Upgrade the GPU on a Latitude E6430 or E6520?
April 19, 2013 4:11 PM   Subscribe

Is it possible to upgrade the GPU in any recent Dell Latitude laptops using the Express Card slot or other non-soldering techniques?

I picked up one of each of the above mentioned laptops on a Dell Outlet fire sale.

Both have quad-core i7s and nice displays, but the GPUs are anemic (4200 and 5200 NVS cards).

I've read a bit about eGPU, but I was hoping to skip the forum hoping and have a resident MeFite let me know the options (if any) I have with these two models.

They're perfect machines outside of the graphics performance, and I'd rather not get a Lenovo or HP consumer laptop simply for gaming.

Also, if it is possible, I'd appreciate any tips on where to buy the correct hardware. I haven't seen a lot of laptop discrete graphic cards for sale on Newegg.....

Thanks!
posted by lattiboy to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)
 
No, pretty much your only option is going to be the eGPU route. It's a niche enough market (laptop gamers who don't want to actually buy a gaming laptop) that there don't exist nice easy solutions.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 5:06 PM on April 19, 2013


Best answer: eGPU or a new machine are the only options here. And eGPU, in and of itself is an express card slot solution. I briefly considered going down this road and that was the only plausible option for using my current machine at the time.

Very, very few laptops have upgrade-able GPUs, it's pretty much limited to alienware/clevo/sager and a few MSI laptops that are both large, and gaming specific.

If the solution you're looking for needs to be readily portable and backpack-able, you probably just want to look at a new machine. If this is for at-desk or not super mobile gaming then eGPU is the way to go.

For what it's worth, i've bought and sold high performance(quad core sandy bridge, etc) asus gaming laptops on eBay that were extremely well made for $450-550. You don't have to buy some awful HP or low end lenovo to scratch this itch. You could easily get in to that price range building a half-decent eGPU setup too, at the very least be touching 400.
posted by emptythought at 5:53 PM on April 19, 2013


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