Laptop Graphics Cards

[Cienja]

Hi. I'm trying to help my nephew by looking into whether or not it is worth upgrading the graphics card in his laptop. I'm not laptop-hardware savvy, so I'm hoping one of you will tell me if a card would benefit him (gamer, Diablo III, Minecraft, WoW, Starcraft II, etc.)

Here are the specs to his machine:
Toshiba Satellite Specs.

His is an integrated chip - do they even make graphics cards for laptops that are not integrated?

I did see adapters, but nothing that described itself even close to "...you can now use your PC graphics card for your laptop..." An adapter would work great; I have five generations of graphics cards that I can give him.

Thanks!

 

[KingFatty]

No, it is probably best to sell that laptop, and purchase a used laptop that has a powerful video card.

Some older laptops can be found for reduced prices because they are old, but they still have powerful video cards enough for gaming.

 

[Zodiark1593]

For most laptops, even the dedicated video card (chip and memory) are soldered to the motherboard and accessed via integrated PCI-E. Now, there is the option of an external video card that takes advantage of the ExpressCard slot(rare), the mPCIe slot (where the wifi card is), or a Thunderbolt port (very rare). Even if you have any of the above, the adaptor needed is obscenely expensive, and overall is an inelegant solution at best.

My recommendation is to save the money (work with the nephew here), and buy a proper gaming desktop, whilst still keeping the laptop for on-the-go stuff.

 

[Mopetar]

Building a dedicated gaming PC would probably be a better alternative, especially if any of your old cards are still relatively powerful.

However, you can use a regular PC GPU with a laptop, but the process is somewhat involved.

 

[Blue_Max]

That laptop can play most of those games at a moderate level which is better than nothing... but dedicated gaming is WAY cheaper on a desktop.

 

[tviceman]

Cienja, you cannot upgrade the graphics in that laptop. It is integrated graphics built into the CPU. They do make cards for laptops that are switchable, they are called MXM cards. But the process of upgrading such a laptop is usually expensive and also very restrictive. Either way, your nephew's laptop is as it is and can't have it's graphics updated.

That laptop can play most of those games at a moderate level which is better than nothing... but dedicated gaming is WAY cheaper on a desktop.

No, it cannot. It can play many games at the lowest quality settings at resolutions lower than it's native 1600x900 with somewhat frame rates, but trying to play most modern games at 1600x900, even at lowest settings, will be a subpar experience at best.

 

[Blue_Max]

Another video snob. At least it'll work with those games for some basic playtime - something some video options can't do at all.

 

[tviceman]

I speak from experience. Being able to display a picture and actually enjoy playing a game are two different experiences. If he is playing circa 2005 games then he will be fine. But if he starts trying to play anything remotely close to modern that needs decent frame rates (unlike Civilization) he will be greeted with very low res fidelity and choppy frame rates to go with it.