effort vs. outright buying a new laptop for her if she were to need one. I saw a small slide show on PCWorld on how to do it, but depending on where it is located (the PC World slide show was 2 years old and said some where located on the bottom of the unit not requiring a total dismantle of the laptop) it may require me to pay to have it done as I'm fairly certain I would fuck something up if it involved dismantling the laptop. Looking around on newegg and tigerdirect (I don't know any other websites specifically for computer parts) I can't even find mobile graphics cards to purchase and any searching just results in laptops that contain said card.

So with that said, I know I could post the laptop specs + graphics card I want to upgrade to and get the answers of whether or not it's compatible, but before I spend a lot of time researching this I'd like to know some opinions if I should even spend my time doing so.

Sorry if this post is a little incoherent; if it's that bad I'll try to clean it up in the morning when I'm not as tired.

[The Stig]

Not worth the effort really. It's true that it's mainly impossible to upgrade because a lot of cards are kinda perma-soldered on (well, on my mini Dell XPS m1210 at least) or a lot of cards are designed specifically for X laptop. This is why you won't find anything out there but spares but even that's rather uncommon. Mobile Cards work a lot differently to a desktop one due to their heat generation/power requirement/etc.

Although in another topic elsewhere (lemme try to dig it up) someone managed to rig up an external card to a laptop and use that to "power" the display on the latop.

Effort/cost ratio, if you're good with tweaking fiddling DIY research and stuff, by all means try to rig an external one to it. But it won't be a laptop anymore since it'll need 2 power supplies (laptop and the card itself) and you'll need to be quite delicate in handling it.

What laptop do you have?



I'm too lazy myself (not to mention the aftermath) to do all of the suggestions so I would personally just buy one and save the hassle. And since it'll be your fiancee using it, combined with the fact she's a women, I don't think is too ideal.

[Icari]

Depending on the laptop the graphics card you have now may be part of the mother board, and if so then you can NOT upgrade it. If your graphics card is NOT part of the mother board, it may be very expensive 500+ to buy another graphics card and no guarantee that it will fit well in the case, it has to be the EXACT same size as the card you have now. You could also find that if you upgrade the graphics card the life of the card may be short, the laptop may not be able to supply the power and cooling needed by the new card so it may over heat and then be useless and waste your money.

[orinthia]

http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

Here's a site where you can find out if your laptop can be upgraded and where to buy the part. Be warned though, choose too high a part and you risk serious overheating issues. There's also the problem of the different kinds of slots, so make sure they are the exact needed slot.

Since you didn't tell us the laptop model, we can't tell you exactly what you can do. The above only works for select few laptops. You can also buy an exteral pci-express card bay for a desktop video card, but that will run you $500+ just for the bay. It will never run at full desktop speed either due to laptop pci-express card speed (2x or so instead of 16x).

In all, it's far easier to assume you can't upgrade a laptop's video hardware because it's rare you can at all and expensive as hell sometimes.

[fishstix]

Even if you could upgrade the card, like people are saying, it'll come much more expensive than upgrading for a PC, $500+ probably unless you buy it used or something. Only a small fraction of laptops out there are built to be upgraded. There's a chance you'll only be able to upgrade to a small step higher, also. If it's an integrated chip, you'll have to go with an external route.

Overall, with effort and cost, buying a new laptop would be best imo. If you could post the model, we might can tell you if it's even possible for you.

[Krandor]

Even if you have a laptop that has upgradable cards, don't fucking do it. I upgraded the graphics cards on my XPS M1730 awhile back, and it cost me around $700. Don't get me wrong, it was a big ass performance upgrade because the cards that came with it were awful, but a few months later I ended up buying a 2nd laptop for 1000 bucks (since 12 lbs 17" laptops are a pain in the ass to carry around), and my M11x outperforms the big fella in anything that's not video encoding.

Save a few extra bucks and get a new laptop, you'll be better off.

[sruon]

Going to +1 everything that's been said, it's extremely expensive compared to the cost of a brand new laptop.

[TacoTaru]

Yeah, while I appreciate people offering to help by me posting the laptop, I think this one is going to be a pass. My expectations where drastically off, especially on price. Thanks for the comments though as I'll probably just grab a new one with my student loan refund money.