Upgrading the video card on my laptop

[TheGuyFromThere]

Ok, so I have a Toshiba Satellite A200-1BW. Its spec is quite high. Dual core centrino, 2 gig of ram, stacks of HD space, you know, all the good stuff.

 

Built in Nvidia GeForce Go 7300..............64MB

 

It says... Available Video Memory: 800MB (or something like that) but its a 64MB card... how can I tap into that 800MB?? can I like hand over 200MB to it somehow??

 

Now I paid £900 for this piece of kit and I didnt even think about checking the video spec. I didnt buy it for that at the time.

 

Now I want to be able to game CoD4 on it, full graphics. At the minute, it can only game on the lowest settings, but if I had more video ram like 128 or 256 then it'd be a beast... otherwise it runs games perfectly fine on full gfx settings.

 

I phoned a toshiba repair centre and asked about upgrading the video card, but they said that you can't do it on the entire toshiba range.

 

So I'm thinking - not on their policy.

 

Is it POSSIBLE to do it on my laptop, and how?

 

Cheers.

[Fozzy Fozborne]

It's a TurboCache card. That means you get measly on-card memory and it leaches off your main system RAM to store most of its information. This means the card's cheaper, but lower in performance. It's practically impossible to upgrade to say a 7600Go, as you need to remember that laptops use careful power management to maximize battery life, when you upgrade a component that uses more power, it might cause problems. On top of that, I don't think there are any laptop videocard upgrades available. As for upgrading the card you have now to more memory, there should be an option in your BIOS (check your manual) to upgrade to 256MB dedicated to your card, which is the highest I'd go.

 

Keep in mind that upgrading to 256MB (if it isn't currently 256MB), won't get you much more performance at all. You're still running a portable version of a budget card from last generation (a brutal combo in today's games). Hope that helped you.

 

Edited January 15, 2008 by Fozzy Fozborne

[matthew1g]

The only laptops I know that have upgradable video cards are clevos and alienwares with the MXM-III/IV modules, and those are only available in 7950GT and 8800GTS/GTX flavours.

 

normal laptops such as yours can't have their chips upgraded.

 

also,

 

 

Now I want to be able to game CoD4 on it, full graphics. At the minute, it can only game on the lowest settings, but if I had more video ram like 128 or 256 then it'd be a beast... otherwise it runs games perfectly fine on full gfx settings.

 

 

When I had a desktop 256mb 7300LE in use with a quad core and 2gigs DDR2, CoD4 barely ran at the lowest settings. so increasing your Vram will do virually nothing.

Edited January 17, 2008 by matthew1g

[Crokey]

Similar to what Fozzy said

 

1. No you can't upgrade your Graphics Card in a Toshiba, as Matty said only Clevo and Alienware SLi based Laptops can do that.

 

2. I doubt that you'd be able to allocate more memory to be dedicated to the GFX card, as Laptop BIOS's aren't that flexible as a desktop Motherboard BIOS is. They are generally quite limited.

 

This might sound like a 'Well Durh' or a 'Yeah I know that now', but going for the uppermost GFX card is top priority for Laptops in my own schnumble opumble.

[TheGuyFromThere]

Similar to what Fozzy said

 

1. No you can't upgrade your Graphics Card in a Toshiba, as Matty said only Clevo and Alienware SLi based Laptops can do that.

 

2. I doubt that you'd be able to allocate more memory to be dedicated to the GFX card, as Laptop BIOS's aren't that flexible as a desktop Motherboard BIOS is. They are generally quite limited.

 

This might sound like a 'Well Durh' or a 'Yeah I know that now', but going for the uppermost GFX card is top priority for Laptops in my own schnumble opumble.

So i've discovered...