Inspiron video card upgrade

So, like any other Dell Inspiron 8500/8600 laptop owner I wanted to upgrade my vid card to the now discontinued Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo 128MB. I managed to get my hands on a used one through EBay and did something stupid.

Instead of throwing the card into my latop as is to make sure it worked, I modded it out first following the instructions from ( http://www.bay-wolf.com/8500videoheat.htm). Everything went well but when I turn my laptop on the screen looks "torn". It's like the image has been sheared and there are diagonal lines all over. Oddly enough the image gets better as the computer heats up and if I leave it on long enough everythings fine. Shut the computer down, let it cool and restart and we're back to square one.

Any ideas on what I'm missing here? Is the card damaged? I'll never know if it arrived broken or whether I did it myself.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

what does it look like when you plug in an external display?

 

Laptop video cards are costum integrated into the motherboard, so I would guess that the problem is that the video card that you ordered wasn't specificly designed for your motherboard, its probably not damaged (although I can't be 100% sure that it isn't. That said, you should be able to put your old card in and get it to work.

 

not all vid cards are integrated into the motherboard. Many dells, like the one he has, and alienwares, can be upgraded althought there is no standarized module such as mxm or what u would find in a desktop.

 

Drumfu: what am I looking for? I'll hook up an external display and see what I get but what are you thinking? And thanks.

For those of you not familiar with the mod I carried out on this card it was simply altering the heatsink. The ATI 128MB card is of the same form factor as my current vid card - hence my being able to swap it out with the 64MB I already had in it. The 128MB card can overheat with the puny little thermal pad that the card comes with so the mod I made was simply to remove the pad and put a large copper plate (cut to fit) in its place allowing for better thermal transfer with the heatsink.