inspiron 1720 video card upgrade which are compatible

hi!

I own an inspiron 1720, it came with intel graphics media accelerator x3100. the other options were 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS or the 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT.

Are those the only ones, are there any others you know of that are compatible? is there a 512 for this model? where can i get one?

the nvidia website had a link to tiger direct, i called them and they said they don’t sell video cards for notebooks ???

how hard/easy is it to install it on an inspiron?

Thanks for your replies.

I don’t know anything about the Inspiron specifically, but the reason no one sells graphics cards for notebooks is that there are no “cards” in most notebooks (except for the occasional miniPCI slot with a wifi card). The graphics chip is soldered directly to the motherboard and not replaceable. You are almost certainly stuck with with the graphics chip you have unless you get a new laptop.

Actually this is not totally true for the Inspiron line of Dell. I can only speak from experience with a couple of different models. An Inspiron 1000 and my current 9300, both had a replaceble graphics module. The 1000 I know about because Dell replaced it on site multiple times under warranty.

The 9300 because I initially got it with the ATI version and latter upgraded it to a Nvidia 6800. I personally am wondering If a newer modulte will fit in my 2 year old laptop. My intrest of course would be Cuda. My guess is to look at what Dell offers for different laptops and if they offer some options that are the same on both models and yet a better option on the other model It may still work. Of course Dell would prefer to sell you a new laptop.

Huh, that’s very interesting. Does the graphics module look like a miniPCI card? Is there any kind of standard for this?

MXM module : http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

Yeah you actually can upgrade the video card in the Inspiron 1720 you can Pick up A Nvidia Gforce 8600M on ebay for like $140 But it will void your Dell warranty if you open your laptop so make sure that it has expired…

You have to find out which size of MXM your laptop supports (there are three). The bigger the size, the more powerful the GPU with more memory that you can fit.