2 Questions

[Matt77]

Heyyo!

1. How can I OC this i5 CPU if: 1. Turbo Boost is Maxed and 2. CPU and components are soldered on?

2. Is it possible to get an "external" video card for a laptop? Integrated sucks

Thanks,
Matt

 

[carnageX]

1. Most laptop BIOS's don't allow you to overclock. Unless you find a modded BIOS, or overclock through Windows software (which is not stable and not recommended at all). Doesn't matter if components are soldered on (only thing that would be soldered onto your board is the GPU btw, the CPU is still a socket-based chip).

2. I"ve seen some that are external, but are crazy expensive and not really worth it IMO. Could just find a used gaming laptop on Craigslist or a refurb from Newegg. That's how I got my Asus G73; was a refurbished laptop from Newegg that was a couple hundred dollars cheaper than what it normally would be. Plays Skyrim on max just fine (as long as I keep it cool enough that is).

 

[Matt77]

1. No, it's literally soldered. The school wanted it done. vPro thing maybe??? I asked about the soldering in case I'd have to change components.

2. kind of what I thought, I know you can make an external one, but for $200, why not just save up.I thought that there may be a PnP alternative out there I've never heard of

Thanks!
Matt

 

[PP Mguire]

If your school offers these tabs on bulk to the students I doubt seriously they took the time to solder the chips on all of them unless they ordered them that way. If they did, kind of dumb as if they need to fix one it has to be replaced completely. No, you can't OC the chip. In olden days bios locked computers could be OCed with clockgen apps but the bios on modern pre-built PCs and laptop/tabs blocks all 3rd party software. Considering they don't raise the multi it would **** everything up anyways. Any BCLK modifying over 3MHz changes the PCI clock.

There are things you can buy. Thing is, it takes a regular desktop GPU, this Expressport card thing, and a PC PSU. Totally not cost effective.

 

[Matt77]

They were ordered like that. The PC is quite modular, if a part of something goes out, they replace the whole thing. How does this PC sound?
Amazon.com: Buying Choices: HP XW8200 Professional Desktop Workstation Computer. Xeon Processor(s)/DDR Memory/SATA HDD
Third seller comments

 

[PP Mguire]

Old.

 

[Matt77]

Better than a new Pentium build? Or no...

 

[PP Mguire]

Depends. Not much information on the Xeon setup but it's DDR so I'm assuming that it is same gen as 775 Pentium 4.

 

[Matt77]

I'd rather stay the heck away from Pentium 4...Too many bad memories.

Remember that Toshiba A30 I was telling you about PP? It takes 3 minutes to load IE after a clean reinstall of XP :/