Graphics Card for a laptop

[alliswoe]

My laptop has an Intel Pentium 3 processor, 498MHz and 256MB RAM. Does anyone have any idea what kind of graphics card could be used with this? The current one is so awful it makes me want to cry.
Much appreciated.

[FastGame]

What LT do you have ? can it even be upgraded ?

[zipp51]

alliswoe,check your settings in the display properties,and make sure it is set to 1024x748 for the screen resolution.Also make sure you have the latest video drivers installed. :D

[PIPER]

Most, not all laptops come with a video card that can not be upgraded...you should check with your OEM on the model you have to see if it is optional..chances are your stuck with what you have. I tell customers to be certain on that componet before we go to build just for this reason.

[Big Booger]

The next generation laptops are coming out with upgradeable cards..

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20040517080409.html

Not to say that will help you, but I think you are going to have to upgrade the laptop.. they don't make a USB or a PCMCIA or Firewire video card..

One thing you can do is check in your display properties, and see if it uses a shared memory type. If so, you can sometimes adjust the system to use more ram as video ram. On mine, (rather old compaq) I can use 2, 4 or 8 MB of system ram. I have 288 MB of system ram, 8 of which is consumed by the video graphics.

Another thing is to try to upgrade the driver. I found a newer driver for my video card and I can notice improvements, plus there are a lot of extra features that you won't get with a standard driver.

:( This is one thing notebook makers should have thought more on.. but to make them affordable, they had to skimp somewhere.

[alliswoe]

i apologise 4 wasting ur time every1, i've been looking around my files and have found that it falls woefully short of what i want, and i'm pretty sure i cant upgrade my laptop

[PIPER]

not a problem....wish the news was better...like BB said, the newer generation laptops will have upgradeable cards which makes life a little better in the world of portable computing.

[Ken Moore]

Hmm, I was going to post a question about PCMCIA graphics cards but since there seems to be an acceptance that there are no such things, there doesn't seem much point.

Mind you, you might like to have a look at http://www.villagetronic.com where you'll find details of VTbook. It does seem a bit costly, though!

[Big Booger]

Ken,
That is an external graphic card that works with a secondary display. It is not an internal card meant to improve the performance of the notebook display.

So to add to the $250 cost of the card, you'd also have to buy a new monitor as well. I think alliswoe was looking for a more internalized solution.

[Ken Moore]

Hi BB. indeed, I was perhaps more preoccupied with my own problem of a dodgy external video out and it was your comment "they don't make a USB or a PCMCIA or Firewire video card" which prompted mine.

On problem with VTbook, AIUI, is that it only works with PowerBooks (and not all of those either).

I think I must go and start my own thread (rather than risk hijacking this one) to see if I can get a solution to my problem!

[Big Booger]

:)

[egghead]

this thing works for both mac and pc windows 2000/xp

it uses a trident chipset and i bet ATI is very insterested in this thing.

It does have dvd acceleration and therefore is better for older laptops.

It does have limited 3d acceleration and I bet this thing will catch on.

Would love to see an ati 9700 chipset.

QUOTE:
Will I be able to play games faster?


VTBook was not designed with games in mind, but for the professional user in need for high resolution and color depth: VTBook goes to millions of colors at 1920x1200 as needed for the Apple 23" Cinema display.
Due to the PC card power and cooling limitations in a notebook, VTBook does not compete with 3D performances of ATI Radeon Mobility or nVidia chipsets that are included in latest notebooks.
If your notebook is not equipped with such a fast graphics engine, VTBook may still let you to improve the gaming experiences significantly on the external display.
VTBook uses a Trident XP2 chipset which is very optimised for heat and power consumption. The memory clock is run between 200 and 266 MHZ DDR. It is delivered with 3D drivers compatible with DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL. To operate on the external display, a game needs to be DirectX 8.1 complaint or the user has to run operating system Windows2000 or WindowsXP. The PC Card socket of the notebook must deliver at least 3.3 Watt of power in order to have the 3D features enabled. All Apple PowerBooks are fully compliant to this specification.

[Ken Moore]

That's interesting. A review I read said it was only for PowerBooks but the line "All Apple PowerBooks are fully compliant to this specification" suggests this is not the case.

Do you (or anyone else) have personal experience of this card?

[egghead]

hi Ken,

there are some posts about vtbook here,
http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=VTBook+video&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
and here,
http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=VTBook+dvi&btnG=Search

post any thoughts here

cheers

[Ken Moore]

Thanks for that. Mostly Mac stuff but still a few useful comments.

It seems that there are 2 cards (much as I'd discovered); the 4Mb Margi "Display-to-Go" product and the 32Mb VTbook job. Limited number of suppliers in the UK and the Margi comes in around £135+tax and the VTbook around £196+tax.