ThinkPad T500 Video Card Upgrade

[HIMAN1998]

I have a ThinkPad T500 with the ATI graphics. Is it possible to buy another card for this motherboard and put it in to replace the current ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650? If it is possible, what would be a good card to put in here? I am already doing a processor upgrade from the 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo to the 2.8GHz Core 2 duo, and I might get 8GB RAM to put in this.

[LegendaryKA8]

The quick answer is that the video card is soldered onto the motherboard and cannot be replaced. The only ThinkPads I know of that had removable video cards were the W700/W701, and the couple of attempts that I heard about upgrading their GPUs weren't successful.

[HIMAN1998]

Ok, at least the card that is in here is better than only running on integrated graphics. I can run some games on here, like Minecraft and Portal. Anything else is currently on my Xbox until I build a gaming desktop.

[LegendaryKA8]

Completely understandable. The HD3650 will still run some newer stuff; I did manage Skyrim, Far Cry 2, and MW3 on it; they were definitely playable.

[HIMAN1998]

What graphics settings was Skyrim at, and what was your average FPS? That's my main game I play on Xbox besides Forza Horizon, which I know can't be played on a PC.

[LegendaryKA8]

What graphics settings was Skyrim at, and what was your average FPS? That's my main game I play on Xbox besides Forza Horizon, which I know can't be played on a PC.

It's been a pretty long while since I've played it on the T500(I'm considering bringing mine back from the dead, so I might get more concrete results for you soonish), but IIRC I was playing at native resolution(1680x1050) on medium settings. There was some lag here and there, but I didn't find it terribly distracting.

I did, however, receive an HP netbook running an AMD E300 APU(basically half the GPU and processor power of the T500) and I was able to get that to run Skyrim at minimum settings and a resolution of 1366x768.

[HIMAN1998]

I might try to get mine to play Skyrim. I only have the 1280x800 screen, so I might be able to run it a little better than yours did on 1680x1050.