Graphics upgradable?

Hi all. I'm new here. Stumbled on this forum looking for some laptop expertise. I'm wondering if it's possible to upgrade the graphics card in my Acer Asprie AS1694WLMI. If you look it up you might see p-m 750 and x600 in the specs but that's sure not what I got... and for once, I'm not complaining. I got a p-m 760 and an x700 (it's centrino with a gig of ddrII and a 5400rpm 100gig drive). Now the reason I'm looking at upgrading the graphics is because I have the 64mb version of the x700.

So my questions are:
-What are my upgrade options (if any)?
-Would I see a big performance gain between 256mb and 128mb? (ie can the card take advantage of the extra memory? Though I'm not sure there is a 256 mb version of the x700...)
-Would there be a gross temeperature difference and could my lappy take that heat difference?
-What do you guys think of an upgrade? Am I wasting my hard earned cash?

Thanks

 

Unfortunatly you won't be able to upgrade that card, there's only a few high end machines that can be upgraded at the moment with MXM technology (swappable gfx cards)the best you can do (if you haven't already) is upgrade your gfx driver to the new mobility catalyst 5.10 from ati, these new drivers will allow your gfx card to borrow more system memory i.e from 64mb to 128mb and give you better performance for games and apps etc. All in all you have a decent hard drive (5400rpm) your gfx card is not the best but it's very good none the less,so you should be able to do and play most things, your memory 1gb is suffient to get some nice performance for games!.Sorry to be the bearer of bad new's but you have a nice machine there and with the new drivers, you will have an enjoyable games platform! hope this helps enjoy!

 

Ah - it is impossible to upgrade your video card.

Yes - a 256MB version of the Mobility Radeon X700 exists....I've got one in my notebook. And the 256MB of video memory helps in games such as FEAR and Far Cry, also DOOM 3.

Tonyy is correct too!

 

I like the "jewel in the rough"in your rep power chazman!

 

Haha thanks Tonyy - yeah I think that is very cool too! Not many people have that.

 

I don't think you will see that great an increase in performance to be honest with you. The extra ram is useful for high res testures and AA.

High res testures will make games look better - it is more of an image quality issue. But Doom and HL2 will still look great on your notebook.

In the case of AA that's superfluous on the x700 as it is a part that is fill rate limited. Cranking up AA will make the framerate plummet.

If you let games autdetect settings you will be happy with the performance in most games. You are only losing crisper (less compressed looking textures).

 

And one more thing, you should have a look inside to see if the notebook is indeed non-upgradable. You never know. The Gateway 8510gz I reviewed a little while ago was fully upgradable (the question then becomes where do I find the upgrade parts?).

 

Yeah, finding parts will be a problem...especially if it's not a standard module - most notebooks have the graphics card made specifically for them.

There's also the question of motherboard support - for example, if the graphics card you have features a 128-bit memory bus, then you most likely won't be able to use one with a 256-bit bus.

Chaz