Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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
jpegs? man, you are pathetic. all of my pr0n is in tiff.
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.)
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.
is that to say Rob is a "Cereal Killer?" (sorry, but the reference was way too easy...)
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
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.
...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.
those fucking "Dude.." commercials are getting old.
Actually, they had this great rant about that same exact topic not to long ago posted on the inquirer. Essentially the writer called for a laptop standard somewhere along the lines of the ATX standard for PC Cases and motherboards.
Personally I think this is a great idea. It would allieviate costs to the laptop manufacturers in that they could settle on a single standard and not have to spend so much in R&D on every new model of laptop they build. It would also enable the DIY people out there (myself included) to build their own the exact way they want it.
Ahh....maybe one day. We can all dream cant we?
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
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!!!
they must be running their web server on the laptop they hacked
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.
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.
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.
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.
Upgradeable laptops != good laptops
Sorry, but laptops are not big and clunky and easy to manage like a desktop. Getting manufacturers to build things to a standard is one thing, coming up with a standard look for a laptop is a whole different story. People buy laptops because they are thin, or light, or have a huge display, or are very small, not because they may be able to upgrade to a better video solution.
Desktops are just starting to get better looking, and there is still the lean towards ugly white boxen. I hope they never decide to shoehorn laptops the same way.
Bah
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
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...
Actually, you can get laptops that are upgradable. Check out Eurocom. Reasonable prices, and they look pretty cool to IMHO.
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
Anyone upgraded the CPU's on the Inspiron 8x00 series ?
Oh c'mon. There's room for dweebs, too. Many suffering Dell Insipidon users are thrilled with the info in this article. Lighten up!
dweeb
An even lower form of life than the spod, found in much the same habitat as the former. though more prevailent on talker systems. Unlike spods, upon receiving the desired response to the question "Are you male or female?", dweebs will then engage upon a detailed description of themselves and how wonderful they are, often in the hopes of truly impressing the other with their "charm" and "wit". Nearly all dweebs are male, but very few actually live up to the image that they present. Dweebs, unfortunately, are often the cause of ill-will, and may well bring a bad reputation to the system in question. They are often, however, easy to wind up and can be the source of great mirth to the seasoned user.
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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
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.
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