E1705 GPU upgrade

I ordered the E1705 back in april when the x1400 was the best card you could get. I was on the dell site the other day and noticed the nvidia 7900 is now available. I have been kicking myself ever since. I was happy with the x1400 for the price but I do like to play games and the 7900 would add a year or two to the life of this laptop for me.

If it's possible to upgrade, could anyone fill me in or point me in the right direction? Any help would be appreciated.

 

yes you can upgrade to cards that are offered for the E1705. It won't void your warranty, but won't be covered in it either. You'll have to install it yourself, and can order it from Dell's Spare Parts.

 

Hi,

I have a similar question, would you be able to upgrade the video card in a E1505? Thanks in advance.

Justin.

 

I don't think you can in the e1505.

 

Check on eBay or Dell spare parts.

 

The requirements to upgrade GPU is that you must have a dedicated card and you can only upgrade to cards that are offered for your model. In other words, you can't take a card that is offered for the M1710 and try to put it in the E1405.

This applies for the future also. If Dell offers a better card for your model in the future, you can upgrade to it as long as you currently have a dedicated card.

 

But you can take a card that is in the 1710 and put in the e1705...

 

if you can upgrade parts so easily, doesn't this imply that changing the GPU would be easy too? IMO, that's a good step. if anything goes wrong with the card, at least i know it's replaceable!

now i'm thinking if a should buy an E1710 for a dtr... not another purchase, heh. technology moves too fast

 

The ATI X1400 is the best card available for the E1505, if you have an ATI X1300, you can upgrade to the X1400.

 

Also, from what I found researching the X1300 and X1400, Dell proprietary specs their cards, so while you should be able to upgrade to another Dell card, you probably can't use say an Asus X1400 (or X1600) card in your machine.

BTW, they do this on their desktops also (or they used to) in a worse way - Dell Power Supplies and Motherboards use a standard ATX connector with the pin order swapped - so you can swap out the PS and M/B together, but you can't change only one of them to a non-Dell component (unless you swap some wires on the PS).

 

That's because the M1710 and the E1705 are built off of the same chassis and have similar internal parts/cooling systems. The M1710/E1705 and other models, such as the E1505/E1405 have totally different interiors and are of different sizes/have different power requirements.