Shared Graphic Card Question

[c5vette]

I have a hp pavillion laptop.It has a ati mobility radeon 64mb shared graphics setup. I tried playing a game for giggles and was horrible. amd 2.4,512 ram,30gighd. Compared to my desktop which is a amd2.0,512ram AND a Radeon 8500 64mg dedicated card the diff. is unbelievable. I know a graphics card should beat a shared handsdown but this is terrible. My question is can I Purchase a dedicated card like a ati radeon DEDICATED and install it on my laptop even though currently its using a shared setup. I dont plan on doing alot of gaming but want a good graphic card setup. If i can any ideas for a Card?


Thanks

[ECA]

I want you to think of something.
WHARE would you plug it in??
you cant.
Laptops are NOT designed for games.
esp, those that need High frame rates, first person shooters suck.
Civ should be ok, but anything that wants 800x600 to run smooth and 30fps WONT.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by c5vette
I have a hp pavillion laptop.It has a ati mobility radeon 64mb shared graphics setup. I tried playing a game for giggles and was horrible. amd 2.4,512 ram,30gighd. Compared to my desktop which is a amd2.0,512ram AND a Radeon 8500 64mg dedicated card the diff. is unbelievable. I know a graphics card should beat a shared handsdown but this is terrible. My question is can I Purchase a dedicated card like a ati radeon DEDICATED and install it on my laptop even though currently its using a shared setup. I dont plan on doing alot of gaming but want a good graphic card setup. If i can any ideas for a Card?


Thanks

Sorry but you are out of luck, you won't be able to install an aftermarket card on your laptop. The only laptop I know of that lets you upgrade your internal video card is the new Alienware laptops.

[c5vette]

Thanks for the info

[c5vette]

Originally posted by ECA
I want you to think of something.
WHARE would you plug it in??
you cant.
Laptops are NOT designed for games.
esp, those that need High frame rates, first person shooters suck.
Civ should be ok, but anything that wants 800x600 to run smooth and 30fps WONT.

So there are no laptops with dedicated video cards you can game with?

[ECA]

Not anything that will deal with first person high frame rate graphics.
Within the next 2 years, there may be.

1 Question tho, whats your ram? 256,512,1gig? This can REALLY slow it down esp with windows 2000, and XP.
Maxing out ram can improve some of it, at least 1 gig.
But TFT LCD is not FAST enough to refresh the screen at anything near current game needs, 60+ fps. It will either turn solid white or black trying to keep up. But LCD is small lights and they dont have time to Warmup to display anything.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by c5vette
So there are no laptops with dedicated video cards you can game with?

Yes, there are tons...Gateway, VoodooPC, Dell, HP etc

[ECA]

But they still hae problems with the high res high frame rate graphics.
They ARE working on it, and they are getting better.

[c5vette]

512mb ram...2 slots and their full.Looks like im gonna have to throw one out if i decide to upgrade :(

[ECA]

Or both, if it will handle 1gig.
Installing 2x 512meg would be killer.

[c5vette]

yea it would. My laptop has a faster processor and close to the same ram (minus graphic sharing) as my desktop but doesnt perform as well. I would expect this with applications which are graphic 'heavy' but why with just opening office and similiar aps.I have a abit mobo and overclocked amd in the desktop but clock speed and multiplier similiar i believe. Is it just the architecture of laptops which slow them down?

[ECA]

Partly.
Its called ROOM to cool down.
How big a fan you can stuff in it, and still have a SMALL platform, and room enought to cool it.
If ppl didnt mind alittle weight, it could be 10lbs and have enough metal in it to conduct the heat out better. But everyone wants Smaller and cooler.
How small can you get and keep the CPU and video processor cool enough and NOT over powered to keep it cool. You restrict the video processing speed so it dont add that much heat, or you add venting(adds size), add metal(it conducts heat better then plastic), and then Fans(sucks power).
What do you cut?

[lordofthesox]

On this topic, I'm having some issues with shared graphics as well. When I play warcraft 3, I'm pretty sure my video card lags me, it's shared graphics that says it can use up to 64 MB RAM but it never uses more than 17 MB and it lags me bad. I always have like 250 RAM free, is there anyway to make my shared graphics card use more RAM?

[ECA]

Should be set in bios, if not software.
And you wont see the ram it takes until you know the MAX ram of your machine.

whats your RAM size, and whats missing.
Also 250+17megs dont add up right... should be 256, 512, 768, 1 gig.
AND you should get more RAM if you have shared graphics. Windows is going to take about 128+megs just to run. Then your progs, background progs, and game, THEN the graphics storage.

[lordofthesox]

I have 640 MB RAM. More than enough for what I do, so what I'm saying is I don't understand why the video card won't use the RAM that it can. It will only use 17 MB which results in poor game play despite the fact that I always have a lot of free RAM. My Bios has hardly any options, none to change RAM allocated to video card. I'm trying to find out how to update my BIOS, but it doesn't seem to be a very easy subject to find information on.

[ECA]

what Laptop??

[animekenji]

Until recently, upgradeable laptops were still in the realm of science fiction, and even todays upgradeables can't match their desktop counterpoints in ease and versatility. I think the situation is likely to change in the future with technologies like MXM coming.