Upgrade this old satellite, or punt and start anew??

[ReticentPersuer]

First off I would like to thank you for your time! I appreciate your opinion and help.

lets get to it. I have a satellite A505 toshiba laptop. It is an Intel core i3 with 4gb ram and a GeForce 310m (removable). I have all but abandoned this old guy, turning to my ipad and phone for most of my needs. I recently decided to get back into using it and partitioned 40gb of my harddrive and am now running linux mint. This made a world of difference in speed. I finally enjoy my laptop again.

Now, my battery is toast as this thing is like 5 years old... so I would need to replace that. I am considering adding 4gb of ram, and possibly upgrading the graphics card. Is this pointless on such an old rig? If so... should I upgrade to building my own desktop, or stick to the more portable sylish couterpart?

I hope to game some (dayz mod) and mostly surf the net. Thanks again for your time and I look forward to your response!

 

[Spectre694]

Time to punt. The Card may be removable but the cost for it will far exceed the value of the laptop if you can even put a modern one in. Laptop/desktop question depends on your budget and whether you need it to be portable.

 

[ReticentPersuer]

Portability doesnt matter a whole lot to me. budget would be around 800 or less. less is always good. As long as I can play dayz on high settings, and wont need to start all over real soon. I am happy. I just dont want a budget build that will force me into a corner a few years down the road

 

[Prostar Computer]

Mobile graphics cards are very restricted in their ability to be swapped out for a newer model. I'm not 100% on the 310M, but I THINK this is a surface mounted chip (meaning it's soldered to the laptop's motherboard and is not a removable card).

In either case, the cost is generally not worth it, and with an aging system touting an i3, it won't do a lot of good to upgrade the GPU when the CPU will "bottleneck" it.

My suggestion: if you're happy with your tablet and phone for general purpose mobile computing, then stick with those and build yourself a tower. It will treat you better in terms of cost to performance ratio, longevity (most likely), and overall performance.

Hopefully that helps!

EDIT:
Perhaps this will help: http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

 

[Spectre694]

Portability doesnt matter a whole lot to me. budget would be around 800 or less. less is always good. As long as I can play dayz on high settings, and wont need to start all over real soon. I am happy. I just dont want a budget build that will force me into a corner a few years down the road

Sounds good desktop it is then you will get better performance for the price let me see what I can find.

 

[Spectre694]

Something like this

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($115.89 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($67.50 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($56.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($239.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($37.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $828.32
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-14 19:33 EDT-0400)