How to Upgrade or Replace Your laptop GPU

It is not difficult to replace your laptop graphic card, the hard part is to upgrade where you need to identify which graphic is better and compatible with your laptop. So how to identify which graphic card is compatible? for this one you need to get advice from laptop graphic card seller and they will tell you what is the compatible graphic cards you can buy for you laptop model. You also can call the service center or Google the Video Cards replacement parts for your model or read the Manuals. For example HP NX9420 and NW series can use Nvidia FX 1500M over AMD Mobility Radeon X1600.

A. Upgrade and Replacement Process
Get your laptop service manual, you will need to read the part removal and replacement. You can get it from your laptop manufacture site. For this tutorial we will replace Acer Aspire 7720 With ATI Graphic Card.

1. Remove the back cover by loosen the screw and open the back compartment.
*Note : For othe model such as HP or DELL or other models, the removal might be slightly different. Please refer your manual.

2. Next step is to remove the heatsink. Unscrew the driver and carefully remove the heatsink.

3. Now loosen the Graphic Chipset Screw, and carefully pull to remove it from the slot.

4. Insert you new graphic and apply fair amount of thermal paste.

5. Lastly put the heat sink back in place and close the back compartment.


C. Things to consider before Upgrade/Replacement.
1.Normally if there is only a slight increase in graphic performance after upgrade. You can't expect to get from 256MB to 512MB. Normally 251Mb to 358MB is the highest replacement I ever know.

2. This method originally intend for replacement where lot's of GPU is defect caused by high temperature.

3. Upgrade normally requires you to replace both Mainboard and GPU which costs more than a new laptop, so you better use that money to buy a new one instead of upgrading. Replacement on the other hand only requires a new the same new graphic chipset which is available on

4. If your graphic chipset is defect by overheating, make sure after the replacement the temperature is below 60 degree. Different graphic chip will produce different amount of heat and you need to observe the temperature carefully. Otherwise it will defect again after 30-days (or less).