video card upgrade for notebook

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jrg70

Weaksauce
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Jun 23, 2004
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I'm looking to upgrade a video card for a friend's notebook. I know nothing about notebooks.

It's a Dell Inspiron 9300.

It's currently got an ATI Mobility Radeon x300 64MB.
They could sell me a 128MB or 256MB for $144 or $320.

I did some price searching and could not find video cards for sale for notebooks at newegg or other retailers. Was I just not seeing the right thing or do they really not sell them?

Sorry if it's a stupid question but I just don't know anything about notebooks.

Please respond if you know anything.

Thanks
 
very very few notebooks have user-replaceable video cards, and those usually are the highend ones
 
cesium666 said:
very very few notebooks have user-replaceable video cards, and those usually are the highend ones
Click to expand...

And more, actually FINDING a place that sells replacement s to the public is very difficult. Your best bet is system pulls for sale on Ebay.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I talked to Dell and they told me the card IS replaceable. It is not on the motherboard.

I opened up the notebook and actually found the card and yes it is replaceable.

But I guess you really can't buy them readily at online retailers like newegg.com and such.

Dell can sell me an upgrade. It's the same chipset (ATI Mobility Radeon x300) just with more memory. Either 128 or 256 which is up from the stock 64MB.

So even if I buy the upgrade from Dell, it's only going to give me more video memory. I don't know if that's really going to be worth the cost for the upgrade.

I may end up just recommending he gets a decent gaming rig.

Thanks for the help!
 
An nVidia 6800 Ultra and a 7800 GTX can be installed inside Dell 9300/XPS Gen 2 laptops.
 
blix said:
An nVidia 6800 Ultra and a 7800 GTX can be installed inside Dell 9300/XPS Gen 2 laptops.
Click to expand...

Yes, but you would also need to replace your power brick for a stronger one I believe. And that jacks up the price even more. :rolleyes:
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Yes, but you would also need to replace your power brick for a stronger one I believe. And that jacks up the price even more. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You're correct about the power supply

I just wanted to clarify that the videocard could be swapped out. Granted it will cost some cash to upgrade, but I think it would be cheaper than buying a new gaming capable laptop or building a desktop machine.
 
jrg70 said:
Dell can sell me an upgrade. It's the same chipset (ATI Mobility Radeon x300) just with more memory. Either 128 or 256 which is up from the stock 64MB.

So even if I buy the upgrade from Dell, it's only going to give me more video memory. I don't know if that's really going to be worth the cost for the upgrade.
Click to expand...

Adding more Vram to an X300 isnt really worth paying for. Going from 64 to 128 you will barely even see a difference at all.
 
pfunkman said:
Adding more Vram to an X300 isnt really worth paying for. Going from 64 to 128 you will barely even see a difference at all.
Click to expand...

That's not what I was talking about...

You can add a new hardware into the system that looks like so:
92d937c2.jpg


Both the 6800 Ultra and 7800 GTX models will fit inside the laptop.
 
blix said:
You're correct about the power supply

I just wanted to clarify that the videocard could be swapped out. Granted it will cost some cash to upgrade, but I think it would be cheaper than buying a new gaming capable laptop or building a desktop machine.
Click to expand...
For $320 you could upgrade your desktop (cpu, ram, mobo, video card, easily for $320) and it would be 100 times better for gaming.
 
pfunkman said:
Completely worthless without an external monitor and then who buys a laptop to be thethered to a monitor? Not to mention the estimated price is $599 for a unit that ships with a 7900GS :eek:
Click to expand...

You also want to avoid it because of poor bandwidth. The ExpressCard slot has 250MB/s bandwidth (PCIe x1), which will limit the performance of the card. Yes, the station accepts an x16 card, but it will only be supplied with x1 bandwidth. Performance will be better than onboard video, but only slightly.
 
defaultluser said:
You also want to avoid it because of poor bandwidth. The ExpressCard slot has 250MB/s bandwidth (PCIe x1), which will limit the performance of the card. Yes, the station accepts an x16 card, but it will only be supplied with x1 bandwidth. Performance will be better than onboard video, but only slightly.
Click to expand...

Some of the reports I have seen show a 5x boost over on-board Intel Graphics, I would say a 2-3x boost over that onboard ATI solution..

I guess the general rule of thumb with Laptops is this.. You get what you bought.. Other than Mem or HD, you are really stuck in 95% of the cases.

Dell Sells BRAND NEW Core 2 duo laptops with Integrated 8 series graphics for $700 or so.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bqcwjvd&s=bsd
 
defaultluser said:
You also want to avoid it because of poor bandwidth. The ExpressCard slot has 250MB/s bandwidth (PCIe x1), which will limit the performance of the card. Yes, the station accepts an x16 card, but it will only be supplied with x1 bandwidth. Performance will be better than onboard video, but only slightly.
Click to expand...

don't forget that the thing also has 5.1 audio and usb ports, so if you are using those as well, they will be eating up bandwidth that the vid card would normally have. for $600, may as well get a new laptop, for sure.
 
bigted said:
don't forget that the thing also has 5.1 audio and usb ports, so if you are using those as well, they will be eating up bandwidth that the vid card would normally have. for $600, may as well get a new laptop, for sure.
Click to expand...

Actually, I'm willing to bet this is not the case. ExpressCard is essentially two buses in a single connector: a PCIe x1 bus, and a USB 2.0 bus. You can make use of both simultaneously.

The audio is probably USB, so use of that plus USB controllers isn't going to starve your card. But with such low bandwidth to begin with, you already have a significant performance problem.
 
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