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Laptop Video Upgrade
captainstupid writes "The friendly folks over at GotApex? have a walkthrough of an interesting hack. They upgrade
a Dell Inspiron's viedo card! It's cool to see the heat transfer mechanisms that they use to pull the heat away from the CPU as well as the GPU. Another fun way to void your warranty!"
Do you people sit here and hit refresh just to get first post? Jesus.
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"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.
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"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.
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THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD
Well, heck... you could have what ever you wanted now. That isn't the DELL buisness model!!
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
...you're gettin' a blue screen!
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
As he continues to spin downward:
Bush Tops The Idiots List For 4 Weeks!
Be patriotic; smoke Amerikan grown marijuana!
There's no way I'd try it until my warranty ran out-- I've sent my Inspiron 7500 back to the depot six times in a year and a half. I guess I'm just not that brave.
You just voided your warranty!
... on Slashdot? Nah, couldn't be...
Also of note, holy shit, did I just see a huge 336x280 ad on this page for "Microsoft Visual Studio.NET - Get your trial DVD today!!"
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Now if we could only get them to upgrade their web server...slashdotted already. :(
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
those fucking "Dude.." jokes are getting old.
Try thinking of something that's actually witty for a change.
I've learned to never, ever, use my 7500 as an actual "lap top" -- after a while the hair burns off, your skin starts to melt, and you can read the word "Inspirion" backwards on your right leg. Interesting early engineering solution to dissapating heat though.
It's wonderful to see they're handling the CPU/GPU thermal load much more intelligently in the 8500.
Looks like yet another page has been slashdotted.
And it can be closed quickly if someone walks by.
and what about upgrading my CPU? i only have 233 MHZ, is there any way to put say a 500 MHZ in there?
Back when I bought my inspiron 5000 a lot of folks on the dell groups were talking about upgrading the video card since it seems it was on a daughter board. I am not sure if anyone ever made this happen. Anyone know? My 5000 is showing its age and a new video card would let me get another yer out of it.
Malice95
Two sites slash-murdered today and counting.
--riney
10 posts and it's slashdotted. What the hell.
I know this covered in an earlier thread about the high school kid's notebook, but for the love of God can't anything be done about this?
It's a waste of time and a black eye on Slashdot when this happens.
The rest of the article details the performance difference. This isn't a hack - it's a standard upgrade. The article isn't that bad, but the Slashdot editors have SORELY misrepresented it.
(And before you tell me that the Slashdot editors didn't write that blurb, keep in mind that I know that. The writer of the blurb, however, did not post it to the front page. EDITOR. The job of an editor is to proof-read the submisson for accuracy and legibility.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
HA ha. you get slopy seconds!
Build a man a fire and you warm him for a day. Set a man on fire and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Question: Where can you buy the GPU chip to put in it? I didn't see that anywhere in the article.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
People go crazy with these hardeware hacks. This would seem like a bad idea. I hate not having the best stuff so... ill just void my warrenty! Sounds like a moron to me.
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
Below is the text of the first two pages ... which includes the how-to, but none of the benchmarks or conclusions.
Manufacturer: Dell
Street Price: $1,200
Review By: LegendKiller
Review Date: 08/12/02
Introduction
Since the inception of computers into the mainstream market, enthusiasts have been trying to get more speed out of the machines. This has been undoubtedly so for laptops since the first luggables. These "portable" computers, with CRT screens and heavy metal cases were the precursors to laptops. However, the progression into LCDs, and mobile modern processors has lead the way to faster and more useful machines. Battery life has always dictated the amount of speed a laptop could provide. In the past, a businessman could only squeeze one hour out of their laptop, now slim ultra portables go for more than 7 hours on one battery. So called "portable desktops" have always been a myth since the power of laptops have always been held by the battery constraints. Hard drives remain a large obstacle to the speed of laptops, although it will be solved sometime in the future. However, there has always been one place where laptops have lagged behind their desktop brethren, and that is the video card.
While video cards have always led in desktop platforms, they have always lagged in notebooks. S3, NeoLogic, and others always provided some type of display chips, but they were never adequate for 3D gaming. With the advent of the ATI mobility chips, the start of mobile gaming was upon portable computers. These chips progressed, Dell incorporated the Radeon Mobility M4 into their 8000 line of laptops. Nvidia eventually released the GeForce2go, which was heralded as the beginning of mobile gaming, Dell Inspiron 8100 laptops were the first to be equipped with the GF2go. The next generation, released at the beginning of this year is the Inspiron 8200, and with it came the next generation in mobile graphics, the GeForce4Go 440. Many say that the GF4go is not actually a Geforce 4 GPU but merely a tweaked GF2go. However, the core and memory speeds are almost double that of the GF2go. In addition, many of the shortcomings of the GF2go were addressed and some of the instructions incorporated into the GF3 were put into the GF4go. What was produced was an energy efficient, but powerful GPU. It was only a matter of time that people would find a way to modify their past laptops in order to use these new, more powerful chips.
