HP Touchsmart 600 - Ge Force GT 230 Upgrade?

[AaryionRaslan]

Hi Everyone,

I have tried to find something on this topic in many places, but there are not so many answers that I have found helpful to me - I guess I am not that tech savvy!

Wife bought me this: HP TouchSmart 600 Quad

Happy at first, but after a while, I found the graphics kinda suck as I try to play newer games. Stuck on low/medium settings with the inbuilt GT 230.

I have seen other folks ask similar questions in other places, and get answers about the HP BIOS not taking a new card, "you can't upgrade laptop cards", and other things like that. In general, the post become very dismissive and not informative to me.

I am trying to understand in the simplest terms if its possible, difficulty level, possible steps to do, etc. And if the answer is no, its no! But I'd like to have someone tell me directly.

Also, on one post one support person mentioned "but there are two mini PCI express slots on the motherboard" - what can those do for my situation? Is there anything I can add there to help boost my performance overall?

Thank you in advance!

 

[rvilkman]

In theory you could use the MXM 3.0a interface to upgrade your video card. Unfortunately all the higher end cards are using the 3.0b interface and also the size of the boards is generally too big to fit the slot. So they can't be used like that.
3.0a would fit to a 3.0b but generally not vice versa. Also the power requirement are 35W vs 75W.

However if you can find one with 3.0a interface that is more powerful than your current one then the upgrade might be possible. Otherwise you are better off getting a 'real' computer.

 

[AaryionRaslan]

I see - no one has ever mentioned the .a vs .b - thanks.