...in a simlar vein to Turkey's query...

I have a laptop that I use in work and also to play games on:
Dell 8500 Inspiron P4 2.0GHz Widescreen
NVidia 4200Go 64Mb Gfx card
512 Mb memory

...basically it runs perfectly well and can handle most things - It plays CS fine (steady 99 fps in quiet bits, mabe as low as 45ish fps if things get really hectic, but usually 65+ fps).
However with new games coming along (i.e. HL2 ) I'd like to look into extending it's useful gaming life.

I know laptops tend to underperform, and that laptop gfx cards tend to be underclocked to conserve power and reduce heat, but I'm wondering if there's anything worthwhile I can do.
I don't expect to be able to run it at stupid resolutions with all the options enabled, but I'd like to know what options there are to beef it up.

I believe the existing card itself may be tweakable/overclockable - but I've never tried it, and not sure how easy or worthwhile it would be.

The new "NVIDIA Quadro FX Go" series looks amazing, as does the Radeon "Mobility" series.
But I can't find anywhere that sells them in the UK, so I have no idea of the price (scan/dabs/overclockers/etc dont appear to stock the mobile models).


I've tried a couple of Google searches without a great deal of success.
If anyone has any helpful suggestions or knows any good sites then help appreciated.

You can't really upgrade the graphics capability of a laptop as the GPU
tends to be soldered to the motherboard.

You may be able to swap out the processor and add a bit more RAM, but I
imagine that'd be just about it.

Try searching for NVTweak or PowerStrip and see if it's possible to overclock the GPU. It may be.

Hmm, how inconvenient
I though the gfx was swappable (ala desktop pcs) - ah well, will take a look at the tweak routines - cheers

No, your snookered with a laptop. Mostly they only do HD and memory, sometimes the cpu can be swapped, but a lot of the time its just a spare memory slot.