Upgradeable Video Card/ Upgradeable Laptops

[mehmetmunur]

It is my understanding that both NVIDIA and ATI make most of their income from the sales of their graphics chips, since other companies (gainward, gigabyte, albatron and tons of others) manufacture video cards with ATI's or NVIDIA?s chips on them.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a video card, whose memory, and graphics chip you could upgrade?

Today's graphics cards are much like a computer of their own, GPUs with millions of transistors, a cooling fan, tons of memory. If we are capable of upgrading a computer by putting together a few components, I don?t doubt that we should be able to do the same for our graphics cards.

The same issue appears in laptops. Until last week, opening up a laptop was a nightmare. After doing it I realized that it was not that hard after all. So why not have more laptops that are upgradeable? I know that some manufacturers are going this route with some of their new models. I think Dell is coming out with a laptop that is supposed to have upgradeable graphics card. You can upgrade the hard drive and the memory, but upgrading the CPU or the motherboard of a laptop is extremely hard, if not impossible due to thermal issues.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a laptop that you could upgrade substantially?

Of course, most of the computer manufacturers thrive on the possibility that one-day the computer/laptop/graphics card will become obsolete/slow or simply break down. Thus they have to sell new systems in order to survive. This is probably one reason why they charge as much as they do for upgrades. Apple charges $1100 for 2 GBs of DDR 400 memory on a powerbook. This could be had for $315 a stick from Kingston. They also charge $123 for an upgrade from a 4200-rpm hard drive to a 5400-rpm drive, with moderate increase in size. One could buy a 7200 Hitachi travelstar for about the same price. It is simple to see that computer manufacturers do not want us to open up their systems, and do the upgrades ourselves, for a considerably lesser amount.

But recently, the number of people that are capable of working on a computer, upgrading its hardware has increased dramatically. Or maybe they have found better ways of communicating and showing numbers, such as these forums.

So won't these hardware manufacturers have to satisfy growing numbers of customers such as us sooner or later? Your opinion is welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[mehmetmunur]

Nobody else cares about this stuff???

 

[jonesthewine]

Sure, lots of people care about this , but selling computers, especially laptops, is a good business to be in and manufacturers would much rather sell you a new computer every x years instead of selling you a new video card every x months.

 

[apoppin]

Laptops are not durable enough.

They wouldn't last more than one or two upgrade cycles anyway.

 

[Matthias99]

Nobody else cares about this stuff???

No, lots of people have written about these very issues, but the answers haven't changed the last million times the questions were asked.

Originally posted by: mehmetmunur
It is my understanding that both NVIDIA and ATI make most of their income from the sales of their graphics chips, since other companies (gainward, gigabyte, albatron and tons of others) manufacture video cards with ATI's or NVIDIA?s chips on them.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a video card, whose memory, and graphics chip you could upgrade?

Today's graphics cards are much like a computer of their own, GPUs with millions of transistors, a cooling fan, tons of memory. If we are capable of upgrading a computer by putting together a few components, I don?t doubt that we should be able to do the same for our graphics cards.

Yes, but such a card would, simply by virtue of the way electronics are hooked together these days, be more expensive and/or slower than a 'hard-wired' card like the ones made today. The GPU wouldn't be so bad (but still difficult), but it would be nearly impossible to run socketed RAM at 400+Mhz!

The same issue appears in laptops. Until last week, opening up a laptop was a nightmare. After doing it I realized that it was not that hard after all. So why not have more laptops that are upgradeable? I know that some manufacturers are going this route with some of their new models. I think Dell is coming out with a laptop that is supposed to have upgradeable graphics card. You can upgrade the hard drive and the memory, but upgrading the CPU or the motherboard of a laptop is extremely hard, if not impossible due to thermal issues.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a laptop that you could upgrade substantially?

Again, laptops are light, compact, and portable mostly because they use a lot of custom components (like nonstandard motherboards and special cooling solutions) to cram everything into that tiny case. Until electronics shrink substantially, you probably won't be able to upgrade the motherboard, because generally they're fitted specifically to the case they're designed for (or for a handful of very similar designs).

You *can* get laptops with upgradable CPUs (just not from the major vendors), the RAM and hard drives can be upgraded, and with PCIe, we should hopefully see much better (and more upgradable) graphics solutions for laptops. Laptop technology has advanced substantially just over the last few years, but it's still cutting-edge. Another generation or two will likely see quite a bit of standardization.

Of course, most of the computer manufacturers thrive on the possibility that one-day the computer/laptop/graphics card will become obsolete/slow or simply break down. Thus they have to sell new systems in order to survive. This is probably one reason why they charge as much as they do for upgrades. Apple charges $1100 for 2 GBs of DDR 400 memory on a powerbook. This could be had for $315 a stick from Kingston. They also charge $123 for an upgrade from a 4200-rpm hard drive to a 5400-rpm drive, with moderate increase in size. One could buy a 7200 Hitachi travelstar for about the same price. It is simple to see that computer manufacturers do not want us to open up their systems, and do the upgrades ourselves, for a considerably lesser amount.

Duh. There is an element of planned obsolesence, I suppose (just because of how quickly computer technology advances), but you see the same thing with, say, cars...

But recently, the number of people that are capable of working on a computer, upgrading its hardware has increased dramatically. Or maybe they have found better ways of communicating and showing numbers, such as these forums.

So won't these hardware manufacturers have to satisfy growing numbers of customers such as us sooner or later? Your opinion is welcome. Thanks in advance.

Everything's going to become modular and standardized eventually; few computer technologies are really "mature" in any sense.