upgrading a 5160, possible?

[chinkee]

during the huge dell sale, i bought a dell 5160 while my gf bought a 600m. i figured w/ a 3.2 gig processor and 512mb of ram, that it would be able to handle games such as WoW decently. it turns out that the 600m outperforms by a good margin. is there any way i can upgrade my computer to handle games better? or should i just sell my laptop pick up a 8600 in the future? if i was to upgrade the video card myself (if possible), how hard is it to do and how much would it cost? i've built my own computers before, but have no experience w/ laptops. or maybe my video card isn't the main issue? perhaps my 60 gig ultra ATA hd or 512mb of ram is the bottleneck? help would be appreciated, thanks

 

[Feneant2]

You can upgrade video to a ''64MB DDR NVIDIA® GeForce? FX Go5200 AGP 4x Graphics [add $49 or $2/month1] Dell Recommended'' which is still far from being good for gaming. If you did that, put in a gig of ram and replaced the hdd with a 7200, you would be able to play most games on a very low setting.

 

[TheCanuck]

It's pretty tough to upgrade the video in laptops. Dell allows it, but you might just be able to put another GeforceFX 5200 in there with more memory -- wouldn't improve performance.

Here's some benchmarks of the 5200 vs the mobility 9000 in your GF's 600m:

http://www.gamers-depot.com/ha...9200_geforcefx/001.htm

The 9200/9000 performance is pretty close. But I'd think that the dell should still be OK at gaming...You might try benchmarking it with 3dmark2003 / 2001 and see if you get similar results. Might need to upgrade video drivers / do some tweaks.

 

[cheesehead]

I have to feel sorry for you-A super-fast P4 is'nt worth much without a fast graphics card. (512mb is most likely not the problem, and even a 4200rpm drive should'nt be causing this kind of slowdown). You most likely have a Volari V5 in there, so you are'nt in very good shape for gaming. See if you can pick up a 5200 upgrade card; you can most likely get one for about 100$ or so, and it might let you play a game or two.
Oh, and if you're interested: I have a 9100 with a 3ghz P4 and a Mobility 9700, with WinXP Pro and 1 year of Accidental Damage Protection. 1300$ shipped.
-Cheesehead