Graphics accelerator slot in Laptop

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
Staff member
My Satellite Setup
A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
My Location
UK
Though I have also seen one in the back of the PC i'm using

Are they worth the trouble of sourcing and fitting a card ?

The only reason is the HD offerings on the laptop often play with a jerky movement, moreso if they are opened in Quicktime (possibly down to the original .mp4 source).

And of course they are a unique size and shap, meaning I don't have anything lying about (so I' may have to part with some cash, without any guarantee of an improvement :-Nooo).
 
What make and model is the laptop? If it's not dual-core, anything HD will be jerky and more a slideshow than video, even my desktop which has a relatively decent spec and a fast processor & graphics card can't do HD.... :(

Can't really say any more with so little info to start with... :confused:
 
It's an HP (or Compaq) TC4200 notebook, with 1.8GHz processor and which has been upgraded with a 2GB memory

_http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00304326
 
i have a hd laptop is there emty slot in laptops to fit a grathics card my grathics on my laptop are intergrated
 
Channel Hopper said:
It's an HP (or Compaq) TC4200 notebook, with 1.8GHz processor and which has been upgraded with a 2GB memory

_http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00304326

Yeah, looking at those Sell'n'runM and PentiumM CPUs available for that series, you're not going to get smooth HD video on that laptop regardless of the addon graphics card, I wouldn't bother trying to upgrade it unless you want to use it for playing older games on... :)

Like I say, you need a Dual-core CPU to do smooth HD video, preferably a Core2Duo or whatever AMD's equivalent is, and with a 12.1" screen at 1024x768 you're not really going to see the benefits of HD (I have that size screen myself on my Toshiba Portege M300)... :)
 
Thanks for that (I'll go hang myself later)
Why does it have a slot underneth then ?


And what about the PC ?

It's attached to monitor with a DVI cable, and there is some Radeon card within, not going to open it up at the moment though.
 
Channel Hopper said:
Why does it have a slot underneth then ?

The slot is for a docking station which at one time were very popular with larger organizations allowing staff to move around the company to different locations and still 'Hot Desk'.
 
Nah. Underneath (inside a cover next to the RAM section) is a position to - I think :confused: - slot an accelerator card.

Will take a picture later
 
Channel Hopper said:
Thanks for that (I'll go hang myself later)
Why does it have a slot underneth then ?


And what about the PC ?

It's attached to monitor with a DVI cable, and there is some Radeon card within, not going to open it up at the moment though.

Well, there was this idea of making laptops more upgradeable by having a slot for a graphics card, I think Dell started the ball rolling and some manufacturers followed suit, but, most users never really noticed you could add better graphics through sticking a little card in it, you still get such addons today, but, again nobody really notices... O-Ha

As for your PC, well, it could be anything, could be an AGP, could be a PCI Express, a built-in thing, I can't say again cos there's no info to work from... :confused:
 
Channel Hopper said:
Do they all look the same ?

Well, no, AGP & PCIe cards look similar (though they vary by brand) but have a different connector, and onboard graphics are a chip soldered onto a motherboard, the only way to tell is to open up the computer and take pictures so we can see... :)

I'm just looking on ebay at laptop graphics cards, and there appear to be a few different kinds, so if you were to go for an upgrade, then you'd need to know what you'd need, and that HP site doesn't really say anything about upgrades... :confused:
 
2cvbloke said:
, and that HP site doesn't really say anything about upgrades... :confused:

Probably because I looked at a receipt of the product and not the actual item, which is a Toshiba Satellite model (A10 Pro) :confused:

No time to check further tonight.
 
Just been advised it is for a WLan port which stuffs my request then. :-ohcrap
 
Yeah, the Satellite A10 isn't really new enough, it's older than my Portege M300... O-Ha

And no, you're not going to get HD working on that laptop no matter what upgrades you feed it, it's just too old... :-rofl2
 
Back
Top