Updating graphics card...

Well, I want to upgrade my computer's video card. Can I put a new graphics card into my laptop? I'm pretty sure it has a PCI Express slot on the side. It's an HP Pavillion dv8000. If I got a PCI Express graphics card, would I be able to put it in there?

You'll get a better answer in the tech Forum, i'll move the post there.

I also own the same Laptiop that you have. And I realy hate to be the bearer of bad news but the graphics are not upgradeable. Our laptops use the ATI radeon Express 200 m chiiset with 128 megs of dedicated ram (this is seperate from the main system ram). We are not alone in this as there are no laptops that I am aware of that have upgradeable graphics. Not long ago Nvidea and ATI were designing a system where you could replace your graphics like a tdesktop. I am not sure but I think due to lack of support from manufacturers this new system was abbanoned. At this time I am not sure of any laptops that have replaceable graphics cards.
I am not sure what issue you are having with the onboard graphics that your unit has but mine runs Guild Wars perfect.

Good Luck

Mega Mouse

Damn, that stinks. Oh well, I can live with this graphics card! It's fine for the most part, except for one thing: sometimes during games the screen gets all messed up and I have to restart the computer. I have a thread on this board asking about it and they said it was overheating. So you say you have no problems with yours? What driver version do you have? Mine's 8.301.0.0. If you have a later version, please PM me or email me with a link to download them/the file itself.

I am useing driver version 8.193.0.0. One other thing what exact model do you have mines the DV8315NR, pretty much the top of the line one of this series but the actual differences are small mainly the ammount of system ram installed(1024 in mine) and whether you have the litescribe enabled DVD burner other than that the other differences are not much to worry about. What I do is within Guild Wars I lower all the video settings to minimum and even lower the sound settings to fastest. I also turn down the sounds that are not realy needed to play the game. As far as heat goes , mine does fget rather hot after a while, I have successfully played Guild Wars for over 4 hours no problems so try to do what I have done and turn as many of the settings down as you can. Also run the game at the native resolution of the lcd which is 1440x900. I actualy had to go to HP to get the native resolution on the display so I know this is correct. Also these are my exact settings that I run on my laptop for Guild Wars:

Graphics: Full screen 1440x900
Refresh rate: Default
Interface Size: Normal
Anti_Aliasing: None
Visual Quality: One notch above the fastest setting

Terrain Quality: Medium
Reflections: Terrain and Sky
Texture Quality: High
Shadow Quality: Medium
Shader Quality: Medium

Full Screen Gamma is set almost all the way to the left
Check the box that says Wait for vertical sync


I hope these settings help out as they may seem low to some but I have had no problems playing the game for long periods of time (over 4 hours at a time). I love the laptop and also added a second Hard drive to it after I found out that it can take another. Like I stated earlier it does get a bit hot but it hasnt affected my ability to play the game. Another thing I use an optical mouse instead of the touch pad for accuracy, and I have turned off the onboard wireless lan seeing as how I do not need it. I also found out that while playiong Guild Wars on battery that I can get almost 2.5 hours in before I get low battery warnings.

Hope I gave some good advice

Mega Mouse

It is possible. However, not in the vast majority of laptops. You would obviously need a card specifically made for the purpose aswell, being low height and low heat / power consumption. For the most part, people who do so have to (usually) change the power brick to something more beefy, to cope with the new card's power consumption. That of course isn't always the case though.

There are very few laptops that allow you to upgrade the video capability. For the most part, this is because the manufacturer does not want you do to this.

Laptop makers make items specific to fit within a certain price break. They then offer different models, with options changing as you move up. Low ended laptops (and desktops) normally come with an SIS or Intel graphics card. Then you move up to more basic ATI and NVidia graphics. Then you have the top of the line models, which have the best available at the time.

It is not in their interest to allow you to upgrade the graphics. The laptop makers want you to buy another unit, not upgrade the one you have. And they get no benefit if you take your mid-grade graphics and upgrade them (cheaply) to a better graphics.

There are a few units that were designed to allow you to upgrade graphics, but it was really only available in "top end" units ($5,000+). YOu can also sometimes get away with it in "Corporate" leptop models. A lot of the older Dell C610 laptops came with Rage graphics. In some of the models you can upgrade to a Dell C610 Radeon graphics chip. But this capability is almost unheard of in "consumer" models.

I was doing a bit of research and there are a few Laptops out there that can have their graphics upgraded, but they are from vendors that use propritary hardware and you would have to get the new card from them. Plus the cost of the original laptop may be out of range of most consumers. Here is a link to Alienwares website that has some very good info on Video cards in general http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2526 . This guide lists a lot of different video cards for notebooks and laptops, and even calls the ATI 200m a top end graphics solution. The amount of information it gives may be a bit overwhelming to most but it explains a lot that even I was unsure of.
So stick with the DV800 series that you have and if you set your guild Wars vudeo and sound like I have you should have very little problems. Even with these settings I do have a few slowdown issues but I attribute that mostly to the way I connect to the internet with my laptop. I use a sierra wireless aircard 860 when at work, which uses Cingulars network to connect. At times I lose connection and get Error 007, but thats the price that I pay to be able to play while at work (I work on the Mississippi river and Gulf Intercoastal Waterways pushing barges from Baton Rouge, La to Freeport, Texas).
Hope that link can give more players a bit of insite to laptop graphics.

Mega Mouse

MegaMouse, sorry I didn't respond sooner. Why would mine not work if my drivers have a newer version? I have lowered my graphics settings to everything you suggested but it still goes all blurry once in a while. My laptop is always plugged in and I also use an optical mouse. I devoted about 64 mb of ram to my GPU too, to see if it did anything, but that doesn't seem to do anything. Do you think another program might be interfering with it somehow? I don't see how it could do that, but I'll try Safe Mode then boot up ATI.

I am not sure why the newer drivers would be causing problems for you. If you have the same laptop as I do then the video card has 128 megs of dedicated ram seperate from the main system ram. When does the screen go blurry on you this may be something else causing it. When I play I make sure there is nothing except my firewall and antivirus turned on and only those system services that have to be running. Several things can and will cause slowdown 1: your antivirus wanmting to check your computer at inoportune moments 2: another program trying to update itself 3: windows trying to update.
I currently run ZoneLabs zonealarm pro fior a firewall with anti spyware and Grissofts AVG anti malware which has anti virus and antio spyware components. Both programs have a small footprint (not system hogs) and play nice with guild wars. Each ado have free versions that work quite well also. I am not sure what anti-virus and firewall you are currently running but give these 2 a try they may help out .

www.zonelabs.com

www.grisoft.com

Check them out and seee if they help. As far as the driver that I have you might try to get it from Hp directly, I have tried to update mine but it says that I have the latest one available.

Mega Mouse

Thanks, I'll install those and report back tomorrow.