This spring, when the I8200 was released, I was looking for a laptop in which I could travel across the country while bringing a gaming system with. The 8100 had a very good price, but lacked in the video card arena. The ATI 7500 was much better than the GF2go, but was still lackluster. One day I was browsing a forum when I noticed a fellow modder had gotten his 8100 to run the GF4go. Intrigued, I conversed with him and eventually visited the Delltalk forums. This led me to find that notebooks had finally broken the final barrier; they were now almost completely upgradeable. Since the 8000 series, Dell has incorporated socket type connectors for video cards, CPUs, and mini-PCI ports. This is a far cry from soldered CPUs, GPUs, and RAM. Owners for two year old laptops were rejuvenating them with the fastest technology, and newer notebooks (8100's) were also joining in. The process was not even that difficult - four screws on the bottom of the laptop removed the keyboard and three more and you were able to get the video card off of the motherboard. Right next to it lies the socketed CPU which can also be changed. You can see the guide here. Yeah, it looks crazy but it does work.
The only difficult part to the upgrade was the drivers for the GPU. Since Dell has blazed the trail, the drivers they have are very immature. However, with dll combining through different Nvidia Detonator Drivers, D-Force has been able to compile up to date drivers for these powerful chips. In order to get a good understanding of the power of this new chip, I will compare it to the other two major video chipsets today, the ATI Radeon 7500 64MB and the Geforce2go. While one could just buy a 8200, this upgrade option is much more appealing, especially considering the high price tag the 8200 commands, and the fact that since the 8100 has been discontinued, you can find good deals on certain auction sites.
The test setup is as follows:
Dell Inspiron 8100
Pentium 3-M 1.0ghz
320mb PC133 ram, 1-256MB Crucial and 64MB Dell ram
GeForce4go 440 64MB DDR ram
15" UltraXGA 1600x1200 TFT
20GB Fujitsu hard drive
8x DVD-rom
WindowsXP Professional
I will be testing the chip using Unreal Tournament, Quake3, DroneZ, MDK2, and 3d Mark 2001. For comparison I will use previous benchmarks by Darth in this review.
The 8000 series of Dell laptops are quite different from the "traditional" approach to building laptops. As previously mentioned, most equipment was soldered onto the motherboard and you could not upgrade the laptop at all. However, with the 8000 series, and even more modern laptops from other manufacturers, they have changed to a socketed design for the CPUs and a type of AGP slot for video cards along with the mini-PCI slot shown below.
As you can see, the P3-M CPU rests in an interesting socket design with an even more interesting heat sink. Heatpipes, made popular on desktop CPUs by Vantec have become more pronounced in other areas. The space-constrained laptops with faster processors have needed a way to wick away the heat in more efficient ways than the traditional CPUs. The 8100's heatpipe for the CPU does this, routing the heat to a radiator-type heatsink at the end where two high-speed fans are placed. An interesting thing about these fans is that they are temperature controlled. However, the BIOS for the 8100 sets them to go into high speed around 75 degrees C. However, you can download a nifty little program called "FanGUI" made for 8k Inspirons and a few other Dell laptops which can control the fans speeds by user set parameters, or manual control. Its a virtual baybus.
When looking at the video card, you will notice a plastic cover. Many people thought that this was some type of TIM (thermal transfer material). However, plastic does not make a good TIM. Upon further digging people found that it was actually an EMI shield which Dell placed on the video card in order to protect it from the various components that throw off emissions. Looking closer at the video card you can see the ram chips are BGA ram which reduces heat held by the chip and surface area needed for mounting.
The "AGP" slot, which you can see above, is just a simple double edged connector placed on the motherboard. This is probably the most exciting feature of this laptop. The existence of this slot means that you can use the Radeon Mobile M4, GF2go, Radeon 7500, GF4go, and perhaps even future video cards. People who have the 8000 have been successful in upgrading a 2 year old laptop to the most current in video technology. However, this is not true in all cases. 8100's have all been able to use GF4go's that are only really supported by Dell in the 8200 series.
The heatpipe technology that aids the CPU in cooling is also present for the GPU. However, the heatpipe does not contact the GPU very well and I was thinking of finding out the gap and placing some type of copper shim between the two surfaces. This would not be a simple matter since you have to also remember the keyboard would impact upon the GPU.
