Is there any differences between the internal bits on the two versions of the 15R's and 17R's?

Besides having a second gen processor. Like say you want to upgrade the video card, is that possible on the older R series? Another question, If you want to add more RAM say you got 4 GB and want to do 6 or 8 and HAVE the Win 7 64 bit OS already from Dell, is there a Ram access panel on BOTH of these or do you have to unassemble the entire machine to get at the ram and Video card? My mini 1012 has the ram access panel that made upgrading it's ram to 2 gbs a snap, but that's as far as our knowledge of lappys internal bits goes now. Just trying to determine which series would be better to go for, the older ones or the newer second gen ones, don't care about switchable lids....Thanks all!

 

Unfortunately with 98% of laptops on the market, the graphics card is not upgradable. Most have their graphics card soldered onto the motherboard. Only extreme gaming laptops (Alienware, Clevo, MSI, ASUS, older Acer) and mobile workstations (Dell Precision, HP Elitebook, Lenovo W7xx series) offered MXM or some proprietary version of MXM. That means for most laptops you have to buy the graphics card up front or you will be stuck with whatever you have or be forced to buy a new motherboard to get the discreet graphics.

Both the old and new 15/17R have a RAM door. Only the 17R has an easy user accessible hard drive door. The 15/14R have the hard drive underneath the palmrest and you must remove all the bottom screws, keyboard and palmrest to get to the hard drive.

 

Just what I needed to know, thanks so much for the info Tsunade Hime! I had a feeling you'd be able to answer those questions for me. What about the graphics cards? is the ATI that they have not as good as the Nvidia ones? Talking about the 1GB cards they have right now in 17R in the outlet.

 

Which video cards were you referring to? Older or newer 17R? The older 17R has a 5470 (decent for light/moderate gaming), while the newer 17R offers the GT 525M (again decent for light/moderate gaming). Both aren't serious gaming cards, and are mid range.

 

I have both Old 17R (N7010) and New 17R (N7110) but only old 17R has easy hard drive access via Memory cover. In new 17R the hard drive is underneath the palmrest (I wasn't very happy when I found that).

 

They were the two I was asking about yes, thank you Tsunade Hime!

Ah, so you did upgrade the RAM in both? It is only one Dimm though right? Has to be all on one chip? That's cool. Thanks for posting your experience miamikk.