Upgrading Inspiron 8600 Graphics Card

Hey folks,

I've searched through this forum and found a few threads that pertain to my question but nothing that really answers it.

I own a Dell Inspiron 8600 and play alot of games. However, especially with newer games my current graphics card is simply not enough. I would like to upgrade to a more powerful card, but am unsure of which I should move to.

My current card is a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. I've already upgraded my RAM once but plan to again upgrade to 1GB.

What's the best card available that will fit this laptop? From what I understand there's not a whole lot available.

 

Before people start flaming I believe yours is one of the few laptops that can have the graphics upgraded. If that is the case the best will probably be Geforce FX5700, which would be a nice improvement.

Places to find the card would be dell themselves or perhaps ebay?

1GB of ram will be the best and most effective upgrade you can make, for gaming these days 1GB is usually the minimum.

 

I thought the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo or the GeForce FX Go5650 was the highest that computer could go?

 

Does the mobility 9800 fit?

 

It's not whether it "fits," since that model is not an MXM or AXIOM compliant, it's whether or not Dell made a more powerful card for that notebook. And I believe the most powerful cards were the 9600 and the 5650, though I could be wrong.

 

Dells notebok lines are typically the same for 15,4" and 17", meaning if you can fit it in and the TDW requirements aren't too high for the laptop, you can use the higher end GPU's from the 17" line. At least you could with 9400/6400 and inspiron 9300/6000. There are documented cases and how-to-guides for putting in the 7800GTX from the 9300 in the 6000. The 7900gs doesn't fi inside the 6400, but it is somewhat compatible.

 

What documented cases were these? In general, I think the BIOS won't support any other card, plus there is almost no way that a 15.4" notebook can provide the power and cooling for a 7800GTX. It might be technically possible, but getting it to actually work would be a whole different story.

 

Ok, I might have streched the truth a tiny bit there. I remember reading the guide. It wasn't the GTX, cause the 9300 didn't have a GTX, it had a vanilla go7800. And someone trying it out with the e1505. And there was some messing with the bios involved. But i believe they have the same motherboards, just different cases. Anyways, it's 5:30 AM here and i've been up all night, so my memorys a bit shot.