The drivers for the GF4go are still pretty immature and people have looked for ways to come up with their own. Drivers from D-Force or "cybercookie" on the Delltalk forums perform this function. These drivers support nearly all of the functionality of the GF4go, including Nview. However, they do not have support for the PowerMizer capabilities for this chip. However, previous driver versions have and the battery savings are not the significant.
On a side note, the overclocking capability of the GF4go seems to be non-existant. I tried using several of the GFx tweakers and none have been able to overclock the card, even Nvidia's Coolbits does not seem to have any effect on the speed of the GPU or RAM. Furthermore, many people warn against doing this considering the high heat conditions in the laptop and the stresses that further heat would place on your computer.
If the laptop manufacturers made it easier to upgrade their laptops, I'd actually get one. The reason I'm sticking with a desktop for now is that I've been able to keep the same one for years and years just upgrading it. A laptop, I'd probably end up hitting a wall and shelling out $1,000+ for a new one.
Hello Ian. I'm talking to you ;-)
And where can I get one? I don't see any "viedo in" jacks on my monitor; I must be behind the times.
Now that you've beaten me at my own game, I have one thing to say:
FUCK YOU.
Any info out there on converting laptop LCD into something with a VGA or DVI plug? I got some old rather worthless or broken laptops with nice displays that just seem like such a waste.
The site is crawling dudes! I give it 10 mins before the server chokes.
I have an Inspiron 8100 which came with the ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility (M7). I have bought both the GeForce 2 Go and Geforce 4 440 and use all 3 interchangably depending on what I want to do. As a driver and game developer, there's nothing nicer than having portable graphics power. The main reason I wanted the NVIDIA cards was that the ATI doesn't have support for paletted textures in OpenGL. When the GF4 came out, I picked it up right away to get at those shaders. Only problem I've encountered so far is that the S-video output is greyscale on the NVIDIA cards. Probably a pin-out problem, but I don't use it much anyway.
for slash cache already!!!
...because its par for the course.
I would like to say that doing this doesn't really void the warranty. Several people have sent their laptops in after they have done this, WITH the modified card in, and Dell DOES repair it. I am on an internship 6k miles away from my desktop for 3 months. Its nice to be able to pick my comp up and move anywhere while still being able to play games. LK
Not true. I am sitting here typing on my Dell Inspiron 8000 that has a GF2go. Close, but no cigar apex.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I helped a colleague at work with the 440Go upgrade on an Inspiron 8000 - he went from effectively no 3D to impressive (for a laptop) 3D in about 30 minutes. Dell doesn't make these options very obvious (they can't be ordered through the website), but they don't actively try to prevent them either (the instructions are listed on the DellTalk forums hosted by Dell Support and they will happily sell you the upgrade over the phone).
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
Getting tired of the Slashdot effect, I threw up the main article and pics. The benchmarks aren't there, but the meat of the article and hardware pics are up there.
You can find them here.
Mirror here:
http://kwak.polpo.org/mirror/gotapex/
I had to do some quickie html hacking but it mostly works.
Ordering info was on page 5 of the article...
>
Make sure when you ask for the GF4go you are saying your laptop is the Inspiron 8200 to get the right parts list.
Part#: 5j149
Dell NV17 video card with 64MB ram: $149.99
Phone Number: Dell Spare Parts - 1-800-624-9896, select option 2, then 2, then 4
not much to say here, other than looks very very nice...
If this is a hack, then so is replacing any PCI or for that matter ISA card in any old box.
Since the "card" is socketed and has screws, it's obviously made to be removed. Because of this, I wouldn't call it a hack at all.
It's more like "someone didn't mid risking killing their expensive laptop trying to see if they could put another laptop's graphics 'card' in it, and it worked."
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I've got a Presario 2700, and while it's not a bad laptop at all, I'd really like to ditch the Radeon Mobility and move to the GeForce2Go, just for better drivers alone!
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any of the Compaqs with this same basic mobo that used anything other than the Rage Mobility, and I haven't been able to find any links to see if Dell and Compaq used the same supplier for the mobos. Are these daughterboards reasonably standard, since they're all coming from the same two or three suppliers in Taiwan?
Anyone? Anyone?
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
There's no really big surprises here. The reason I bought a Dell Inspiron 8200 in the first place is because the whole thing is practically upgradable, including the video card and CPU.
