upgrading video card on my dell inspiron 6000

hey guys I have a dell inspiron 6000 and the stock radion x300 64mb graphics isnt cutting it for the games i play. (world of warcraft, counterstrike)

can someone possibly recommend to me a video card and where to buy it that will fit my computer and play those 2 games well for me ? the stock 512 ram sucks also, but i just ordered a stick of 1gb so Im fixing that problem.

 

The only choice you have is the 128mb x300. That's it.

You current card is more than enough to play those games just fine. Heck, my intergrated ATI one does.

The reason why games run so poorly is because of the 512mb of ram you have. Another 1gb stick and the games will run much much better. Like night and day really compared to your current ram situation.

 

I've Inspiron 6000 as well. I did some research before but this just isn't possible.

 

The x300 card in the 6000 is upgradable, just that there aren't many choices.

There is no 32mb version, so you must have the intel gma, which you're right it's not possible. But the dude has a dedicated card, which is upgradable.

 

hmm interesting, cause yeah right now when i run world of warcraft with the settings all the way down i still lag like crazyy and it has nothing to do with my internet thats for sure. when I get the 1b gb ram stick and install it ill also have another 256 stick so ill have over 1gb of ram, ill let u guys know how the game runs then. just for curiousity how much is a radeon 128mb x300 , and where can I buy it? like u said after i upgrade my ram i probably wont need it but im just curious. and are u sure thats the highest upgradable video card I Can get?

 

Yes it is, nothing else that dell makes will fit. You can try calling dell to see if they have any leftovers or look on ebay.

Just to give you some examples:

My current card (ati xpress 1100) runs wow fine at 1280*800 with medium settings. Your card is a slightly more powerful version of mine with dedicated ram, so there's no way that it's not gonna run it just as well as mine.

I had an old laptop with 512mb of ram and an ati 9000. HL2 lagged like hell (<20fps). Checked my task manager, and the ram available was pretty much 0. Upgraded to 1gb of ram, game ran smoothly (60fps) and even was able to bump the resolution a notch. Checked task manager, the game was using over 700mb of ram. So you can see how a game like counterstrike will be limited by the lack of ram. I assume this is CSS, as CS 1.6 should run perfectly on ur current system.

 

oops I meant 64MB. I actually meant that there isn't any other card to upgrade to (except 128MB version).

 

No, any card that you could upgrade to had to have been offered on the i6000 at some point in time. The part would have to come from another i6000 (off of eBay or similar) or from Dell itself. There is no generic card that you can purchase an insert as the GPU is a Dell-specific design made by Dell for Dell.

 

Yeah i was talking about CS:S. I'll let u no how wow runs after i upgrade my ram to 1gb. just ordered it, should be here in 2-4 days. thx for the help guys, really helpful forum, appreciate it.

 

Hi, I have the same laptop, same specs without the added RAM. When i run CS:S i only get a max of 12fps and thats on the absolute lowest settings and my internet connection is fine. IS there any possible way to increase my FPS?

 

That's your problem. CSS needs more than 512mb of ram to run. Otherwise, the hard drive gets paged, slowing down your game to a crawl.

 

i'm suprised the thing even runs it.

 

My old 8600 with a Radeon 9600 Pro turbo ran quite a few games and it was old.

 

Thanks for the help. So what your saying is to buy more ram, or just get a whole new PC in itself? If i had the money i would love to build my own computer for once instead of ordering one.

 

I was in a similar situation as you.

I had a 600m with the ati 9000 and 512mb of ram. HL2 ran like crap at the lowest settings (20fps). Keeping the task manager open I saw that the memory was being maxed out. I bought another stick of 512mb and what a difference. Not only was I able to up the resolution in HL2, but I also upped the settings to high and averaged 50+ fps.

So yes, more memory will make a huge difference in the game and XP.

 

The Radeon 9600PRO is faster than the Radeon X600 I believe, or about the same speed. The dude has a X300

 

How about this one: Swap an NVidia 7300 256mb in for the 64/128mb ATI X300? The ATI X1400 also looks the same:

Original: ATI X300:
http://i6.ebayimg.com/02/i/07/6c/da/1c_1_b.JPG
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Inspiron-6...ryZ74957QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

NVidia 7300:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f123/newgeardeals/NJ887/NJ887Medium.jpg
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Inspiron-E...ryZ74957QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

ATI X1400
http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/3/1/7/0/7/0/webimg/53871829_o.jpg
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Dell-Inspir...ryZ74957QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Supposedly the x1400 is a perfect fit, but the bios won't recognize it:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread145639-16.html
If someone's decent at bios hacks this should be quite easy, just pull a few lines from the i6400 bios and stick them into the i6000.

 

Okay, SOOO Everything i have read on about 12 different Forums says i should be able to upgrade my ATI X300 64mb to the 128mb.

I whent i Ebay, found the card and put it in. The computer starts up but the screen just comes up White and doesnt do anything.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks!

 

you either don't have it installed correctly *the board isn't pushed down all the way* or its a bad card.
take apart your laptop again and check the connections, if it still doesn't work contact the ebay seller for a possible replacement, or refund for a doa product.