I currently have a NVidia GeForce4 440 card in my laptop. (HP laptop w/ AMD 64 3200+ and 1G RAM) Haven't ever looked into video cards for the mobile market. Can I pick up an improved card (over what I have now) with say...about $300? And do I have to worry about if my laptop is AGP 8X or PCI-E like with a desktop? Or is everything universal in the laptop market? I've search around a little, but didn't find what I was looking for. Don't know much about it. Thanks!

Oh and no, it's not an IGP.

AMD XP 3200+ (Barton Core)
Asus A7N8X Ver2.0
2 X 512MB Mushkin (2.5-3-3)
Sapphire ATI 9800PRO w/AC Rev3

You won't be able to upgrade the video card in your laptop. The laptop is designed with those specific hardware components in mind. There are only a handful of laptops on the market that are upgradable. I think the Alienware's are. I know my laptop was designed for the Radeon 9700. On the bottom of the laptop, there are two fans one for the GPU and one for the CPU. Due to the heat problems, they added a fan on the bottom of the laptop. Even if a card would fit, it would definetly overheat. Not many options.

My System:
<A HREF="http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org" target="_new">http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org</A>

Exactly.

Voodoo and Dell also offer upgradeable graphics, but not on all their laptops (same for Alienware) so even then it has to be a specific type. The thermal properties would be set out of whack for sure if a big jump is made. Some laptops are almost passive cooling they require so little forced air power, while other, especially with strong graphics units require alot more airflow and heat-piping to keep from overheating not only the graphics, but the CPU, the RAM, the HDD, the motherboard itself.

I have seen interesting add-in solutions like PCMCIA graphics cards, but they are mainly for upgrading from ultra-crap early 2000 graphics to something more 2D capable, 3D still being out of the question. So for a GF4 440 there's not much to do other than trade-up.


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PCI-E is meant to be out for graphics. Looks like we'll have to wait for another 2yrs to see it.

<b><font color=red>-></font color=red><font color=green>Thee obsoleter</font color=green><font color=red><-</font color=red></b>

Oh yeah another thing... the funny thing about the Dell upgrades is that they weren't compatible with the next gen cards so there was little use for them anyways. IIRC, the R9600 could be upgraded to R9700, but since they were both out at the same time by the time Dell offered the upgrade option there was likely few takers (since the price diff was less than $100); The board that supported the R9600/9700 however couldn't support the R9800, and the R9800 couldn't support either the X700/800 nor the GF6600/6800, so while there was an upgrade option, it seems there weren't many parts built to meet the needs of that 'option'.


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Yeah exactly, with the two standards (Axiom and mXm) who knows when laptop companies will adopt it.

Of course PCIe is already there internally, but we're talking about the add-in market.


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