I want to swap out my graphics card. (Help?)

[Silicate Wielder]

Okay so i have an HP G72 Laptop and it has an intell 4 mobile express chipset for its graphics card, and I want to swap graphics cards with my sister's laptop which is a Toshiba is it possible for me to upgrade my graphics card with the one in my sister's laptop (Its motherboard is scewed up and toshiba wont upgrade wit without having my mom pay ad muc has the laptop costs to fix it.)

[Thunduhbuhlt]

I am not an expert, but I would assume that if it is the same size and it's compatible with the software then you should be fine, but i would do some research on it.

[Commander Thor]

That's not really possible as the graphics chip is soldered directly to the motherboard.
And even if you could somehow remove the old one, and replace it (Assuming the pin-layout is the same), the BIOS has a 'white-list' of allowed graphics devices, and would most likely refuse to boot upon detecting the unrecognized graphics chip.

tl;dr: No, you can't.

[TheMatrix]

Laptop graphics were not meant to be switched out. Heck, laptops were originally meant to be "portable workstations" so you could edit documents on the go. The gaming (for that time) was done on desktops.
If you've ever wondered why any decent gaming laptops are very expensive, it's because packing a high-end graphics card and a long-lasting battery is no cheap or easy task.

I guess you could buy a "docking station" for your machine(if those exist), and place a graphics card in there.

[ethanf93]

I guess you could buy a "docking station" for your machine(if those exist), and place a graphics card in there.I don't believe any docking stations exist to support that AFAIK they're usually just USB devices -unless your laptop has special support for some sort of dock- and there are effectively no (AFAIK, again) USB graphics cards.

[Skyhawk]

If you don't mind using an external monitor then this will work if you have an expresscard slot (Newer laptops don't have these).

http://www.villageinstruments.com/tiki-index.php?page=ViDock

Also keep in mind that USB 2.0 docking stations are NOT fast enough to run anything like an action movie or a game.

[Commander Thor]

I guess you could buy a "docking station" for your machine(if those exist), and place a graphics card in there.I don't believe any docking stations exist to support that AFAIK they're usually just USB devices -unless your laptop has special support for some sort of dock- and there are effectively no (AFAIK, again) USB graphics cards.

Correct.
While docking stations usually provide some sort of benefit, in the form of additional ports, they do not improve the performance of the laptop in any way, nor do they provide the support to improve the performance.

Referring to my original reply in this thread, there is practically no way to swap out his graphics device, for the graphics device in his sister's laptop (Short of de-soldering his chip, and re-soldering his sister's chip (Again, providing the pin-outs are the same (Which is extremely unlikely between models)).