Excuse me while i freak : can't upgrade laptop video card unless i buy a new laptop - what?

I'm not computer illiterate, and I assumed in a laptop (Medion MD 98200) one can change the graphics card.

I have just spent over an hour looking, but it seems as if the graphics cards for laptops are ONLY sold to manufacturers, so that must mean they cannot be built-in later. That would be very surprising, knowing we all want our stuff to last for a while.

If this is the case, that means all laptops are less worth than what you think. They can get outdated real fast, in like one upgrade by the OS company.
If they CAN be built in, is this just a marketing strategy?

Either this has to do with the huge drops in electronics prices i'm seeing here (and as far as i know, it ain't no special bargain sales time of year), or i'm flipping here and laptops simply can't be upgraded.

I'll probably blush as someone says of course not, RTFM.

:shrug:

thx in advance!
bmc

They have a very limited space and taking one apart to add components can leave one with less than desired results.

does that also mean they are irreparable? Strange, and i should have loked a little harder at the specs of the Medion machine then.

Plus, they are perfectly available IN BRAND LAPTOPS. Dell / HP / Acer / Alienware / etc
So at leasst they fit the space requirements.

I can look for a second-hand one (if one can pry 'em out of there) but who will put it in? Not me...

Thx for your reply though!

bmc

.. laptops don't even HAVE video cards, they are built into the motherboard. This is true of plenty of desktops also at this point.

and if I can't play World of Warcraft on a new laptop of 1100 dollars that sucks :-)

... high end laptop is going to be suitable for WoW :)

...since WoW's graphics suck so bad I'm surprised even an i950 can't hack it, but I know better as I've seen games like that require some pretty absurd amounts of power for the "quality" they produce. You would think a subscriber-based MMORP game would want as much revenue as they can get and work up a low-demand CPU-based rendering engine to allow just about anyone to get on and pay them money, if they were willing to sacrifice graphics quality. And I mean face it WoW folks don't play for the graphics action :-)

Yours looks like a nice enough laptop (always buy one with a tuner, say I, they make great PVRs/TVs when you are done using them as a laptop and having one tuner onboard you can usually add another without reporting to USB/Firewire) but not one made for gaming. The 97900 has a gamer-level graphics chipset, if I am guessing correctly at what all those people are saying in German on the discussion boards.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage.php?id=89 may help you get oriented.

In the next generation of laptops, the video chip will likely be in the same *microchip* as the CPU. Both Nvidia and ATI already have full 1-chip solutions.

everything is fitted in "just so" and so internal components are fixed in place. To upgrade a component, one must buy a new laptop.

i believe laptops use integrated video cards (the cards are a part of the motherboard itself). so you cannot upgrade them without upgrading the entire motherboard.

laptops (from Ebay, etc.) because they become obsolete so quickly, it's not worth the money for a new one. He says he spends a couple hundred, and when it breaks (and it will), he just gets a new one.

I've never owned one, myself, although I'll admit to lusting after one for years. The untethered freedom!

One of these days...

And that is sound advice for laptop lusters you gave there ! Thx.

bmc

In most cases, a desktop is simply the better choice if you are going to be doing things which require a top of the line video card.

for my own. I'm typing from my wife's laptop (in the bathroom :D).

It's just the exclusivity of the sales channels that bothered me the most. You'd think that some freak would do laptop upgrading.
After all, practically all people I know are buying laptops, and it was a 2,5 years old game that ran totally sucky.

Think I'm gonna do some performance tests on this thing, almost looks like something is wrong.

The video setting were low and the screen drew a blank with every new background / quarter turn.

I admit, it may be some other issue than the video card. :blush:

to upgrade laptops.. Ah well.

If your computer is having problems I suggest taking it to a place/friend who won't charge you unless they actually are able to fix something (unlike say.. best buy.. charging 60 dollars just to tell you its borked)

and that is playing with the screen resolution. It's LCD and i've heard they suck in something else than native resolution, and i did change it, so...

I wondered about starting this in the appropriate topic forum, but decided against it as at least I was amazed enough to think this may happen to more people than me. GD for exposure :-)

upgradeable. yes their are exceptions, but generally the stuff you would upgrade in a pc is not user serviceable in a laptop.

this is my errrm 7th or so PC but 1st laptop.

Still left with the awkward feeling about only finding the right type of cards (like a Geforce 8300 or 8600 Go) in specific brand laptops.

But no one is offering motherboards for laptops or that type of thing either, so I guess it just is as you say. You cannot build a lpatop starting from a cae as you can a PC.

Stupid stupid

:banghead:

Are you saying that your laptop would not run the game based on hardware requirements??
Did you try installing it?
WoW is NOT resource intensive. No way, no how.

It's a tradeoff you have to make, portability for graphics.

My advice is to not worry about the fastest graphics card, just get something basic that can still handle what you need.

If you don't care about a small light laptop, and planning on having it plugged in most of the time, then the fastest card would be the way to go though.