Laptop Video Cards Upgrade Options

Of course one could say purchase a laptop with sufficient laptop video card capabilities in the first place. But as we all know hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Even purchasing a laptop with a powerful graphics card today does not mean it will be able to properly run the applications of tomorrow, one of the main disadvantages of laptops compared to desktop computers is the lack of upgradeability options available to us, with a desktop computer it can simply be a case if opening up the case, pulling out the old graphics card and installing the new.

With a laptop where do you begin? Even taking the case apart can be a nightmare, let alone finding a replacement graphics card that is compatible with the laptop.

Standard ATI Laptop Graphics Chip

If you’ve a laptop which is let down by the graphics performance luckily there are a couple of possibilities which are available to us.

Graphic card drivers and firmware
The first and easiest of these are the driver and firmware updates, check with your graphic card manufacturers website and ensure you have the latest installed, this can make a major difference, especially if the graphics card is not using the manufactures drivers.

Tuning and tweaks, user forums within manufacturers websites can be a great place to find tips and hints on tuning you particular laptop video cards to get the most out of it.

Internal graphic card upgrades
Some laptops come with standard graphics cards that can be upgraded, by upgraded I generally mean they can support a memory upgrade. Check with your laptop supplier, but it’s rare to have a laptop that will accept another graphics card.

Other Options
There comes a time when we have to look at the overall specification of the laptop, if the architecture is more than 3-4 years old no matter what is added it’s never going to be able to run the latest games or other graphic intensive applications.

External graphic cards
If your computer has a docking station? Or is there one available? If so many of these can take full pc cards, many of these may only be PCI but this can still give a good graphics boost at a decent price for many laptops.

 One of the latest external video cards is the Asus XG Station

One of the later choices to arrive on the scene is the external graphics card, there are a number of manufacturers who have seen the need for a way to externally upgrade laptop video cards and as such there are a number of choices open to us.

The connections range from USB2 and the PCMCIA card bus slots which is generally unused by most of us, sadly though as this type of technology is still in it’s infancy USB2 or Card bus only offer limited bandwidth in terms of connection data transfer when compared to PCI, AGP or PCI-E slots.

So it’s not really a viable alternative if looking to play the latest games, but if your simply looking for something with a bit more go or maybe for a dual or triple screen setup this is a good way of achieving this.

Conclusion
The most cost effective option we’ve come across is with a docking station, as mentioned above this generally gives us a single PCI slot, and although this technology is not generally used for graphic cards now, there are still some pretty decent cards available with this type of interface offering extra features such as dual display, digital and analogue out puts.

Many of these cards can offer great performance over many standard laptop video cards.

Docking stations can be pretty expensive, but auction websites such as e-Bay are a great place to purchase docking stations at a fraction of the manufactures recommended price.

Apart from laptop video cards we also need to look into other factors
processors, hard drives and ram when getting a performance laptop ..

What else should be look at when purchasing a laptop?
Purchasing a laptop that's right for you requires a little food for thought, read more ..

Budget Laptops
Does this also mean budget specification?

Note
A docking station and port replicator are different and should not be confused, many port replicators do not offer the same amount of functionality and may simply run off of a USB port whereas a docking station will use the laptop manufacturers proprietary port for connections.

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