Which video card to buy? (able to support VtM: Bloodlines)

New member here. Heyah ^_^

Alright, down to my question.

I've recently acquired a Dell Latitude 110L -- it was an offer at my college to get it free (or billed in with my loans) so I accepted -- and, unfortunately, we weren't able to customize.

So it's a standard, WinXP Professional notebook. 40gb... pretty good size. More detailed stats later.

I recently attempted to play Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines on the comp; at the bare minimum of the game's settings, it runs fairly smoothly. At least... for the intro movies. After those, it crashes. I've posted to game-related forums and the response is that my graphics - Integrated Intel 910GML - are at fault.

I'm hoping to acquire - through sibling kindness - a new graphics card this weekend. My question is, which one? The game seems best suited for nVidia GeForce and ATI Radeon.

Navigating the nVidia site to find laptop graphics card is a mess. Same for googling, CircuitCity.com, BestBuy.com, etc. So many results come up, each one listing features that look good to my inexperienced eyes.

I'm looking for a card that is, hopefully, under the $100 mark, yet good enough to support the game's hefty demands. Any suggestions or help in this matter would be greatly appreciated ^^

Tech Specs:
Dell Latitude 110L
Processor - Celeron M 350 1.30GHz
RAM - 512mb DDR 2-400 2
Graphics - Integrated Intel 910GML

 

It is not likely you can upgrade the GPU.

 

So my situation is hopeless, then?

 

Well I don't think it is MXM or AXIOM compatable. That is the only way you can replace the video card.

 

MXM...? AXIOM...?

I know I sound clueless, but my field of expertise with computers tend to be editing, music videos; the Adobe family of Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop.

Now, on the desktop we own, it had an nVidia RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 -- and it was worse on there than my laptop.

 

While AXIOM is for ATIs', MXM is Nvidias' standard for upgradable GPUs. MXM card has three categories based on their power consumption and colling requirements, MXM I, MXM II and MXM III. for example: you can upgrade a Go 6800 MXM III card with Go 7800GTX MXM III compatible card.

the card you have in your desktop, is rather old.

 

Ah, I see. So purchasing another video card for my laptop - which contains the Intel graphics - wouldn't do much at all?

Concerning the desktop with the nVidia tnt... heh, yeah. We've had it for a couple of years and only learned of our graphics card's age when I tried to play the game a year ago.

 

The vast majority of notebooks do not have a replaceable graphics card. It doesn't "come out" in the same sense that you can just pull cards out of a desktop.

The small percentage that do either implement the AXIOM standard (ATi) or MXM (nVidia).

 

A Latitude 110L has integrated graphics as you said - impossible to upgrade unfortunately.

 

The specs I copied from, I think, the Dell site... yet what I actually have seems to differ a bit. When I go to Properties/Display panel, here's what I see:



So...because it is plug and play... I --should-- be able to change it... right?

 

You can't upgrade the card, it is integrated into the motherboard. 99% of laptops cannot be upgraded.

The Monitor on that is Plug and Play.