The only thing you can't upgrade is the LCD, obviously...which is why a smart shopper would get the high-end Dell UltraSharp display. More expensive, yes; but you can always skimp on the other parts and upgrade later. As with regular CRTs, the notebook LCD display is going to be with you the longest.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
hosted on personal system. (IE- BE GENTILE! please)
todayscache.hopto.org
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
they must be running their web server on the laptop they hacked
democrats==big govt==wasting my f**king tax $
Dewd, what is wrong with your laptop?!
I had to bring in my wife's laptop once in two years- and that was because I broke the pc card slot (don't drop the laptop on its side when the 802.11b card is sticking out...) I think that pretty much equalled out the price of the extended warranty!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It says the first Inspiron with g2go was 8100, but it was 8000.
Sure, it's a great idea, but it has a lot of implications. For example, commercial sites rely on their banner ads to generate revenue. If I cache one of their pages, this will mess with their statistics, and mess with their banner ads. In other words, this will piss them off.
Of course, most of the time, the commercial sites that actually have income from banner ads easily withstand the Slashdot Effect. So perhaps we could draw the line at sites that don't have ads. They are, after all, much more likely to buckle under the pressure of all those unexpected hits. But what happens if I cache the site, and they update themselves? Once again, I'm transmitting data that I shouldn't be, only this time my cache is out of date!
I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?
So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/14/00
I was watching the page load (well... try to load, and then fail) - and I misread it as a goatsex url...
yeah.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
People have been doing this since last year. The 8x00 series systems all share the same video card interface. No you don't void your warranty (the delltalk moderators have confirmed this) however it is strongly advised that you replace your old card if you have to send it in for service. One guy reported his GF4GO card disappeared after it being serviced.
To order the card call Dell's spare parts line. More information is available in the Delltalk forums at http://delltalk.us.dell.com Please be smart and use the search function before asking a question that is answered 9000 times already. We'd appreciate it. I'm known as Stonent in the delltalk forums.
You know, taco's pyrric war against the trolls is a fine example of the tragedy of the commons. /. , you'd appreciate it more and tread this place with the respect it deserves!
If he made you sleezy weasels pay for the privelege of posting to
[*}
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Upgrade my video card? Hell, I have a hard enough time getting linux to play nice with the geforce2go as it is[1]. Why would I want a newer card? Sheesh.
But seriously forks, this kind of thing is neat. I'm not a fan of the one-year computer obsolescence, and as a starving college student, I'd kind of like to keep this laptop and keep it usable for a while yet.
[1] Yes. Linux relative newbie. Deal.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
If you think Democratcs = Big Govt, check the
forecast budget deficit to find out about how
deficitism is a bipartisan disease.
I'm actually voting for a meltdown into a slag of molten ash, with the scream of twisting metal collapsing under its' own weight.
but I'm willing to consider other options ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This article makes me wonder why my "ask slashdot" concerning the viability of building a custom laptop was rejected. If changing the video card on a laptop is worthy of the front page, wouldn't a discussion on the possibilities of building a *complete laptop system* be more worthy?
/me watches gotapex's redlined webserver go nova from a safe distance.
Betcha they wish they'd just spent $30 on a better processor rather than overclocking a cheaper one.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know bandwidth has to do with it as well, but its supposed to be a joke, since they're site touts its 'redlined' hardware.)
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
I tried a GF4 in my I8100(came with GF2) and it didn't work. Later found out that it basically had a 50-50 chance of working due to the bios and if I did get it to work it might have fried my laptop due the power consumption of the card. I ended up getting a I8200 partially because of the better video card and sold my I8000 to a friend of mine who is really happy now that He can play EQ at 1600 X 1200. Kent
The problem with the "lite" GF4 used in the laptop fixup is that it does not support pixel shaders.
As a games programmer this is a perennial problem for me: I need to work with the latest video cards.
What I want is a hack where any old card can be attached to the laptop (kind of like an external hard-drive). It can come with its own power supply and fan too if necessary.
Is this even possible? Has anyone done anything like this?
StrutterX
I'm typing this on an Inspiron 8200 at the moment, and I must say, its a seriously cool machine. Not cool in that sense (it'll burn your lap if you use it on your knees) but quite hackable. Check out the Dell forums, there's all sorts of help about doing everything from upgrading your video card (there is talk about stuffing the mobile NV30 in Inspirons when it comes out) to upgrading your LCD screen. One thing, though, that pissed me off about the article was its response to my font sizes. The 8200 (and the 8100 that the article is about) have ridiculously high res (SXGA+ and UXGA) screens. On my 1600x1200 screen, the fonts are turned up quite large. Everything on the page wasa screwy. Oh when will vector graphics GUIs come out?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
aww don't get all pissy because you didn't think of it first.
