Laptop graphics Upgrade

kremedios · 31 May 2007 at 15:25

I have a sony vaio bx laptop with an intergrated graphic card (128mb max) crap i know.. well i'm just wondering, is there a way to upgrade it. I know it would be extremely hard as laptops are limited in their upgradablity, but there must be a way for a professional to open it up and add a new graphics chip. If you know of any such way, please reply.

brendy · 31 May 2007 at 15:30

If there was a way of doing that they would be very rich matey, as it is the bus architecture that includes the graphics chips and memory would need to be totally reintegrated at a layer by layer level on the pcb, not really possible. The best you can do for now is turn the shared memory up as far as possible, the integrated chips are naff for gaming by the way so itll not improve gaming in much of a way,shape or form.

semi-pro waster · 31 May 2007 at 15:35

Some laptops did/do have swappable graphics cards but they are pretty rare and I very much doubt yours is one of them, it also tends to be rather more expensive than would make it economical to do so.

kremedios · 31 May 2007 at 15:36

brendy said:
If there was a way of doing that they would be very rich matey, as it is the bus architecture that includes the graphics chips and memory would need to be totally reintegrated at a layer by layer level on the pcb, not really possible. The best you can do for now is turn the shared memory up as far as possible, the integrated chips are naff for gaming by the way so itll not improve gaming in much of a way,shape or form.

Is the only way to up the shared memory by maxing out the ram. (2gb in my case)

semi-pro waster · 31 May 2007 at 17:11

kremedios said:
Is the only way to up the shared memory by maxing out the ram. (2gb in my case)

Only up to a point, there are normally options in the bios to change the amount of memory devoted to video but there are definite limits so if your system won't allow more than 256mb (a fairly common limit) you could add 4gb of Ram and it won't alter the options available to you.

kremedios · 31 May 2007 at 17:12

semi-pro waster said:
Only up to a point, there are normally options in the bios to change the amount of memory devoted to video but there are definite limits so if your system won't allow more than 256mb (a fairly common limit) you could add 4gb of Ram and it won't alter the options available to you.

What option in the bios is this i cant seem to find it :S I have PhoenixBIOS

semi-pro waster · 31 May 2007 at 17:26

It varies from system to system and some don't have it at all but it usually is something along the lines of - Shared Ram to make available for the graphics card.