T30 Advanced technical query

[le_porquer]

Hi All,

My first post but this forum has helped me immensely in upgrading my T30.

Just before christmas I got bored of my T30 being slow and entrenched with constant DLL errors that various viruses over the course of the past year have gobbled up.

The specs of my T30 prior to me hacking away at it were:

Pent 4-m 1.8 Ghz
512MB RAM
GEN1 Standard fan
ATI Radeon M7000 64MB

So I hopped on this forum and discovered that my T30 is capable of supporting not only a Pent 4-m 2.4Ghz processor but 2GB RAM as well. Over christmas I bought the various bits and pieces that I required to perform the upgrades (baring in mind, ive never worked on a laptop before as I was strictly desktop until 2008). Updated the bios and embedded controllers, installed the hardware, did the whole thermal paste thingy and its been running like a beauty with a hdd format and a fresh install of XP.

Although I feel content with my new specs I want to push my T30 to the limits. I know that people have asked in the past "Can I upgrade my laptop graphics card?" but my question comes with a twist.

I want my new specs to read:

Pent 4-m 2.4 Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
GEN2 SPARTO Fan
ATI Radeon M9000 128MB

And the only thing im missing now is the Radeon.

Before anyone says "It soldered onto the mortherbaord, you cant upgrade it" - im more than willing to unsolder the current integrated chip and install the new one in its place.

I can get a brand new ATI Radeon M9000 128MB intergration chip built for the T40 but unused and packaged for £22 ($31) which is super cheapo. But with this theoretical upgrade comes questions.

1) Can the T30 motherboard support a T40 graphics chip?

2) If no to the above, does anyone know the maximum ATI chip versions that the T30 mortherboard can take?

3) As im already running the latest BIOS/Controller, apart from the driver is there anything else I would need to update?

Looking forward to your responses, including the ones saying im crazy risking destroying my laptop

[Harryc]

The T30 systemboards support;

ATI® Mobility™ RADEON™ 7500 / AGP 4X / 16MB DDR-SDRAM 364MHz

[RealBlackStuff]

To further on Harryc's answer, no, you can't do what you hope.
The T30 gfx chip is a BGA (Ball Grid Array) chip, that is not compatible or interchangeable with T40 or other chips.

The only other upgrades I can think of are a faster/larger HD, built-in Bluetooth if you haven't got that yet, SXGA+ LCD and superG wifi.

[le_porquer]

Thanks - Thought I better ask these questions before slapping it on my PayPal account.

The graphics idea is purely to run 128MB games, the speed of the laptop is more than satisfactory.

Cheers again.

[olex126]

Your T30 will actually support a processor speed of 2.6 Mhz. Intel model number is SL6WZ. I have 3 of them at present, 2 in different A31 models and the third is going into a T30.

Regards.

Dave

[basketb]

If you need better graphics, you may want to look into a dock II and an external PCI graphics card.

[le_porquer]

Sorry olex126 was querying graphics card upgrades, already put a 2.4Ghz lump in it.

Ok cheers basketb ill check out Dock2 solutions.