Compaq Presario R4025 Questions

I baught myself a R4025 and its great so far.

Going to make some upgrades and i need some opinions on some topics.

First of all this laptop come with the ATI Radeon Xpress 200M 128mb.
I read in a review of this laptop on this site that this could be configured to 256 and it also utilizes the new PCI-Express technology by keeping a PCI-e slot open on the motherboard for the future addition of more video memory.

How can i upgrade the Graphics card to 256?

It comes with Athlon 64 3200 AMD chip can this be upgraded.

Last.I want to purchase an external 80 gb hardrive .Is there a specific one i have to buy,whats IDE SATA??


Information greatly appreciated.

 

1. To assign the extra 128MB memory to the graphics card you'll need to change that setting in the BIOS(press F10 on startup when you see the Compaq screen). I dont think that this extra memory will help in improving performance since it borrows it from the system RAM.

2. The graphics card at present is not upgradable, many people have said that it can be upgraded using the PCIe slot but as AFAIK it is impossible to upgrade the graphics card.

3. The cpu can be upgraded to a higher speed. Do remember that they are socket 939 chips made specifially for HP and their availability is limited. HP parts store lists all the specification for the cpu & then you can search around for similar cpu's from other retailers.

4. External HDD - You can get external hdd included in an enclosure, like this...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154623

 

The afformetioned info is correct, with exception of some...

The upgrade for videocard is not true, but the PCIe is left open for future potential Addon's to the existing video card (memory, potentially 2nd gpu? who knows alot is possible with PCIe)

2nd. the socket 939 was not specifically for HP, search Newegg if you would like to find an upgrade for your processor. Make sure you specify on the search the socket type, socket 939

Finally. Your non answered question is what is IDE SATA. IDE is the standard interface for Internal drives, HDD, CD-ROM, DVD-R, etc. It is acceptable by most, and better than its (still used in many servers) predecessor SCSI. SATA is the new kid on the block (stands for Seriel ATA) It is faster than IDE and also has built in RAID support. If you dont know what RAID is, its used to take 2 HDD's and do 1 of 2 things with them. 1. (raid type 0) Double the space and speed by taking 2 idetical HDD's, hooking them up in a raid config. Places parts of each file on each drive speeding up the process. 2. (raid type 1) 2 idetical HDD's act as one of the size of one, files are transferred to both in parallel (same file same place on both HDD's) so if one drive fails, the other still functions

hope this answered the unanswered questions. I might be off on some things, so if others know please correct ;oP