I wanna pimp my laptop to the fullest.

I'm sorry i posted this in the other forum, but then I realized this is actually the right one. So a mod can just go ahead and delete the other one, sorry.

I recently bought a Compaq presario v2424nr, AMD Turion ML 34. 80 gigs hard drive, ati radeon xpress 200M(128 mb). I originally had 512 ram, but since the graphics card is integrated I upgraded to 1024 which gives me 640 ram with the card and all. I'm very happy with the laptop, though I think upgrading to it's max capacity of RAm(2gigs) will make it much better since the integrated card brings it down to 640. Oh and how much money would this be?

...and what other upgrades should I make? Is it possible to upgrade the video card into 256 with the v2424nr?
Or maybe upgrade the hard drive?
...I hear Age of Empires 3 uses this "light and shadows hardware, uhh dunno...like a chip? Something about lights/shadows? Is this something I can just buy and install on my laptop?

In short, I just wanna get the most out of my laptop so I can play most games on high settings, I wanna pimp it out.

Any software suggestion is welcome as well.

thanks in advance

 

...and how much does it cost to upgrade the 4200RPM?

 

If you had 1GB of RAM, the 200m card takes 128MB so you should have 896MB left. Did it comes with 2 sticks of RAM, and you pulled one out and then installed a stick of 512? That would give you the 640, but anyway, while having a full 1GB of RAM would probably help your graphics, it is still an integrated card, and isn't going to perform as well as a dedicated 64MB X300 card or equivalent. If you have a 4200 rpm drive, a 5400 rpm upgrade will give you a nice performance boost. Playing the new games in high resolution isn't going to be possible on your machine, while it will be able to play them on low settings, setting them to high will just make it choppy and almost unplayable. My 128MB X600 card, won't even play the new games on the highest settings. A 256MB X700 card would, but that kind of performance out of any integrated solution just isn't plausable. And you can get an 80GB 5400 rpm drive for about $125-135 at NewEgg.com

Matt

 

...yeah I think I wanted to upgrade to a gig and the guys got me wrong, also, they gave me 256ram back, uninstalled. So they probably got me wrong. I'll add a gig and add the RPM upgrade. Do you think this will give me a big boost? Or only a little?

...and all this will cost about 240 bucks?

 

It won't be a huge boost in games and anything graphically demanding, as so gain game playability will be minimal, but the RAM upgrade and hard drive, will make everything load faster, (when Windows boots up, load times for games, and such). There is nothing you can do to significantly improve the "smoothness" of graphics in games, your video card is definately your bottleneck. Yes $240 sounds like a reasonable estimate.

 

And don't forget.... every item you buy to upgrade your system will leave you with something you cal sell to make up some of the cost...
there's always a market for these parts...

 

iTS AMAZING HOEW MANY PEOPLE WANT TO PIMP THEIR THINGS I NOW EVEN FOUND A PIMPED DATING SITE WWW.PIMPMYDATE.NET

 

Im sorry but i have to disagreee with that, in my experience more ram on my desktop machine boosted my fps and let me play games with higher detail. On half-life 2 i went from 15-30 fps to 30-60 fps and i could use the high textures, models and before i could barely use medium

 

For V2000z model series( yours is), the best upgrades you can do is, replace stock DDR333 with 1GB of DDR400 RAM.( 2x512MB OCZ DDR400 CAS 2.5 Recommended). As Video Memory is shared, it will give of 10-15% even in Video Performance . All other areas also it improves performance about 10%+.

With 1GB RAM video card can be assigned with 128MB in bios, but during games or video benches it can take upto 256MB because of HyperMemory feature.


And then next I suggest is, if you can afford a 7200RPM, or else go with good 5400RPM drive which improves the performance( seagate or Hitachi are fastest).

 

You have a totally different graphics solution than the 200m, which is an integrated card, while yours is dedicated. Him going from 1GB to 2GB with a purely integrated card isn't going to give as much of a performance boost as going from 256 or 512 to 1GB. The grapics card is the constraint when playing games, while how much RAM will help system performance in general, won't give him a 20% gain in gaming over the 1GB he has now.

Matt