Best Graphics Card for my laptop?

[jaaacob]

Alright guys, this looks like one of the best places to post this question and couldnt find much using the search.

I was wondering what you would recomend as the best graphics card within £50 - £120

My system specs:

Vista Home Premium x64 Service Pack 1
Acer Aspire 5735
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU @ 2GHz
4GB RAM

CURRENT GRAPHICS:

Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
1.28GB Adapter RAM


Hope that gives you enough to go on. I have no idea about graphics cards but Ive just got into PC games and want to be able to play them all quite well.

Thank you in advance :D
Jacob

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Jacob and welcome to Vista Forums

Sorry, but you cannot upgrade the graphics capability of a laptop as the GPU is part of the motherboard.

What you could do is to upgrade the memory of your laptop so that you have the maximum amount installed that is supported.

 

[jaaacob]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

That. Sucks.

Well on System Requirements Lab I always fail on games becasue of my chip not being compatible, even though I have 1.2 GB video RAM, and I have 3D acceleration, HW Transform and Lighting, Vertex Shader version 4.0, Pixel shader version 4.0.

Everything here passes, its simply the compatitbilty so upgrading it wouldnt really help would it?

Im really confused
​

 

[thepizzaman]

what he is saying is that you can't upgrade a laptop gpu what you have is what your stuck with all you could do is add more ram to the laptop as a whole

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Jacob,

Having looked at the specifications as regards memory support, I see that you have already installed 4GB which is the maximum supported by this model.

Generally speaking, laptops are more designed for business use. They don't tend to be suitable for playing games on, especially demanding ones.

Sorry.

 

[mach1219]

Buy a desktop for gaming

 

[jaaacob]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

looks like Im stuck then :huh:

I only just bought this laptop for college and dont have nearly enough money to buy a pc as well

I probably should have researched this a bit more but I thought that becasue you can buy laptops graphics cards then it should be alright

Thanks again

 

[mach1219]

You can you buy a laptop graphics card? I dont believe you can, thats why you cant upgrade them.

Get a PS3 for gaming if u cant afford a decent desktop

 

[jaaacob]

Well my local shop sells some but they are for custom building a laptop.

Any nVidia card with an (m) after it is a card for a laptop.

 

[gr8task1]

Since you cant upgrade your laptop. You may want to tweak it by killing processes you wont need. You may also have to set the game to the lowest settings. I bought a laptop as a portable desktop. Course I cant help trying to run some games on it lol.

 

[jaaacob]

IDEA

If I bought a new motherboard with a better graphics card, could i not just install that?

And if its possible, any ideas on what sort of price?

 

[Dwarf]

Sorry, but that is not practical. It is possible to replace a laptop motherboard, but due to the nature of laptops only the exact same motherboard can be installed as a replacement because of casing restrictions (location of vents, memory slot covers, etc).

Laptops aren't made for gaming; rather they are intended for business use. There are laptops available which make very good gaming machines, but they are not cheap. As mentioned earlier, for gaming you are better off with a desktop because it gives you more upgrade options.

 

[jaaacob]

I give up

EDIT: But thanks for your help everyone

 

[whs]

Do not get fooled by the relatively large amount of "video RAM". That is shared RAM from your memory Dimms which is a lot slower than a dedicated memory on a real video card. No way to compare the one with the other in terms of speed.