Fujitsu N3510 - Can the X300 be upgraded?

I think the big question is, are the graphics PCI-E? In other words, can the crappy ATI x300 be upgraded? If so, I will buy one in an instant!

Very nice looking Lappy!

 

Well I just got off with phone with Fujitsu tech support and they claim the x300 GPU won't be upgradeable... Oh well! It coulda been a contenda!

If anyone hears or figures out anything to the contrary, don't hesitate to post!

Also, I could be wrong, but I thought one of the advantages of the new PCI-E format was going to be the ability to easily upgrade Video cards? Can anyone clear this up?

 

Yes, the x300 is PCI-E...They don't have AGP X Series for notebooks right now like they do for desktops. It should be upgradable, but like in another thread it was said, it has to match the bios and the like and it also has to be in sync with fitting, etc. I don't know much about the new upgradable cards but you know, the higher you go, there might be more parts or something. Also, you have to make sure it wont cause overheating problems and things like that. And it probably would run down battery life with more power consumption.

 

The advantage is the card can be removed and a new one can be inserted, but the manufacturer still has to support it. So if they release the N3510 with teh X600 in the future, you should be able to upgrade the X300 to the X600. It's still quite a mess though, few notebooks with these new cards are even shipping right now, so it's a big unknown.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

The thing to remember is that not only does the manufacturer have to support the product (ie. make upgrade video cards that 'fit') but they also have to make it upgradeable in the first place (just because a notebook has PCI-E doesn't mean that the video card will be removeable).

I don't know if this applies to the N3510, but, for example, the Acer 1800 series comes with X600 graphics... but the video card is soldered onto the motherboard. In otherwords, it's PCI-E but not upgradeable.

I think it's similar to the situation with the Sonoma Pentium-Ms. We've clearly seen that the 533MHz FSB and the DDR2 memory don't do much for performance. But notebooks will gradually switch over to Sonoma. Why? Because Intel will simply stop making the Dothan-core Pentium-Ms, that's why. Not because it's better.

Similarly, PCI-E will replace AGP, but not necessarily because manufacturers want us to be able to upgrade the graphics card in our notebooks. It's just the way things go. So some notebooks will have upgradeable video cards and others won't. Of course, that's what we have now.

 

how is the x300 compared to geforce4 440 go? a huge boost in performance?