Blech... Friend has a laptop that needs more power :(

[rommelrommel]

It's a Toshiba Satellite 1800 S100, Celeron 800, he's up to 256 mb of ram, and he uses this for gaming

Building a new desktop is not in the cards for him, he just doesn't have that kind of budget and doesn't wanna give up his laptop. Now, several people have told him there should be a way to upgrade his video card, but laptops really are not my thing, and I can't find any info about this online. Anyone want to comment on the likelihood of this? Or, any other ideas would be welcomed openly. We both no that no miracles are going to take place, but another 10 FPS would be really great.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Only some newer laptops allow upgrading of the video card. I think usually they have a Radeon Mobility or GF2Go type chip, and you can swap in a faster version later; any system using chipset-integrated video probably isn't going to have the upgrade slot (which is sort of a mini-AGP slot in systems that have it).

Can't find an 1800-S100 on Toshiba's support site. Found a 1.1GHz Celeron model, uses the Trident CyberAladin-T video (ugh). The specs for that don't indicate that the video is upgradeable.

It's possible he could upgrade the processor, but that isn't likely to help very much. That video controller is just not going to give him good performance in games, no matter what the CPU.

 

[Justorq]

I think only the Dell Inspiron 8xxx series has upgradable vid card...

Justin

 

[zephyrprime]

Your friend if pretty stranded. Few notebooks have upgradeable video. You might be able to upgrade the processor though.

 

[PCMarine]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Your friend if pretty stranded. Few notebooks have upgradeable video. You might be able to upgrade the processor though.

Yea. I would build him a cheap gaming desktop which you could do $300-500 which would be much better than his laptop.

 

[rommelrommel]

Maybe I can get him to sell the laptop and use the money to build a desktop. He doesn't really *need* the laptop, he just likes it.