Replacing a laptop video card

jothki · July 2007

After a bit of research, I've realized that my new laptop, a Dell Latitude D820, has a video card that's optimized for design applications (Quadro) instead of gaming (GeForce). I'm willing to spend the money to buy a new video card, but I'm not sure if it's possible to switch them. Does anyone know if that can be done, or have any advice for me?

supabeast · July 2007

Dell doesn’t say that it’s a replaceable video chip, so it’s probably integrated into the motherboard with no way to remove it. But don’t worry—Quadro series chips are better at 3D in general than the lower-end gaming chips; they’re not a step down.

jothki · July 2007

supabeast wrote: »

Dell doesnâ€™t say that itâ€™s a replaceable video chip, so itâ€™s probably integrated into the motherboard with no way to remove it. But donâ€™t worryâ€”Quadro series chips are better at 3D in general than the lower-end gaming chips; theyâ€™re not a step down.

The problem is, I'm trying to run Oblivion and any sort of blurr effect causes the entire screen to flip out. From fifteen minutes or so of Google research, it seems that the Quadro series sucks at pixel shaders, which could be the issue I'm having. There don't seem to be any driver updates available that I can find, so if anyone has any alternate suggestions I'd love to hear them.

IreneDAdler · July 2007

I wouldn't go around mod-ing a Dell laptop. They use proprietary parts that might not run as smoothly with hardware you pick up at Best Buy. Also, opening the machine voids your warranty, so if you break something (either while trying to replace the video card or through use down the line) they could make you pay out the nose to fix it. If you're really unhappy with the performance of your video card, maybe you can return the laptop if Dell will give you a full refund, or maybe buy another video card from them and see if they'll send a technician out to your house to install it.

Daedalus · July 2007

Extremely few laptops actually have replacable video cards. 99% of the time it's built into the motherboard and you can't change it. This is likely the situation with your laptop.

wunderbar · July 2007

ya, there are like, 3 notebooks, ever, where you can replace the video card.

jothki · July 2007

Ah well. The annoying thing is that the option that I probably should have gotten (the Inspiron, I assume) was on the same screen as the Latitude, for a roughly equivelent price. I even spent as much as I could on the other options like the CPU. I've already had it for a few weeks now, so I assume it's too late to exchange it.

While this is up, I might as well ask for help on my particular problem. In Oblivion, whenever a blurry creature (Mystic Imp, or something using Invisibility) is in the direction of my view (it doesn't actually have to be visible, the corruption effect happens through walls), my screen flips out. From a distance horizontal lines appear across the screen, and when I get closer up either those lines mostly fill the screen, or the entire screen becomes blurry, sometimes with a non-blurry hole in the shape of the creature that seems to have a constant position on the screen instead of cooresponding to the creature itself. If the creature is visible, I can often still see its position through the blur.

Has anyone seen this kind of thing before (in Oblivion or otherwise)? I already asked about it in the game thread itself a little while ago, but all I got was a comment about how it could be a pixel shader issue.

Raere · July 2007

You should be able to force the game to run using lower versions of pixel shaders. Search here and see if there's a way to do it.

jothki · July 2007

Nifty, thanks. I'll check that page out.

Nozz · July 2007

jothki wrote: »

Ah well. The annoying thing is that the option that I probably should have gotten (the Inspiron, I assume) was on the same screen as the Latitude, for a roughly equivelent price. I even spent as much as I could on the other options like the CPU. I've already had it for a few weeks now, so I assume it's too late to exchange it.

While this is up, I might as well ask for help on my particular problem. In Oblivion, whenever a blurry creature (Mystic Imp, or something using Invisibility) is in the direction of my view (it doesn't actually have to be visible, the corruption effect happens through walls), my screen flips out. From a distance horizontal lines appear across the screen, and when I get closer up either those lines mostly fill the screen, or the entire screen becomes blurry, sometimes with a non-blurry hole in the shape of the creature that seems to have a constant position on the screen instead of cooresponding to the creature itself. If the creature is visible, I can often still see its position through the blur.

Has anyone seen this kind of thing before (in Oblivion or otherwise)? I already asked about it in the game thread itself a little while ago, but all I got was a comment about how it could be a pixel shader issue.

Dude I have seen that problem 1000 times. Does it look like gigantic grey spikes shooting in odd directions?

jothki · July 2007

Nozz wrote: »

jothki wrote: »

Ah well. The annoying thing is that the option that I probably should have gotten (the Inspiron, I assume) was on the same screen as the Latitude, for a roughly equivelent price. I even spent as much as I could on the other options like the CPU. I've already had it for a few weeks now, so I assume it's too late to exchange it.

While this is up, I might as well ask for help on my particular problem. In Oblivion, whenever a blurry creature (Mystic Imp, or something using Invisibility) is in the direction of my view (it doesn't actually have to be visible, the corruption effect happens through walls), my screen flips out. From a distance horizontal lines appear across the screen, and when I get closer up either those lines mostly fill the screen, or the entire screen becomes blurry, sometimes with a non-blurry hole in the shape of the creature that seems to have a constant position on the screen instead of cooresponding to the creature itself. If the creature is visible, I can often still see its position through the blur.

Has anyone seen this kind of thing before (in Oblivion or otherwise)? I already asked about it in the game thread itself a little while ago, but all I got was a comment about how it could be a pixel shader issue.

Dude I have seen that problem 1000 times. Does it look like gigantic grey spikes shooting in odd directions?

Not at all, just a blur effect that extends far further than it should, sometimes over the whole screen. It looks awesome, but it shouldn't be there.

The linked site seems pretty useful, one suggestion it had was to disable trilinear mipmaps, which my driver might have been forcing. I'm going to try that out, although I'm running a defragment first.

DrFrylock · July 2007

Confirming the above, according to the D820 service manual, the video card doesn't seem to be a separately-removable part. Note that SOME Dell laptops, such as the Latitude C series, did have a small number of video cards that were swappable. I think you're out of luck, though. Try a software fix.

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