Graphics Upgrade

How can I upgrade the existing Graphics on a Laptop?

I want to fing out how I can upgrade the graphics capabilities on a laptop. Often enough a laptop has everything necessary to play a high-end game except the graphic capabilities, is there a way to upgrade this?

Public Comments

1. Simple answer is no, graphics cards are fused to the mother board in laptops because of the space restrictions.
2. Yes and No. Laptops are not really designed to be really upgradeable like a desktop computer. The only really thing you can update on a laptop is hard disk and memory. However, I know ATI sells an exteranl USB graphics card sort of device that may extend the graphics capabilities of a laptop. Normally you are stuck with what you have though. When you take a laptop apart you will notice the graphics chip is fused onto the board, no way to change it or upgrade it internally.
3. I wish there were. If you dont take the systems VPU into consideration when you first purchase your laptop, the only way to upgrade would be for graphics card manufacturers to produce type 2 pcmcia cards, something they dont currently do to my knowledge. You can find gaming ready laptops anywhere, but I recommend making sure the onboard graphics at least supports 128 MB of RAM for the graphics. Alienware and Dell XPS's are some of the more popular gaming machines, although there is a steep price for either.
4. You can upgrade some laptops and with others it is impossible. You need to consult your documentation to see if you can. Typically you can look at the bottom of you laptop and there is usually 2 covers that will open, one for your memory and one for the video. Even some of the best video for laptops is barely capable of playing new highend video games...the reason..HEAT!! The newer graphics cards produce temendous heat and need very elaborate cooling systems to avoid overheating. Most laptops are using a heat pipe to remove heat and even though it is good, you could never remove enough heat to avoid a near melt down. Some of the ATI laptop cards are as good as you can get providing you allocate enough memory to them. There are a "few" cards which have there own memory but again they are very expensive and are usually not a user replaceable item on an existing laptop...
5. You can't. The laptops are not like computers. Laptops graphics card is embedded in to a mother board, the only way is to change the mother board. Only 3 things you can upgrade on the laptop, Memory, Hard Drive, and Battery. Or you have to buy a new laptop with a better graphics.
6. You'd need to purchase a laptop that's designed with upgradable graphics as an option, but those are hard to find. VoodooPC marketed one for a while, http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=834 but it's no longer in their product line. However, for high end gaming, both VoodooPC and Alienware offer laptops with SLI graphics (though I use the term "laptop", loosely, as the Voodoo offering weighs 16 lbs, while the Alienware is 15 lbs) that can compete with nearly any high end gaming desktop.