upgrade the VGA card?

hi.. i'm a newbie and wanna buy a laptop
but i need to know if the laptop can be upgradable or not

is there any ASUS laptop that can change the vga card?
I really don't have any info bout that..

 

from wat i have read, it's not possible for any ASUS laptops

 

Nope, no brands can - there are exceptions, but even so, its very limited.

 

buying a laptop with the intention of gaming is a strectch (not impossible, just requires research and will be expensive)

and changing graphics cards is usually not possible, and when it is, its not economical and is a prime candidate for heat / design / voltage problems

(generally turns out to $250-350+ for a few percent improvement vs buying a new laptop)

 

what bout MXM and AXIOM?

 

Hyped up, then died down.

 

there were only a couple dells and one or two other laptops it was possible. but yeah it died down. another prob is there is really no way to find the cards either.

 

Let me help explain this a bit........ MXM and other standardized form factors in the past have had the right idea, just never the right execution. For example, I think there were what... three MXM sizes, which limits things right there and then there was another form factor from ATI. Basically, all of these things try to help standardize graphics cards so that in the future you could go and buy upgrades and replacements from a local store. Laptop so-dimms and 2.5" notebook hard drives only really started showing up in big box stores a year or so ago, so graphics cards are still years down the road, even if the form factor was actually hammered out a year ago.

When you think about differences in models... from sizes, to brands, to models.... everything is different and to lose that originality in an otherwise mundane tool, really cramps the style of notebook designs of today and really pushes them back a few a years........ the big reason it's been impossible to use them on every notebook. Basically, to stanardize all graphics cards limits design which is already limited in a lot ways even further and means that a seperate card would need to be worked into the footprint, usually meaning the system would need to be thicker. That's basically been the problem. The Asus M7v (Z71v) used the MXM standard and it made for a thicker unit with a good deal of open space.... For a gamer or someone who may not travel with their laptop, it might not be a big deal, but it doesn't work in all cases at this point. It's also because of this that companies like Asus haven't been able to develop graphics cards for the purpose of upgrading systems because there just aren't enough systems out there in the same form factor to make it work for them.

Right now, the only good thing about a removable graphics card is that if it dies, you can just replace that instead of the entire motherboard. Usually, the graphics card makes up 1/3 of the price of the motherboard.. so if the gpu goes, it's 1/3 of what an entire motherboard with gpu built on would cost..... and likewise, a motherboard replacement would be only 2/3 of what it would be if you needed to replace that and the gpu if it were soldered on.

So they have their pluses and minuses, but none of the ensembles have seperate graphics at this time and the only ones that I recall having seperate cards would be the M7v (Z71v) and the L5 Series of many years ago.

 

There are more MXM notebooks out there than what you give them credit for.

And if memore serves, it was the Z81 that had MXM. The Z71 had some kind of modular card that used the same connector or something like it but had nothi,ng to do with MXM.

 

But what if its PCI EXPRESS?(what some lappy's of asus have)
PCI express can be removed.
or is this not possible?

 

PCI Express has nothing to do with the physical appearance of cards. It's just the electrical definition of the interface. The GPU can still be soldered to the motherboard and be PCI Express.

It's like saying 'Hey, I can upgrade this CPU because it also has a 1.2V core'. It says nothing about the package.

 

PCI express (like PCI and AGP before it) denotes the technology that is used for the connection/information transfer between the GPU and the motherboard. it has nothing to do with the question of weather the GPU is upgradable or not.

 

Maybe it's ExpressCard that you mean (sort of new version of PCMCIA)?

 

expresscard doesn't have the space or bandwidth to support videocards

 

I swear this question is asked once aweek in this forum alone (probably daily forum wide), yet dispite the FAQ's giving plenty of info on this and a quick search pulling up 10000's of threads, people just dont want to believe that the gpu in 99.9% of cases isnt upgrageable.
Please people search the forum, read the FAQ's this question is getting to become a little over done.
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I agree with you. But the FAQ also notes that it is very common that the same questions will be asked over. It also suggests that we should be courteous and helpful even when that happens...cuz you know its going to happen, no matter how many FAQs we put up

 

Extremely cool explanation on why you can't use your Express Card slot to upgrade your video

 

Acutaly I was reading a little bit about this, there are and will be such thing as External Video cards, they will be encased, just like external HArd drives.

The External Video cards will have its own power brick that needs to be plugged in, the graphic will work through the Express Slot.

Meaning for students, who want a nice small laptop with good batterylife, can do so, and then come home, and hook up the external GPU and then be able to game on it, and possibly hook it up to a external Monitor.

The Cons are it will be expensive, this technology has just only started, you really can't get it now, we don't know how well it performs, and there may be cooling issues.

In anycase once External GPUs become mainstream people may not need such a high power GPU in the laptop itself anymore.

The External GPU does not solve the problem for "on the move performance" that some may need.