alienware m9750 upgrade question

[Saben M Kane]

i was wondering if it is possible to upgrade this comp? for instance, is there a compatible current mobo to replace the orginial or is the design structure too different

 

[JD88]

Unfortunate not. It's simply too old and Laptops really aren't that able to be upgraded to begin with.

How much are you looking to spend and what games are you wanting to play?

 

[yillbs]

What issues are you having that would want to make you swap out the motherboard. Laptops are rather different than desktops when it comes to this. I have had sucess swapping out motherboards in laptops, but the ports will never allign and you may have heating issues as internals don't always fit.. but it's always doable, anything is doable with a little nit and grit. if you mean, do they have a drop in replacement.. the answer is no.

 

[Saben M Kane]

Thanks for the replies. My problem right now is the fps in guild wars 2. I lowered all the quality and downloaded razer game booster, which increased my fps from 7 to 20. I was wondering since I do like the laptop, can I upgrade the hardware (without having to do major retrofitting). So with that in mind, I would like to build a desktop for the game with $700 budget. I know this isn't a lot, but i increase quality overtime. So in both of your opinions, for GW2 should I go better gpu now or cpu? And any other advice that you may have.

 

[yillbs]

Even on the highest settings GUild wars 2 only calls for : GeForce GTS 450 2GB DDR3
Radeon HD 5670 1024MB
either of those or higher. Your M7950 is a bit dated, and is going to have an issue keeping up with those. Replacing the motherboard isn't going to remove those DUAL Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX video cards, they are 512MB a piece, which brings total video up to 1GB, but it's still a very dated card. You have multiple things in this AW that are just dated, and need replacing. The HDD is small, the GPU's are pretty much useless by todays standards ( they workd.. but not well ), it DOES have a nice screen. But like i said, even if you could replace the motherboard, there are other factors that will go into everything else. The ram in this AW is DDR2, so you would need new ram, just.. to many things overall. sorry i didn't have a better answer for you 🙁

 

[JD88]

Since upgrading your laptop is out of the question, and you are interested in building a desktop, I decided to post a build that will give you an idea of the parts you might get for your budget.

Since Guild Wars is a lot heavier on the CPU than the GPU, I decided to go with an Intel Core i5.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($82.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($55.25 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB Video Card ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec 450W ATX12V Power Supply ($48.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS95 DVD/CD Writer ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $699.72
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-04-25 11:38 EDT-0400)

This build will either max out GW2 or come very close to it depending on the resolution you are playing on.