Wanting to upgrade my Studio 1749 Laptop

Its a bit of a beast but I love it. Its my second Dell Laptop, my previous one being an Inspiron 6000, it lasted 6 years and I sold it someone else and its STILL going.

Anyways,

I bought it mainly for school. It has a few bells and whistles on it, the bigger one being the touchscreen display. You could only get the touchscreen and a certain cpu because I bought it with a student discount, it only came with one color, Chainlink. Has the backlit keyboard. I wanted BluRay but it wasn't an option. I got the DVD Burner instead. About a year ago I found the BluRay Player from a 1747 on eBay for 50 bucks. I haven't installed it yet but it can't be that difficult. What I wanted to ask mainly was the CPU. I want to replace the i3-330m to something faster. I am guessing the i5 but if I can get away with it, the i7. I remember there being a "Turbo" option that railed the CPU from 2.6GHz to 3.16GHz. What models of Intel CPUs could I install?

Would replacing the motherboard be out of the question and buying one with the option to install theATi 1GB GPU....The one I have is the Intel (5650 I think) maybe I can boost the video performance. I know I can buy another laptop but I dropped a mint for this setup and besides the RAM upgrades I have done, I want to dig a little deeper into the unit. I know it won't turn into an AlienWare but I would like some more OOMPF! from the system.

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated

Pete

 

At the very least all the Arrandale dual-cores up to the 640M should definitely work. Depending on what your exact performance requirements are and what chip you want to buy, the upgrade may or may not be worthwhile.

If you currently have the Intel mobo (the 5650 is the ATI mobo, so you should double check what you have), the ATI mobo will definitely give you a boost in GPU performance, but again, depending on what you're trying to do with it, it may or may not be worthwhile. You might also be able to upgrade to the Clarksfield quads up through the 840QM if you change the mobo. You might need to buy a new heatsink as well.

 

Sorry...Mine IS the Intel HD...I am not looking for playing games or anything but I would like to boost the CPU up to at least the 3GHz range...something to match the HD touchscreen, the Bluray player, and just the overall kickass machine it is. Maybe I should aim closer to the i7-620m for about 150 bucks (2.6/3.3 Turbo). I am assuming the heatsink varies between the i3 and the i7? I am just pondering what to do...I was messing around with my laptop and I was using photoshop, the default backdrop is gray on the screen and there were horizontal lines cycling through the back in the gray. Now to me, thats either a video issue or an screen issue. I would almost hope for the GPU because I could do a potential upgrade I have been thinking about....but if its the screen...Geez...I dont want it to be the screen.

 

I don't think the heatsink varies between the i3 and i7, just the integrated or discrete GPU. Not 100% sure on that, though.

As for your screen issue, have you tried seeing what the output looks like on an external display?