Party Vibe

I did have a quick look around using Google for you and it seems the general answer is no.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061212004439AAMFpfx

I did read that you can change them on some laptops but it involved soldering and only certain laptops. I think it would be safer to take the answer as a no unless someone else actually knows different.

If it’s for games, you can expect to spend some serious money for the ability to play the latest ones (look for something with a mobile 7600 or 7950 geforce chipset) – probably somewhere in the region of £1000+.

Swapping out is as GL says difficult if not impossible (I have been building computers for over 10 years, and while I would think nothing of changing a laptop processor, adding memory or changing it’s hard disk, I wouldn’t want to try doing the graphics :hiding: ). That said, I believe there are new models being released since the advent of PCI express that are designed to have their graphics upgraded (if this is the case, it will be a fairly major selling point, so should be made obvious in any literature).

Again, as GL says – if it’s not for the latest games or high end graphics apps (things like 3d rendering etc, not photoshop), then most laptops available today can cope with it fairly well…

Depends on the game – a lot of the newer strategy games, like C & C, and Total annihilation need fairly beefy graphics processors, as they’ve gone to town on the unit animations etc. More importantly for the newer games, the AI and physics mean both CPU and system memory need to be decent spec. Older strategy games should run fine on pretty much any modern machine.

As for video editing, that can be done on almost any computer too, it just depends on how long you’re prepared to wait for it to finish stuff. It also depends on CPU and system memory, so you should probably look for the best spec you can on those and not worry too much over the graphics chipset (you’re looking at about £500-£600 before you can get one with any really appreciable upgrade from onboard graphics, as a lot of the lower priced specialist chipsets are hobbled versions of their desktop cousins, and not really worth the money).