Gaming Laptop Upgrades

[LokiDB83]

I have a Toshiba Qosmio X500 its roughly 5 years old and starting to see limitations in graphics capability. What sort of internal Hardware Upgrades could I make if any?

 

[GreyCatz]

Greetings Loki:

I'm afraid it's bad news. Laptop GPUs are soldered onto the motherboard (as is the CPU), leaving users with only the option of upgrading the RAM and the HDD (and sometimes not even the RAM). I assume you have the 1.5 GB GTX460M which is a bit on the low end, as you said.

What OS are you running? You might be able to squeeze out some speed by upgrading to 64-bit and re-download all graphics drivers in 64-bit version. This would only offer a mildly improved viewing experience and has nothing to do with the GPU itself.

Other than that, you'll have to get a new laptop.

Best of luck,
GreyCatz.

 

[Prostar Computer]

I'm afraid it's bad news. Laptop GPUs are soldered onto the motherboard (as is the CPU)...

This is subjective to the model.

Loki,

Your model doesn't have much upgrade potential. Here are some considerations, though:

CPU: 820QM; 840QM; 920XM; 940XM - These are first generation models. You cannot upgrade past this generation.
GPU: 470M; 480M; 485M - It's unlikely you will be able to upgrade beyond the 400M series. See below.

Keep in mind that your computer's BIOS may not support any of these upgrades. Further, what I don't know is whether your GPU is an MXM card or a chip soldered to the main board. If it's the former, then things hinge on the BIOS; if the latter, you cannot upgrade the GPU.

 

[LokiDB83]

Greetings Loki:

I'm afraid it's bad news. Laptop GPUs are soldered onto the motherboard (as is the CPU), leaving users with only the option of upgrading the RAM and the HDD (and sometimes not even the RAM). I assume you have the 1.5 GB GTX460M which is a bit on the low end, as you said.

What OS are you running? You might be able to squeeze out some speed by upgrading to 64-bit and re-download all graphics drivers in 64-bit version. This would only offer a mildly improved viewing experience and has nothing to do with the GPU itself.

Other than that, you'll have to get a new laptop.

Best of luck,
GreyCatz.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OS - Windows 7 64bit
Intel Core i7 CPU Q 820 @ 1.73GHz 1.73 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M
8GB RAM

 

[GreyCatz]

Greetings Loki:

I'm afraid it's bad news. Laptop GPUs are soldered onto the motherboard (as is the CPU), leaving users with only the option of upgrading the RAM and the HDD (and sometimes not even the RAM). I assume you have the 1.5 GB GTX460M which is a bit on the low end, as you said.

What OS are you running? You might be able to squeeze out some speed by upgrading to 64-bit and re-download all graphics drivers in 64-bit version. This would only offer a mildly improved viewing experience and has nothing to do with the GPU itself.

Other than that, you'll have to get a new laptop.

Best of luck,
GreyCatz.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OS - Windows 7 64bit
Intel Core i7 CPU Q 820 @ 1.73GHz 1.73 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M
8GB RAM

Hello Loki:

While I defer to Prostar's expertise, I still believe that your options are very limited indeed.

The silver lining is that for a 5-year-old laptop, the specs aren't completely useless: You can still run standard productivity programs and surf the Internet, but watching YouTube videos or news clips is going to be a frustrating experience and with only 1 GB of graphics on tap modern games will be out of reach, as you've no doubt found out yourself.

I suggest you consider a mid-range laptop like this one:

http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/laptops/satellite/S50/S50T-CBT2G01

...and keep your current Toshiba for data backup or storage.

Cheers,
GreyCatz.