Thinkpads Forum

yeh i got a t60 and it has a ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 wondering if i could upgrade it?
thanx

GPU cannot be upgraded.

yeh i think its pci or something
not gpu

GPU=====Graphics Processing Unit====Graphics Card

i see...
well i am noob
thanx for clearing that up

pheebz wrote:i see...
well i am noob
thanx for clearing that up

In almost all laptops, the GPU is a part of the motherboard. The OEMs license the reference graphics designs, buy the chips, and incorporate the reference designs into the motherboard. In desktops, the OEMs could choose to make the graphics cards themselves, but they generally leave this job to other companies. Desktops have PCIE interfaces that makes communication with the graphics card very fast. Although laptops have this type of interface also, the problem is that laptops are a lot of technology in a very small space, and so in 10 different laptops, you are likely to see 10 different GPU designs; they move the cards around and change their designs to best fit them into the laptops. There is a spec for a type of mobile swappable graphics card, but it has only been used in a handful of laptops, and most companies would rather retain control over the internals of their laptops anyways. [hypothetical] If you were to swap a significantly faster card into your laptop, it could cause overheating [/hypothetical]

jjesusfreak01 wrote:There is a spec for a type of mobile swappable graphics card, but it has only been used in a handful of laptops, and most companies would rather retain control over the internals of their laptops anyways. [hypothetical] If you were to swap a significantly faster card into your laptop, it could cause overheating [/hypothetical]

Yeah, MXM and Axiom. Sadly, they haven't caught on too much.

There's also been some motherboard designs where the GPU wasn't physically on the same board as the CPU, but a daughterboard which could sometimes be upgradeable. Not too common, though.