Do I Need A Graphics Card For My Laptop To Play Video Games?

by GamePlay on November 19, 2009

What does my laptop (inspirion 1420) windows vista laptop need to PLAY video games?

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Kevin

you cannot really add a graphics card, the card in the inspiron 1420 is built it.
did you order it with a 128mb Nvidia card or an integrated graphic processor? if its intel graphic processor you are doomed you cannot play any games except ones with VERY low graphic design.

Free WP Plugins

Well, you most likely can not install a graphics card into the laptop itself and the one installed on your system is most likely not good enough to run a decent game in a decent resolution. So, you can try and get an external video card which are more expensive but cheaper than buying a new laptop. Good luck.

CanadaRA

An external video card (USB) is going to be way slower than the built in card, that’s bad advice. There may be ExpressCard video cards available someday, but I haven’t seen any. This one was promised in early 2008 but apparently still has not shipped http://www.villagetronic.com/vidock/tech…
What you need to do is to choose your games carefully, and the play at lower resolutions with AA and the optional effects turned down or off.
Other than making sure you have enough RAM and that your Windows OS is clean (not with a bunch of background processes, widgets, etc) http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g…
there’s nothing you can do to make the machine faster in video than it is. Depending on your configuration, you have either Intel 965 integrated video, or a NVIDIA® GeForce 8600M GS

mike b

You would need a top range laptop to play the newest games, they are not cheap, so your graphics card in your laptop will only play the older type games. If you really like gaming get yourself a quad /duo desktop.

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