Help with Friend's laptop gpu?

[5hadowking115]

Ok, so recently I finished my gaming desktop and it runs amazingly. I told my friend about it and he said he wants to get into pc gaming too, but a desktop is too pricey. He went and bought an HP laptop.

This one: http/h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c04030174&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

And now he says that it won't even run happy wars without crashing. Even some flash games don't work. I suggested updating drivers, but he's insistent on getting a better GPU. Thing is, I'm not sure it can even accept a different one.
The thing that's confusing is that the HP site says it has dual GPUs. Am I reading it incorrectly, or is there something I'm missing? Also, what is an APU? It says he has one of those too.

 

[i7Baby]

It doesn't have a gpu. the a10 cpu is in fact an apu - a cpu with integrated gpu.

He needs to get a better laptop. And this time, do some research first.

Get one with an i7 and GTX gpu

 

[someguynamedmatt]

An APU is AMD's combination of a CPU (central processor) and GPU (graphics processor) all on one chip. The reason it claims to support 'dual graphics' is because a lot of laptops are capable of having an actual dedicated video card alongside the APU, and that card will only be used once a sufficient video load is encountered.

There are very few laptops which support video card swapping/upgrading, and those are generally $1000+ gaming laptops such as the Asus G75 (not sure about the new G750), MSI's GT series, and a lot of the Sager NP 91xx series and better, though I believe these have been replaced with a newer generation as well. With nearly all modern laptops, the processor isn't socketed but rather soldered directly to the motherboard along with a video chip if present at all, and I'd bet my next ten paychecks that there isn't any sort of video expansion available in that HP; even if there is, you have to remember that the laptop your friend has isn't built to support any kind of useful video card, thermally nor electrically. I don't like telling people this, but with a laptop, what you buy is basically what you're stuck with (aside from hard drive upgrades) unless you get into the $1000+ market, and even then, those replacement parts are prohibitively expensive.

As for the stability problems, that isn't normal, but without any additional detail I can't really pin it down to one specific issue. It's not hardware related - I can play most flash games on a Cyrix MII processor from 1995... it sounds like something has definitely been either tampered with or broken by some other software that was installed.

Like i7Baby just said, do some research and find a system that is actually capable of what's expected from it: You need an actual video card, most likely a Geforce GTX, not an APU or Intel integrated graphics.

 

[k1114]

Dual graphics actually refers to amd's hybrid cf with the igpu and dgpu. Although yes it does have 2 gpus, you won't find intel laptops that say dual graphics when it has a igpu and dgpu. They are soldered gpus nonetheless and only find mxm in $1000+ laptops as previously mentioned. Not related but sicne you mention it, most mid+ laptop cpus continue to be pga, don't know why people keep saying otherwise. You can even google his current cpu, it's fs1r2. Not that you'd even want to try upgrading it.

The crashing isn't normal, first thing I'd do is check the temps. Use hwmonitor or similar. Otherwise more info needs to be given to troubleshoot the issue.

A desktop is cheaper than a laptop as far as performance goes. You just find cheaper laptops because they are even lower performance. What he has now is low end though and will hardly play anything even if it did work right. http/www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8650G.87916.0.html