Celestia Forums

I am a very happy camper. My new video card for my Dell notebook arrived today. So while I was at work on the graveyard shift, I installed it into my Dell Inspiron. I now have a GeForce2 GO with 32mb of VRAM. This is great because now I can work on textures at work when I have free time. And let me tell you, it beats the heck out of the ATI card that was in there before. I can now use .dds texures, use anti-aliasing, and now I can see specular lighting effects. I was considering going to a GeForce4 GO but it was more expensive and there isn't as great a sucsess rate in the upgrades on my paticular model. Of course I will be somewhat limited to the size textures I can work on and test but it sure beats having to wait till I get home if I come up with some new ideas. Just thaught I would share the news with everyone.
Don

Whats the model on that lappy? I didnt think those could accept a new video card let alone a GeForce 4!

Hey Rass,
Its a Dell Inspiron 8000. P3 800MHz, 512mb PC 133 SDRAM, 20gig hard drive. I came across a letter in Maximum PC magazine and it was discussing an article they did about updating notebooks. Anyway the person writting the letter was asking why the magazine hadn't included changeing out the video cards. This got my atention as I have one of these notebooks. So I hit the web and did some reading and some research and found that my notebook did indeed have the GeForce2 GO as an option. There have been many people that have sucesfully updated there 8000 and 8100 to operate with the GeForce4 440 GO as well. I went with the GeForce2 GO because I new I new it would be a shure thing being my notebook also sold with it as an option. It actually was pretty easy to change out. Its a removable module/card right under the keyboard. There is one issue that I still need to work out. When the system boots the Dell logo and the Windows XP start screen are no longer stretched to full screen anymore. But if thats the only problem with the change-out then I will most definetly live with it. This card is quite a bit faster than the ATI Mobility4 that it replaced. That card was a nightmare for working on Celestia. I had just about given up doing anything on the notebook because of how bad it was. If you have access, or can get ahold of one of these machines at a good price I recomend it for upgrading. Its note very often you can change out a notebooks video card.
Don

P.S.
The CPU can be upgraded as well. Its mounted in a tiny little ziff socket just like the bigger P3 chips. Of course finding a micro size P3 will be a chalange unto itself. I am not sure how fast a chip can go in to this thing yet. I think it goes up to a 1GHz.

Here, here...

I'm one of those people with an i8100 that upgraded to the 64 MB GeForce4 440 Go from the 32 MB GeForce2 Go. Yup, there is a significant difference in performance.

I still have my GeForce2 Go card if anyone needs one...

Regards,

Bogdan

Don,

Try Fn F7 to get back the full screen Dell logo...

Bogdan

Thanks UncleSpam,
That did the trick. I guess I might be showing that I an not the original owner of this notebook. I got it second-hand from a customer at the shop. She was totaly furious with Dell about this machine. She said it spent more time with them than it did with her. So I got it at an incredible price.
She then went and bought a new Apple iBook. I personaly have had not one problem with it. Some people just expect to much from somethings.
I am still considering doing another upgrade to the GeForce4 440 GO but not far a while. I think I can live with it the way it is for now. Besides I love the idea I can watch DVDs on it and burn CDRs in the CDRW drive as well. Its just kind of big. I need to find a bigger carying case.

Don,

You should try a 5400 RPM Hard Drive in that computer... you should see it fly then. I have a 40 GB IBM in it right now and a 48 GB IBM as a "spare".

It makes a big difference compared to the standard 4200 RPM ones.

Regards,

Bogdan

What about heat issues. How hot do those drives run. I have read that they run alot hotter than 4200rpm drives. This would concern me because there is really not alot of room for heat disapation in there. Most of the Dell Insspirons that I checked out have 20gig IBM drives but mine came with a 20gig Hitachi drive. I am sure its only a 4200rpm but I may check into that. I am consideing going up to at least a 60 or 80gig hard drive for the added space.

Ill have to look into getting one of those....With a GF4 in there you should also be able to play just about any game on the market...

And there is suposed to be a newer NVidia chip comming out out that will be GeForce4 Ti4200 GO! One can always cross ones fingers for that.

Rassilon wrote:Ill have to look into getting one of those....With a GF4 in there you should also be able to play just about any game on the market...

I was able to do over 100 fps in Quake III Arena with the GeForce4 440 Go and over 60 fps at the LCD native resolution of 1600x1200. That was significantly faster than the GeForce2 Go.

Bogdan

Don. Edwards wrote:What about heat issues. How hot do those drives run. I have read that they run alot hotter than 4200rpm drives. This would concern me because there is really not alot of room for heat disapation in there. Most of the Dell Insspirons that I checked out have 20gig IBM drives but mine came with a 20gig Hitachi drive. I am sure its only a 4200rpm but I may check into that. I am consideing going up to at least a 60 or 80gig hard drive for the added space.

Absolutely Don,

There is more heat generated on the 5400 RPM drives. IBM has a program (Win32) that will allow the drive to go into energy-saving or semi-energy-saving modes to conserve power and reduce heat. That program is PowerBooser 2k.

I also use I8kfan v1.8.0 to turn on the laptop fans at a lower temperature than the BIOS setup (more conservative that is)

Bogdan