Looking to upgrade Dell Inspiron 9300

[DNyholm]

A friend of mine has a Dell inspiron 9300 with a Nvidia GeForce Go6800 in a Dell Inspiron 9300 (Pentium M 1.83, 1GB RAM) and he is looking to upgrade 'something' in order to get some better framerates on Everquest II (he is getting 2 FPS on the highest quality and 20-25 on medium quality). I am not sure if it worthwhile for him to upgrade his video card or not and what actually fits.

Do laptops use the same video cards as desktops?? I obviously, couldn't imagine so, but when i checked on newegg, I couldn't find anything that specifically mentioned laptops or desktops on thier cards.

Any help would be appreciated in a decent upgrade for him. He wouldn't want to spend more that 100-150.

Thanks in advance,
Dennis

 

[mruffin75]

Laptops for the most part, aren't upgradeable... You may find a few models that do have different cards that you can install (I'd check online to see if that model came with any other cards as options, and if so, it's possible they could be used in your laptop)..

Other than that no...it's not as easy as just going to Newegg and ordering a new card.

 

[kagy600]

There is no Official graphics card up-grade for the 9300, but with a XPS power supply and XPS bios flash you are able to run a GeForce go 7800 GTX.

Rarely find them on ebay...and for at least 4x what he is looking to spend.

Do some searching/reading over at Notebookforum.com in the Dell section (sorry dont have an links)

So bottom line... processor,ram and HDD are your mainstream up-grade options for a laptop and probably none will give you noticeable improvements in games.

note- best improvement in FPS will probably to decrease the resolution, but thats no fun

EDIT: 4 7800GTXgo's on ebay now all 310-400 USD (search dell 7800gtx)

 

[mruffin75]

Originally posted by: kagy600
There is no Official graphics card up-grade for the 9300, but with a XPS power supply and XPS bios flash you are able to run a GeForce go 7800 GTX.

Rarely find them on ebay...and for at least 4x what he is looking to spend.

Do some searching/reading over at Notebookforum.com in the Dell section (sorry dont have an links)

So bottom line... processor,ram and HDD are your mainstream up-grade options for a laptop and probably none will give you noticeable improvements in games.

I'd also suggest from the sounds of the original poster, that you do *not* try and upgrade the laptop yourself... you'll most likely pull it apart, forget where the 3-dozen screws go...and end up with either a laptop that flexes all over the place, or worse, one that doesn't work at all..

I'd suggest selling the laptop and buying one with a faster GPU...

 

[kagy600]

^^^ Not a bad suggestion. Just making sure he knows that there IS an option out there.

EDIT: LINK about the upgrade