Where to buy mobile video cards?

[Yan Wang]

Desktop video cards are easy to find and cheap nowadays, but I can't seem to find a place online to buy mobile cards (for a laptop). In particular, I'm looking for the 128mb or 256mb version of the nVidia Geforce Go 6800 (not ultra) with GDDR3 memory.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

Desktop video cards are easy to find and cheap nowadays, but I can't seem to find a place online to buy mobile cards (for a laptop). In particular, I'm looking for the 128mb or 256mb version of the nVidia Geforce Go 6800 (not ultra) with GDDR3 memory.

The tricky thing with laptops is that most of them have the videocard integral to the motherboard or have other funny constraints. This makes it very hard to just go and buy a video card.

That said, I think it will be hard for you to find a card, but good luck.

Wetzel

[CmptrGk]

unless you have an alienware laptop, i think your out of luck. ive never seen an upgrade video card for a laptop, except for alienware, and those are incredibly expensive.

this probably isnt what you were looking for, but this is the only kind of laptop i have seen that can have upgradeable memory.

what kind of connection in your laptop does the video card use. can it be removed? if you know the name of the connector, try googling that along with the type of card you are looking for.

in my mind the power requirements of these new cards just make it seem hard to use them on a laptop.

also even if you are able to find one, it may not even be able to connect to the display in the laptop. lets say you manage to find a card in the mini pci format which would plug into the minipci slot in the laptop. there would be no connection from the laptop's display to the new video card.


in any even here is the link to the alienware cards, these work becasue their laptops(i think) have a propitary connector that is basically an agp slot. in my laptop the agp is integrated fully into the motherboard, with no room for upgrade.

they are hiding from me right now, but they are located somewhere in the "gear shop" here.

[Conor Ryan]

first question you wanna ask yourself is do I have a port to support it on my motherboard? The card you are looking into is available in AGP 8x and PCI-Express 16x.

On the availablity of cards, your looking at a very limited selection. The only card i've been able to find in my quick research is the Sapphire Mobility 8MB Video Card, probably not the best upgrade, its Agp 2x thats not exactly that fast, you may have better integrated graphics. Oh and it runs at 3.3 volts.

[Yan Wang]

Dell Inspiron 9300 will be what I order soon. Its best video card is the 256mb DDR1 GeForce Go 6800. I'm looking to find a 256mb GDDR3 GeForce Go 6800 for it (or Ultra). The XPS2 has it but it's bulkier, heavier, and uglier.

[Tristan Lall]

Unless there's something extra about the GDDR3 version, you won't see a big difference in performance by just using faster memory.

The older Dell Inspirons were very good in terms of the availability of graphics card upgrades, but I'm not sure if the 9300 uses a miniature PCI Express interface, or if it's still AGP like the old ones; its 915PM chipset does support it, though. Unfortunately for you, you'll probably have to go through Dell (parts) or eBay--both of which will tend to be expensive for that sort of thing. You might ask Dell if the XPS laptop is parts-compatible with the 9300 (I bet it is--the other XPSs are just colourful versions of other products, well equipped).

[Yan Wang]

I solved the problem with the Dell folk.

Tristan, in benchmarks, the GDDR3 version could often keep up with or beat the X800 mobile in performance while the DDR1 version lagged at a little more than half the performance. BIG difference.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

Tristan, in benchmarks, the GDDR3 version could often keep up with or beat the X800 mobile in performance while the DDR1 version lagged at a little more than half the performance. BIG difference.

I just checked: the clock speeds of the GPUs themselves are different (250 MHz vs. 330 MHz), in addition to the different memory speeds. That ought to account for much of the difference. The 6800s both have the same basic architecture, though.