What is a cheap good video card?

I have a dell inspiron 1550 and my old videocard cannot play a game like crysis. Are there any video cards I could buy for cheap?

 

To my knowledge, that laptop does not exist. If you mean a 1505 or a 1525, or quite frankly any laptop, you cannot upgrade the graphics card.

 

Unless you are really really INCREDIBLY lucky, no graphics card upgrade is possible.
You're stuck with whatever you have in your system.

 

He might mean 5150, I think that system had an FX Go 5200.

 

Yup. A Geforce FX Go5200 with either 32mb or 64mb RAM. Not too much you can do with that card unfortunately. The Geforce FX or 5 series were big farce with the Geforce 4 not being any worse really...luckily nvidia redeemed themselves with the Geforce 6 series.

 

the nvidia 4 series was more powerful than the 5 series. I upgraded from the 5650 to the 4200 and noticed a nice performance increase. That was like 5 years ago though.

If you have the E1505, you have the option of upgrading the gpu, to the nVidia 7300, ATi X1300 or ATi X1400. None of which will play crysis on medium settings.

K-TRON

 

I'm kind of new to this, but couldn't you just buy a better video card and replace the old video card? I don't understand why an upgrade is perhaps not possible.

 

read the stickes, this is not a desktop

 

Their are three types of graphics cards for laptops:
1) integrated graphics cards. The graphics card is a chipset which is physically soldered to the motherboard. These are not upgradeable
2) dedicated graphics card which uses a proprietary video port. Since you have a Dell, you can only upgrade to a graphics card which was offered with your system. For example. My E1505 was offered with a nVidia 7300, ATi X1300, and ATiX1400. All three of those cards will work in my system.
3) dedicated graphics card which is on a MXM slot. These cards are upgradeable. You just need to find another MXM module which has the same dimensions and power usage.

What is the model of your laptop. Their is no such thing as an Inspiron 1550.

K-TRON

 

It's an E1505. Sorry for the mix up

Also, I currently have a nvidia geforce go 7300.

 

Well, you can upgrade to the ATi X1300 or the X1400 than.
The ATi X1400 is the most powerful card the E1505 can use.
This is what the ATi X1400 card looks like: (Its the red card in my laptop)



The part number is:
FBFM1017013
The graphics card is made by Quanta for Dell

K-TRON

 

You may be able to upgrade your card. The 1520 can, that I know. However, the best you can upgrade to is the 8600m GT.

Edit: I don't think the E1505 can, sorry.

 

Dont listen to Han
The E1505 video card can be upgraded, however the ATi X1400 is the max.
Only three cards will work, the nvidia 7300, X1300 and X1400.
I gave you the part number of the X1400, so you can order it on ebay or through Dell

K-TRON

 

My apology, yes you can upgrade the GPU.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins6400/en/sm/video.htm#wp1006368

 

Mind you, your machine still won't play crysis unless you crank all of your settings waaaaay down. Even then it might have trouble.