Adding GPU to laptop?

[SurpriseSlayer1]

So my friend, who is not a PC person AT ALL, decided to buy a new laptop for gaming, he is the cheapest of the cheapest, and bought a laptop for 600. It didn't have a gpu, which you need for gaming. He gets terrible fps. He doesn't want to buy a new laptop, so is there any way he can get an external gpu? Or something to replace the horrible Intel graphics? Thanks!

 

[Blaise170]

Not really. There are some very expensive external enclosures that you can buy but it's probably going to be out of budget for someone who doesn't want to spend any money.

 

[StarChief]

You cannot change or upgrade a GPU in a laptop, very few models have upgradable GPUs and those are the expensive gaming ones. Your friend is stuck with what he has, unless he buys a whole new laptop that is.

 

[digitaldoc]

http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2323895/connect-external-desktop-gpu-laptop.html

In short, adding an external GPU to a laptop is theoretically possible, but hardly cost effective, or worth the effort it will take to get it working.

 

[cheese9k]

Yes! Kinda... Depends on his laptop. He can get a laptop to external video card dock. It requires a power supply and also needs you to have an available Mini PCI-E slot.

Other than that, nope. Not really. Unless his laptop supports MXM, which I doubt...

That's what he gets for being cheap I'm afraid!

 

[itmoba]

No, external graphics cards don't work very well -- sorry, your friend is SOL. Why? Because USB 2 and USB 3 simply don't have the appropriate bandwidth/throughput available to them when compared to PCIe. Even if you could use two Thunderbolt connections, it's still not as capable as PCIe.
Your friend is better off not being so thrift. You get what you pay for.