What all do I need to do to upgrade the video card in my E1705

Hey guys I'm new to the forums here and I have a question I sure you guys are familiar with due to how many times it has been asked. Forgive me but I must ask again because I'm not to bright in the Notebook department.

As the title says I have a Dell E1705. Its a great little machine. It has a Go 7900 GS in it with 256mg. Don't get me wrong this is a great little card. I have run plenty of high end games on it, of course with a graphics turned down a bit.

I know that regardless of what I do I will need to upgrade my motherboard, that's fine. What has been bugging me is that I can't seem to get an answer from Dell as to what motherboard I will need in order to get it compatible.

I have three cards that I have been looking into. My first choice and priority is the NVIDIA Geforce 8800M GTX with 512mg. Nice card has the memory that I want. Now what motherboard would I need to get in order to make it compatible in my E1705?

If not possible the next two cards in priority order are the Go 7950 GTX and the 7900 GTX with 512mg. What motherboard will I need to get in order to make it compatible?

I'm sure you tech savvy guys are wondering why not just by a new laptop, well it a personal preference. Truthfully I do not want to, that's upwards of 3000 dollars that I don't want to spend. So please no response with just buy a new one.

From what I understand about the 3 cards that I have listed they seem to work very well. Pretty much all I want is a nice card with 512mg that will hold me over for a year or 2 till I want to buy a new notebook. Something that will run Red Alert 3/ Fallout 3/ Empire: Total War/ Hearts of Iron 3/Company of Heroes/ Silent Hunter 4, not necessarily at the highest uber resolution but at a decent resolution with good frame rates (between 35-60).

I also understand that I may have to modify the inside of the case ie "break off some plastic" to make it fit since the 7900 GS has one heat pipe and the 7900 GTX/7950 GTX/ and the 8800M GTX all have I believe 2 or more. That is fine, I'm not looking to install it myself. I'm actually hoping I might talk Best Buy into it (might be silly but I haven't thought about it yet and I am by no means an expert on installing Notebook upgrades). Regardless again I'm just looking at what motherboards I would need for those three cards, I can find the prices but if you guys already know them by all means post them.

That is all. I hope my inaugural post isn't to inconvenient. I very much appreciate any and all help. Thank you for the time and you guys have a Merry Christmas! (and for the politically correct of us all have a Happy Holidays!)

 

have you read this? the Dell card looks like MXM but it isn't.

 

I don't mean to be rude, but your plan is a pipedream.
I am not sure, but I believe the 7800GTX and 7900GS are the best cards officially supported by the Inspiron 9400/E1705
As a result, the other cards you have mentioned, will not work in the motherboard.
Another motherboard will be impossible to install in your current chassis.
As for the having Best Buy do it - well, two things. First is those guys are idiots, and would be completely incapable of hacking an unsupported card into a computer. Second is that even if they were capable, they would refuse to do it. This sort of thing you have to either do yourself, or find someone genuinely knowledgeable to hire to complete the task.

You will save yourself a lot of time and headache, and perhaps the complete destruction of your current laptop if you bought a new laptop with what you want already in it, then sold your current laptop.
This would be an excellent replacement to your current system:
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT725-075...sr_1_385?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1230006177&sr=1-385
You'd likely be able to sell your current system for 500-800 dollars... hell, maybe more if you find the right buyer and depending on the specs.
You're now down between 800 and 1100 bucks with this method.

Whereas... an 8800GTX is going to cost you 500 bucks minimum.
It's not going to work, you might destroy your laptop (in which case you have to buy a new one ANYWAY)
Plus, you're going to spend no less than 200 on labor.
Down a minimum of 700 dollars on this method, and you either end up where you started, OR worse off then you started... depending on luck.

 

if Dell is giving you the graphics card, then it can be replaced easily.

 

This may be of some help.

Merry Christmas! :smile:

 

Go read in the Dell forums. All of your questions have already been answered numerous times. The search bar is your friend. For your mileage it would make the most sense to just OC your card. Once again, the Dell forums. All the answers are there. This has been beat to death with a stick already.

 

I love how you guys beat down his dreams, cause you are all wrong

his dream is not a longshot at all. The only card which will not work is the 8 series cards.
The 7950GTX will work in his E1705.
This is a very good link, read it and you will surely smile:
http://eduncan911.com/archive/2007/12/11/why-the-inspiron-is-a-king.aspx

You can upgrade your card to a 7900GTX, Quadro FX2500M, Quadro FX3500M, 7950GTX.

The 7950GTX is a great card, rather expensive but I am sure you can get a great deal on ebay or through dell.
Just make sure you buy a card which works with your system.
Your chassis has the same gpu as the precision m6300, inspiron 9300, inspiron 9400 and the XPS1710.

K-TRON

 

I wasn't beating down his dreams but I have to tell you that when I OCd the 7900GS 256 meg card in my daughters laptop and compared it to my 7950GTX 512 meg card the performance was @ the same. As I said before his best bet is to just OC the card he has as the majority of people who have done this have reported excellent results. I have OCd (vid card bios flashed) 17 different XpsM1710s and E1705s with the 256 meg 7900GS and have had fantastic results with all of them. The 7950GTX as well as the 7900GTX can be OCd as well, just not nearly %wise as much as the 7900GS. Yes, you may in fact reach higher performance with the 512meg cards if you find a good one, but ultimately it will be roughly a hand full of percentage points at most. This I know as I have tested all three types of cards I list in this post thoroughly. For the money the card he has when overclocked will beat the pants off of a 512meg 7900GTX and/or a 512 meg 7950GTX. Given that his GPU and ram are up to the task. Most have been. I have not personally run into any DUDs in my endeavors but I am certain they are out there as some were definitely posted here at NBR. The big kicker is that this is all FREE FREE FREE and at no cost or charge to him at all. Well, maybe he does have to buy a CD to burn the software to.

As stated in my previous post ALL of the information he requires has already been regurgitated over and over here at NBR. For years. All he has to do is put in some personal time and effort into searching these very helpful forums and he would find his answers.

 

I think K-TRON was probably referring more to some previous posts than to yours or mine. :GEEK:

 

I stand by my post.

 

So my best or easiest bet would be to overclock the 7900 that I have. How exactly do I do that, are there any tutorials that would helpful with this?

I do very much appreciate any and all comments. As I said earlier my knowledge of notebooks is very limited and I don't seem to know much about GPUs either.

What would I need to do to overclock my card? What risk do I run and how bad could those risk be?

Hope you guys had a great Christmas.