upgrading a laptop

[Niflheim]

So I wonder.

I bought a laptopt this fall and been almost exclusively using it to do work and homeworks and unversity stuff. No need to say that I bought a very cheap one, for my PC can run any game (and I like games).

I like to upgrade my PC. Changed RAM, I changed the motherboard and often the video card, I recently bought a new CPU and hard disk and all these configurable little things. But is it so easy with a laptop? I just opened it once for fun and didn't even quite know what was what.

My laptop is an Acer Aspire 3050. It has like an integrated Radeon Xpress 1100 which pretty sucks. It has only 512 mb or RAM. These are the things that annoys me most.

What I'd like to know is if these part are easily replacable. If I buy another gb of ram, will it be easy to install myself? How do I know what RAM is compatible?

And for a video card, how do I know what video card fits my laptop? Damn I don't even know what is the motherboard inside of this. Which video card can I buy for an Aspire 3050? And would I be able to install it easily?

Thanks a lot you guys who knows everything

 

[Niflheim]

No one has ever changed their laptop video card?

 

[corkyg]

Few have changeable GPUs. Most are soldered components on the motherboard. In general, notebook upgrades are limited to RAM, HDD, and optical drive. Older ones have replaceable floppy drive modules.

Laptops are highly proprietary in design - even among models by the same OEM. They are generally not standardized.

 

[themisfit610]

Yep.

There's been some attempt to standardize the video card on higher end laptops via nVidia's MXM spec - but it doesn't matter, because even though its a standardized interface and form factor, all the cards are incompatible due to power / heat dissipation requirements, among other things.

You can't upgrade laptops. That's why I would never buy one.

/thread.

~MiSfit

 

[Niflheim]

oh well i'll be damned.
thanks guys

 

[Tiamat]

for gaming, you are SOL. For everyday tasks, upgrade the harddrive to a high density platter containing harddrive / 7200 rpm drive; and increase the ram.