Wanting to upgrade my Laptop

[shadoelured]

I'm new to the community, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but,

I just bought my first laptop, an Acer Aspire AS8943g-9319. It has an i7 1.73 in it. It currently have an ati mobility radeon HD 5850 graphics card and 4gb (2x2g) of DDR3 1066.

I would like to upgrade my video card and ram. I am experience at building desktop pcs but i only ever worked on a laptop once and it was to replace the lcd. Is there a physical difference between a desktop video card and a laptop one? Also what would be a good card to look into, this one is supposed to be 2gb ddr3 vram but when i ran it on 3dmark11 it didnt score to high in graphics. How would i check to see if it is what it was sold to me as?

One last thing, the max ram for this laptop is 16g. I looked on newegg and could get 2 8g kits of DDR3 1600 for $95 each. Would this be too much ram for gaming and minimal ms works and office stuff? i seen the size of the ram listed on one details list. is 1066 small/larger then 1600?

 

[jaguarskx]

Is there a physical difference between a desktop video card and a laptop one?

There is a huge physical difference. Discrete video cards for laptops are small and follow the MXM I, II or III format. I am pretty sure the Mobility HD 5850 is MXM III format. Not sure what's the best video card that is currently available for laptops. Your current video card is roughly as powerful as the desktop version of the HD 5770. Replacement laptop video cards are not easily found since they are basically only sold to companies that builds laptops, plus they are also very expensive. I would say the Moblility HD 5850 would probably cost anywhere between $300 - $450. A faster card will cost more.

One last thing, the max ram for this laptop is 16g. I looked on newegg and could get 2 8g kits of DDR3 1600 for $95 each. Would this be too much ram for gaming and minimal ms works and office stuff? i seen the size of the ram listed on one details list. is 1066 small/larger then 1600?

Laptop uses SO-DIMM RAM which is different from RAM used in desktops. The size of the modules are smaller. Your laptop is using 204-pin DDR3 RAM modules. There are pairs of 4GB kits you can buy from Newegg (see link below). 16GB of RAM is overkill for games, 8GB is more than enough; Crysis 2 only uses about 1.2GB of RAM, I think I read somewhere that the Sims 3 also only uses 1.2 GB of RAM. 16GB of RAM is overkill even for "office stuff" unless you are working with an extremely large database.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007635+600006178+600000401&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=381&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

 

[shadoelured]

Thank you Jaguarskx,

I hadnt found any information on the physical difference of VCs on numerous searches. I appreciate you clearing that one up for me.

As for the ram, again thanks. Ill save 100 bucks then and only get the one kit of 8g

Thanks so much

 

[hang-the-9]

You should not need any upgrades to that computer, what are you running that's slow? Do you have a 64bit OS? If not, 8gig won't do you any good.

 

[shadoelured]

You should not need any upgrades to that computer, what are you running that's slow? Do you have a 64bit OS? If not, 8gig won't do you any good.

I havent run much of anything yet. I ran 3dmark11 to get a benchmark but that was all as im still going through the installation processes. Yeah it does have windows 7 home 64bit on it too

 

[hang-the-9]

4 gig of RAM with that video card should not need any upgrading unless you are running heavy RAM use applications like CAD or Video Processing. Use the laptop first before looking to upgrade it