replacing laptop video card

Amphetamine

So I recently acquired a Dell Latitude D830 for free from my dad's company, since they were just going to toss it. It's pretty sweet:

Intel Dual Core 2.4ghz
4gb Ram
140gb hdd

The only problem seems to be the video card- an Nvidia Quadro NVS 135m. It's not exactly made for gaming, or playing videos that well. Shit seriously lags when I try to watch any video in fullscreen. As a comp sci major, I could kind of see that being a problem later on.

At this point, I'd rather drop like $200 for a new video card than spend a goddamn grand on a whole new laptop, especially since this thing is pretty great.

So I've replaced parts on desktop PCs before with no problem, but never experimented on laptops- is it basically impossible to replace a video card or is it doable? If so, how?

corky842

Sorry, basically impossible.

TychoCelchuuu

If you want your videos not to lag I'm sure you could find a media player that lets you go full CPU.

Captain Vash

The NVS 135m is a cad oriented graphics card. seems to me that 2d graphics should be pretty cake for a 3d minded gpu.
That and a dual core 2.4ghz processor? you should be money bro.

By comparison I had a computer with a single core, 2.3ghz processor and an all in wonder 9800, which boasts fairly similar stats, and that computer was playing 720p hd movies on it's 3rd birthday.

Are you sure there's no driver, or other system resource issue at work here?

Alecthar

Captain Vash wrote: »

The NVS 135m is a cad oriented graphics card. seems to me that 2d graphics should be pretty cake for a 3d minded gpu.
That and a dual core 2.4ghz processor? you should be money bro.

By comparison I had a computer with a single core, 2.3ghz processor and an all in wonder 9800, which boasts fairly similar stats, and that computer was playing 720p hd movies on it's 3rd birthday.

Are you sure there's no driver, or other system resource issue at work here?

You'd think, wouldn't you, but it's actually not true. Most modern graphics cards are actually fairly underpowered in terms of 2D acceleration, which is a significantly different process than 3D acceleration. The hardware/software for a card like that is heavily focused on 3D/CAD rendering, so it doesn't surprise me a great deal that it's not doing great with video.

It's a workstation laptop, which may be useful to you in the future, but it's also not going to be worth a damn in most other applications.

General_Win

We use D830s at work and I haven't heard anything about video playback. Its true that it is not a video gaming video card.

I would also go and check the drivers.

Also as an ex compsi major, I don't see why you would need a video gaming chip, unless its to play video games. The basic 3d stuff you'd do in your program shouldn't tax that laptop.