Laptops with upgradeable video cards

[alanwest09872]

How can you tell if you have a laptop that is capable of getting an upgrade on the video card. I know some can have theres upgraded but how do you tell if one is going to be able to.

 

[Maximilian]

Its difficult to tell, look for laptops with MXM compatability, they recently changed from the old MXM 1/2/3/4 system to MXM A and MXM B i believe, where MXM B can hold the largest highest performance cards and MXM A smaller cards.

But even if you have a laptop with something like MXM B which will typically come with anything between a GTS 250 and an ATI 5870 in it already theres no guarantee something released in the future will work an ATI 6870 for example may have increased power requirements/thermal requirements and on top of that getting a hold of an MXM card on its own without paying through the ass for it will be a pain in the ass.

They know lots about this stuff over at notebookreview.com forums. Asus sometimes use MXM i think, Acer surprisingly enough usually use MXM, Dell and HP etc never use it and have their own non upgradeable system.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/396320-acer-mxm-models-cards.html

Check the above thread out, thats just for Acer. I looked into this extensively about a year ago, decided to hell with this minefield and built myself a desktop instead 😀

 

[WildW]

Unfortunately I tend to agree - although this "standard" exists for laptop GPUs there's no guarantee that an upgraded card will work in a given laptop, even if it fits. I looked at upgrading my MXM-equipped Acer, but ran into horror stories with people talking about GPU bioses being locked to given models or manufacturers. Add to that that the cards are hard to get hold of and cost a fortune, I gave up on the idea. . . and built a desktop 😛