Can I upgrade this computer?

I am thinking about purchasing the HP Elitebook 8540p for college. I can get a very good deal on it....only $1000 for the i7 version. I like everything about it except the video card on it. Am I able to upgrade this video card? I have installed video cards into desktops but have been told that notebooks are very hard. I just wanted to know if it is even possible to upgrade this...Thanks!

 

You heard correctly. Most notebook cards are soldered to the motherboard, though with enough skill, all is possible.

 

Take this response to mean "No, you will not be able to upgrade the GPU"

Unless you have your own desoldering station and such. And if that was the case, you wouldn't be asking that question

Even if you could, you're looking at $300+ generally for a better card. You may as well spend that now on the machine and not worry about it.

 

Perhaps the biggest question is if you're taking this to school and presumably to class, do you want to carry around a six pound 15" notebook? I think most would say no. Another option would be to build a desktop for gaming and then get a smaller less expensive notebook for school. You could probably do both for the same price and desktop would offer you better gaming.

 

an i7 notebook will give you horrible battery life, say on the order of 1-3 hours.

Why do you want an i7 cpu anyway?

 

lol you think i7 is too much power? i am not really a gamer...just want to have that option for college

 

The i7 isn't too much power, but it usually consumes too much power. Not many laptops out there powered by i7's are built for long term battery life. For non gaming and general purpose use there are alot of i3's and even i5's out there with ample battery life an more than ample cpu power for the task of a laptop.

i7's are more designated to DTR laptops where gaming and other tasks are important. i7's have their place in portable units too but you rarely should require that much of a CPU..............

 

Without the video card to match, an I-7 is pretty pointless really in most situations.

There is very little that needs THAT much processing power that doesn't need (or can't use) the graphics power to match. If you can use it, then you are probably aware of said programs. On the other hand, not much really needs an I-7 either.

Personally, skip on the I-7, get the lower I-5 model with SSD and/or more memory. You can upgrade the CPU later if you need it, but chances are you won't miss it.

 

without a top of the line video card **and** an extremely fast hard drive/ssd, *AND* a huge/heavy battery pack, a mobile i7 cpu is pointless.

By the time a current college freshman 'outgrows' an i3 cpu, they will have also outgrown their hard drive and battery pack.

Figure that laptops are generally (not always) on a 2-3 year refresh cycle for active users.

 

think i5 better choice over i3 if i want it to last longer? say throughout all of college??

 

her ONLY thing an i5 gets you is turbo-boost, which is of dubious value in the real world.

 

how is turbo-boost dubious? you saying i would never use it?

 

yes, that is what I am saying. you will likely never see any advantage in the real world. it may kick in from time to time but how fast does a cpu have to be to run office/f-fox/watch movie, etc, etc.

turbo boost kicks in for a very short time then backs off as necessary to let the cpu cores cool off. sometimes that backing off brings the cpu clock speed to BELOW the nominal rating (meaning slower than usual)

some people will see some benefit with turbo boost if they have some specialized workloads running with some particular software, but for 'regular' work, nope.

For college, I'd say get the least expensive machine that will get you through 1st and 2nd year. If you find that you need Moar Powah, you can take the money saved on your first machine and get a new, more powerful, in warranty machine for your 3rd and 4th years.

But if you spend a pile of $$$ now on a hugely powerful (and probably horribly underutilized) machine, it will still be close to being obsolete and definitely out of warranty after 2 years.

 

According to who? Turbo boost shows some non-trivial real-world gains: Benchmark Results: Media/Transcoding Apps : Experiment: Does Intel?s Turbo Boost Trump Overclocking?

Turbo boost is an auto-overclocking thing that the i5 and i7 mobile processors can do. It's not really something you have much of a choice over. That said, it's a nice thing to have. It depends on how much the cost differential is... I wouldn't pay more than about $100 to go from a 330M to a 520M.

 

benchmark, benchmark, benchmark.......

who runs benchmarks for more than 30 seconds?