Hardware question. Toshiba Satellite - M35x series

Hello,

I am new to the forum, and I'm looking for some knowledge on a problem that I have been having recently. I don't really know that much about laptop hardware and setup, but I'm fairly familiar with desktop settings and harware.

About 2 years ago now I bought a Toshiba Satellite M35x series. It ran fine for a really long time, and for the most part it still does; however recently I have been having problems. I play games on the laptop, and with everything I've had it's pretty much ran fine. Nothing is wrong with the laptop's hardware or anything, and it runs the way it's supposed to, the only real problem is that the hardware is outdated, and new games I want to play on it are too advanced for the computer to handle.

I figure that all the hardware in it would be fine for the game, like the gig of ram, the processor (AMD) and what not. The only real problem is the graphics memory (or so i would believe). The graphic memory is shared memory, and even at that it's on the lower end. When I boot up the game, I can't really see much, a lot of the textures don't load in, and in other areas the objects ingame don't display on the screen at all. You can tell that that might be kind of a problem.

I would simply buy a new laptop if I could, seeing as it's two years old, but I am in college, and therefore I have a lack of funds. So I guess what I am trying to ask in a prolonged way is, would it be possible to install some type of videocard that would give me the video memory that I need? And if so, where and how would I go about acquiring such a card, and installing it. I figure that would be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new unit.

I've never really taken the thing apart, but I don't imagine that it would be difficult. I'm not sure if there would even be the ports or space to install something like that. I don't know the exact model of my laptop at the moment, but I could get it if it was necessary to answer the question. Or if there would be some other method I could go about improving the quality of the game. I'm not looking for the best thing out there either, just something I could use to run the game even on the lowest settings. If anyone has any info on this that would be great.

Also:

As I'm already asking something, I figure I should ask another question as well. I've definitely done a lot of gaming on the machine since I've had it, and it's probably taken it's toll. Later as I had the computer, after playing hours and hours of gameplay on it, it seems that the laptop is having problems keeping itself cool. When I am playing a game, the bottom left side of the laptop near the processor heatsink gets extremely hot, and has even caused complete shutdowns before. A cooling pad wasn't cutting it either. I don't know what would cause that. I'm not entirely knowledgeable on the situation, but I think it might be dust build up inside the computer. But really I have no idea.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? Or is it just wear and tear from a lot of use?

I hope there is something I can do that wouldn't be so costly. Any advice would be good at this point.

- Thanks

 

You can NOT change the video card in that. Clean the vents out with canned air as it probably has a lot of dust bunnies in there. I actually use a very small vacuum to suck out the dust bunnies, but some people don't recommend that.