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Has anyone heard of these? Any idea what to get them?

My acer laptop takes them, and I want to upgrade from integrated sis graphics to something better so I can play doom3 when it comes out!
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Most of the implementations of powerful graphics cards for laptops are specific to the manufacturer model aren't they? I would suggest you contact the manufacturer and ask them which upgrades your laptop can support.

That being said I doubt anything but the latest and greatest laptop would be able to comfortably handle the new FPS games coming out.
Hell, my PC is going to need an upgrade to handle it.
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It's an acer desknote, which is basically a desktop PC in a laptop case. It's pretty huge too - it has a 17 inch screen. P4 2.66GHz chip. I think mini-agp is a standard, but there's feck all about it on the net.

I called Acer support, and spoke with an asian guy I could barely understand. He gave me a number for a company in Wellington, who then said they can't help me. The referred me to Harvey Norman!
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You could try contacting Tech pacific or finding someone who has an account with them (I don't unfortuately). They are the NZ importer for Acer and will almost certainly have a parts list for your model of laptop.
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commando said:
Has anyone heard of these? Any idea what to get them?

My acer laptop takes them, and I want to upgrade from integrated sis graphics to something better so I can play doom3 when it comes out!


there isnt a laptop alive at the moment that will play doom3, well not at any dencent graphical level....
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How about this one (LINK)

It's a desknote - a desktop in a laptop case. It's a desktop P4 2.66GHz, 768MB RAM, 17 inch LCD. I just found a place that sells mini-agp cards, and can add a 64MB GeForce4 mini-agp card for $350 - I don't know exactly what specs the video card would have - except it's a GeForce 4.

Do you rekon this might work?
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anything but one of the top of the line geforce fx or radeon cards will run it properly...... i guess you could turn all the settings down but that kind of removes the point of playing doom3 Neutral
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Damn. I could always buy the card once the demo's out and see, but then i'd still be down $350 and might not be able to play doom3. Decisions decisions...
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Ok, google to the rescue again... from what's written below it seems that a GeForce4 and a 2.66GHz machine will be easily enough to play it. You might not have every single visual feature on, but it will play well.

From http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=3578
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Chief among the known improvements to this title are in the area of graphics. A real-time lighting model is being implemented that will apply to everything in the game, characters and environments alike. One demo sequence of the engine shows a ceiling fan casting a real-time moving shadow. Every pixel in the game will be at least bump-mapped, and some will require up to 50 passes for current graphics cards to render. id is currently shooting for a photo-realistic quality game, and the hardware requirements alone will be terrifying -- as John Carmack notes that a GeForce 3 will be required to get an average of just 30 fps.


From http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=8076
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Those looking forward to the release of DOOM 3, but still wondering of their machines will be capable of handling the game might want to check out a recent news post at 3D Action Planet. The post contains information, straight from id Software's John Carmack, of the PC version's current minimum specs. Here's the info:

1GHz CPU
256MB RAM
GF1 or Radeon 7xxx series card


There's an article here: http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/carmackdoom3/
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(question)GeForce1/GeForce2/Radeon7500. All would be able to run DOOM3 at lower resolutions with fewer per pixel lights per frame. What about per pixel normalized LightDirection? No cube maps and LightDirection can be stored in diffuse or specular color component of vertex but I'd appreciate a clarification/confirmation from you.

(john carmack)That is actually on my list of things to benchmark, but I rather doubt it will make a difference. I don't think there are enough combiners on a GF1/2 to do it, and I don't expect much of a speedup by skipping a rather low-res cube map access on GF3/4.