Longhorn_Fan68
1,000+ Posts
Is it possible to do so? I sorta assumed that is was an onboard card, but I didn't know if it was possible to upgrade it. I have a somewhat old but very functionong Toshiba laptop. Any helped is appreciated.
Upgrading video card in laptop
- Thread starter Longhorn_Fan68
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wherzwaldo
1,000+ Posts
It's possible, but risky. I looked into upgrading my laptop's video card a year or so ago and decided it wasn't worth it. Basically, you have to worry about it producing too much heat or sucking too much power. I read some testimonials of people that tried to do it before (on Inspirons) and many of them resulted in fried motherboards, fried video cards (brand new), or both. Plus, you'll spend more on a laptop video card than you would on a desktop one.
Orange&White
1,000+ Posts
I work with very large ( 5+ gig sets) aerial photography that takes some serious time to redraw as I pan around. I looked into this same thing about a year ago and found it to be not worth the moneyor hassle to upgrade.
Last week I saw a few laptops (made for video editing) on sale that now come with stand alone video cards (non-integrated?) and they seem like the way to go. They seem to start at around $1500. Since I don't do a lot of work on my laptop, I'll just hold off for the price to drop and continue doing most work on my desktop PC. But I would love to work by the pool all day rather than in my office.
Last week I saw a few laptops (made for video editing) on sale that now come with stand alone video cards (non-integrated?) and they seem like the way to go. They seem to start at around $1500. Since I don't do a lot of work on my laptop, I'll just hold off for the price to drop and continue doing most work on my desktop PC. But I would love to work by the pool all day rather than in my office.
wherzwaldo
1,000+ Posts
If your desktop has XP Pro, Remote Desktop would work as well. I do that all the time.
Ugh, graphics over remote.
If you're dealing with 5+GB data sets I'd imagine your worry should be HD speed, MB/CPU bus speed and speed/amount of ram. I think the newest laptops at the boutique vendors (Sager, Alienware, etc. not the big brand names) are competent or good in these regards. It's not a Quadro or FireGL but the mobile ATI 9700 and 9800s are great for gaming graphics.
If you're dealing with 5+GB data sets I'd imagine your worry should be HD speed, MB/CPU bus speed and speed/amount of ram. I think the newest laptops at the boutique vendors (Sager, Alienware, etc. not the big brand names) are competent or good in these regards. It's not a Quadro or FireGL but the mobile ATI 9700 and 9800s are great for gaming graphics.
Keep in mind that displays only show 72 pixels per inch, more or less. The photographs you are looking at are high resolution, but the remote desktop only takes a snapshot of what you see (at lower resolution). It does not send 5 GB of image data over the line, just a few kb.
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