Upgrading laptop graphics on an EeePc, can it work?
 

Hi there!

I bought myself a second hand EeePc (1101HA) a while ago, and I'd love it if it wasn't for the horrible Intel GMA500 chipset.
As I can see on this page dissecting this netbook there is a mini PCI-E slot which is currently taken by the WiFi-card.

Now, I have a theoretical plan:

• Replace the PCI-E WiFi card with a (low-power) PCI-E gfx card
• Replace the USB bluetooth module with a USB wifi module

But as far as I can Google, it hasn't been done.

The USB Bluetooth -> USB WiFi operation shouldn't be too heavy, as long as I can attach the antenna so the signal strength remains intact. This will be a bit of wiring at most, but nothing serious enough that it is unmoddable.

What I'm wondering about is if I can simply plug in a mini PCI-E graphics card and make it work, or if there are any limiting factors (BIOS?) keeping me from doing this.

There's no such thing as a mini PCIe GPU.

nope. cant be done.

There is such a thing as a mini pci-e port my laptop has one for the 5870, but it would have to be 2.0 x16 for a video card to work. and seeing as its a wifi pci bus its most likely pci x1. A new video card would be around the price of a nice new laptop anyways.

Thanks, and crap. The (lack of) graphics (driver support by intel) is by far the worst point of this netbook. I consider trading it for another model now.

The only viable solutions in mobile systems is if you had a pci-e expansion card where you could then use an external card. Internal cards can only be used if there are MXM slots which come in more than one format, however as it has been already stated, a single MXM card is already too expensive, some of them cost as much as building a decent specced rig which would ultimately be better.

The fact that it doesn't really exist does explain my lack of Google success too :)

I think any netbook manufacturer wouldn't really even consider the option since it would compromise the netbooks primary points (being mobility, battery life and so on at a low cost).

If you could access the mPCIe slot externally, you could make a DIY eGPU.

So the only actual complaint is lack of driver support. While that might be crap in the Windows world, in the Linux world it means that the fact that they have the freedom to mess with the drivers (open source) and built them in.
When installing e.g. Linux Mint the drivers should be "there". BTW, be clever and install their LXDE version, as this is more leightweight and thus more suitable for netbooks.

I have fooled around with several Linux versions including Mint and several Ubuntu versions, but as this GMA500 is really the odd one out of all Intels chipsets (it's a bought PowerVR chip, not Intels own-made stuff), all drivers suck.

Gonna experiment with some customized drivers now.

if you want gaming performance of any kind from a netbook, you need one of AMD's APU setups running fusion.


even then performance wont be too fantastic, but at least they'd support 3D games enough to start them