Recommend a graphics card? (Laptop)

[nightswatchicefire]

My skyrim's framerate is perfect at the lowest quality and resolution but even a pinch higher than that and i get frameskips. I've enabled dual core, tried game booster and skyrimprefs tweaks but nothing works so I think its my graphics card. I'd post my specs but I don't really think thats necessary because I'm not really posting about a crash or error. The textures on my skyrim look like someone ate the original textures and threw them all up. It didn't bother me at first cuz I'm a gameplay over graphics kind of guy but recently i've been watching other people's videos and been getting pretty jealous of how amazing it looks on higher qualities. Currently I have ATI mobility Raedon HD 4250 which is barely even a gaming graphics card and is like 512 MB i think so no wonder i can't play on better qualities. I'm pretty sure as long as its a laptop graphics card it can fit into any laptop right? (sorry i've never actually changed a computer's graphics card before) i want one for ultra quality, yeah I've decided to go from totally crap to totally hardcore! my budget is around £150 ($241).

[hangarspace]

I don't belive you can really do much about it. Firstly, very few laptops have removable graphics cards, even if yours is then the finding a compatible alternative is pretty slim let alone one with 'harcode' performance. On top of that, a more powerful gpu would likely want to use more power which you laptop psu is unlikely to be able to supply. Try using google to find out if your laptop has a removable graphics card and if there are any upgrade options but I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

Alternatively, save up for an Alienware laptop or gaming PC.

 

 

Chris

[GnatGoSplat]

Except for Alienware gaming laptops, regular laptops don't use a graphics card. They use a graphics chip. It's soldered to the mainboard and cannot be replaced with something better. I know for fact it can't be upgraded in yours, because the ATI HD4250 is an ATI chipset integrated graphics.

 

You will need to buy an Alienware laptop or desktop PC.

[Aj47951]

you could all was get a external Gpu for your laptop

 

here how you could make one

http://lifehacker.com/5851902/turn-a-low+powered-laptop-into-a-gaming-machine-with-an-external-video-card-dock

[alsoran]

Just googled "external graphics card" and there are some options, but I cannot imagine you would want to go there.

 

Read this laptop review which has an external Video card http://www.anandtech.com/show/5530/sony-vaio-z2-everything-is-peripheral

 

And have a look at this external enclosure http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock

 

Good Luck!

 

PS. If you can build a desktop.

Edited September 15, 2012 by alsoran

[bben46]

Unfortunately, most so called gaming laptops seem to be more orientated toward games such as solitaire or angry birds than graphic intensive games like Skyrim. 'Gaming laptop' is often a marketing gimmick to get suckers to pay a lot more for a slightly better video chip and a small amount of video ram.

 

Many laptops do not have any real video ram at all. Even if they say 512mb of video ram what they often are really doing is stealing ram from the main system ram - so if your laptop says it has 2G of Ram, 512M Video ram - it really has only the 2G, and 512M of that is dedicated to video - leaving you just 1.5G of useable system ram

 

Basically - you cannot upgrade the hardware in a laptop. Usually just RAM is all. you can change.