Should I buy a new graphics card?

B

benh128

Geek Trainee
Hey guys,

First let me apologize for my utter ignorance of basically all things computer hardware related. My laptop typically runs games pretty decently, but I'm considering buying a better graphics card so I can run them a bit smoother and with prettier graphics. Here are my specs:

Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 w/ 1GB dedicated graphics
Windows 7 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz
4 GB RAM

My main concern is whether upgrading my video card would actually improve my frame rate and graphics performance significantly enough to justify the purchase (my budget would probably stretch to about $200 at the very most, I think), or whether there are other things I need to think about to increase performance. Any other information or links maybe on good graphics cards or what I should be aware of when looking around would be very much appreciated too though!
 
What is he model number of your laptop? You can't change the graphics in most laptops, It's very unlikely that yours has a discreate adapter that can be changed. but I do not know for sure without the model.
 
Ohhh that doesn't sound good. It's a HP pavilion dv6 1329-TX. Is there any possible way to get around this? Like some sort of external adaptor? My laptop also has an ExpressCard/54 Slot, which wiki tells me could be used for "external enclosures for desktop size PCI Express graphics cards", although when I googled, it seems like there isn't much that could actually be implemented with it. Is there anything else I could potentially upgrade to improve performance? Or should I just settle for turning all my settings down?
 
Your internal graphics module isn't upgradeable. HP does make an expansion base for your system (the xb3000), however as far as i can tell that base does not include a graphics adapter either, but you could call HP and ask just to be sure. There are external graphics solutions on the market that will connect to a expresscard/54 slot but they are very pricey and as far as i can tell the slot doesn't have enough throughput to use any modern graphics cards. The best card that i can find preinstalled in the enclosures is nvidia 8600GT.
 
Yeah I think I might call them up tomorrow then. And yeah I've been looking some up today, most useful site I've found looks like this one http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html . This one seems relatively cheap (although a big ugly/messy, but I wouldn't mind that), but there seems to be a concern about the expresscard slot restricting bandwidth, only x1 or x2 compared to x16 with graphics cards (just parroting out these figures since I don't know what they mean, in the link it is listed as a con though). Would you have any idea if this would be a serious enough problem so as to make buying one of these pointless? And is that nvidia card a significant upgrade for me/how pricey is that enclosure? Thank you very much for your help by the way!
 
The enclosure that i found that came with a preinstalled 8600gt is the same brand that is refered to in that link you posted. I don't think they would give you any really noticable performance gain.
 
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