The graphs at the end are totally unreadable. Who uses jpg compression on graphs? I dont think i would trust someones advice who doesnt even know how to properly encode images.
One of the things I'd always wanted on my machine (VAIO F-series) was the ability to use the machine as the "head" for another computer, i.e. use special cables to plug the laptop into a standard desktop, and use the laptop's keyboard, pointer, and display as the input / output for a desktop. You could even have some Function Key to switch between the internal machine and the external.
Anyone seen this?
Michael C. Hollinger
I have a Compaq M700 with a PIII 700 with the mobility chipset. Has anyone upgraded any type of compaq Laptop. To me it looks upgradable.
someone figuered out how to change the video card.
I browsed through Dell's notebook and support web pages but was unable to tell if they sell separate laptop components beyond the standard RAM and HDD options...
You can read more about the babbling idiot here:
That's Outrageous; Enough Is Enough; Disgusting
[Seinfeld]
Every time there's a Bush in office, we're at war with the Arab and the econoomy is in the crapper?
[\Seinfeld ]
Didja' notice? Taco's screwed up the < and > tags again!
So what if you upgrade the 8000? I have the 8000 with the M4 32MB card and have found no problems running any type of game whatsoever. Counter Strike? Sure...silky smooth. Nascar 2002? No problem...I feel the speed. IL-2? Why not...(okay, so I turned down the fluffy clouds)? Quake III/SOF? Bank on it. Is 10 more FPS on any of these games going to make a difference? It's like all these people are saying "You can't play games on the 8000 unless you spend an extra $150.00". Name one game that won't run well on the card above. Sure, maybe when Doom III comes out in late 2004, I'll want to run it on a good rig. But think of what $150.00 will buy you in an 8x AGP card by then?
Namaste
viedo card
When I read this, I imagined an Italian IT support engineer wildly gesticulating on a phone to a Dell Computer rep about the problems with his "viedo card" QUE COSA CON IL CARTA VIEDO, EH?!?
Anyone attempted something like this with a Gateway Solo 2500?
:)
That crappy NeoMagic card has got to go...
Unless it involves solder, duct tape, resin, thermal vents, dremels or other implements of destruction, then it's not a hack.
Hack == soldering a fan to the MOBO to increase cooling ability, then cutting holes in the case to mount it. Or installing a switch that will change the clock rate.
Anybody know if you can pull off this upgrade on toshiba 3000 series satellites? I've got one of the earlier gforce 2go / 16 mb cards, and would love to drop one of the newer cards in. But knowing Toshiba, it's probably soldered into the mobo. I've heard the processor is.
-Laz
Well, I'm heading off to begin working on my CS degree in a few days and the school I'm going to has generously decided to supply me with an IBM thinkpad T30. The stats on it are VERY nice (especially since it's free) but the one thing that dissapoints me is the 16MB ATI Mobility Radeon.....16MB!!!!! I can't run tetris on that. Now I know there is hope that one day (read: when I get the money) I will be able to play Team Fortress at a decent resolution while the rest of the class is learning the intricacies of the while loop. And to think I had some crazy idea of trying to fit my Voodoo 5 in there.
BTW, does anyone know how well linux handles mobile graphics cards? Particularly Slackware 8.x as thats my preferred distro.
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article
Anyone upgraded the CPU's on the Inspiron 8x00 series ?
To upgrade a laptop video card to a G4? To tell you the truth this is not what I would use the laptop for.. To me a laptop is just for programming portability. I would not play the latest games on it.. It just seems silly to me..
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
This makes me wonder if I could replace the Rage Mobility (M6) that's in it, with a 64MB Radeon 7500.
I also own a Inspiron 8100, and was very happy when I found that Dell has docs telling you exactly how to take it apart. They must consider it user serviceable.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Having built the Inspiron (and Latitude) for a year, I know that you don't want to mess around too much under the hood of one of these things. If you improperly seat the video card, the pins on the connector can be bent very easily. Also, an improperly seated heatsink can cause literal meltdown (and a not too pleasant smell). And when you're putting it all back together, don't forget to plug the LCD back in :)
Smeghead every day of the week.
dude admit it, your joke was lame
The Inspiron's are bigger and bulkier than
the Latitudes; it's always been this way because
they bring out the newer hardware on the Inspirons
first, do the engineering to get it all on a
single board, and then release the equivalent
Latitude. If you change the video chip on a
Latitude, it's maybe interesting. Changing the
video card on an Inspiron is about as amazing as
changing the disk drive or upgrading the RAM.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's not really a hack, but saying it was a hack got it posted, right?
CaptainStupid
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson