"BCurrey" <BCurrey@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:F86E4687-EBC4-4367-AFA2-B266E0FE5557@xxxxxx
Quote:
>I have a graphics subscore of 3.4. It's by far my lowest score on my
>laptop.
> How bad is this score? Is it going to prevent me from playing a lot of
> games?
> How easy is it to upgrade the video card in a laptop? Thanks.
Actually for a notebook, that's a pretty good score, Is that for Business
Graphics or Gaming Graphics?
My notebook I think is 3.2, it's not a gaming notebook (Toshiba A215-S4767),
and I consider it above average.
To echo a little of what Jupiter said above, You can't really upgrade
graphics on a notebook. SOME notebooks come with modular video cards that
you can swap out with another, but probably less than 1% of all notebooks
have this, it's really rare. The other 99% of notebooks have the video card
integrated on the system board, you can't upgrade it. Driver updates usually
do not help the speed score.
If you want a better score, get a better notebook. Toshiba has 2 "Gaming"
notebooks that they sell at Best buy, both have nVidia SLI video (2 video
cards linked together) and 2 hard drives in RAID-0 configuration. The low
end one is only $1300, and the high end one (with HD-DVD drive, better
video, more ram, etc) runs around $1700.
For the price they are really nice systems. They are freaking HUGE though,
probably twice as thick as most notebooks now a days, definatly less of a
laptop and more of a "desktop replacement that's easy to pack up and take to
LAN parties".
Alienware, Dell XPS make excellent gaming notebooks. Voodoo is a great brand
(if money is no object).
If you're not looking to upgrade, or Santa isn't coming to your house this
year, try playing the game in a lower resolution (like as low as it'll go),
I play TF2 on my system with a 3.2 score, and it's "Doable". I'm not scoring
amazing kills, but I can hold my own.
Good luck,
A.