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Possible to change video card in macbook?

post #1 of 12
8/13/06 at 11:35pm
Thread Starter 
Hi! i'm new to the forums, but i already have a question. So i just got my macbook today, (1.83 GHz, 512MB DDR2 RAM...the white one.) I like it so far, but i am kind of disappointed by its inability to play computer games. I realized that the problem was the poor integrated graphics card. So, i'm wondering if there is a way to cahnge the graphics card with a more powerful one? I heard that the chip is sometimes soldered on so its impossible. Anyone know is the macbook has a soldered video chip?
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post #2 of 12
8/13/06 at 11:44pm
yes they do have soldered GPUs. only systems w/o soldering are the high end systems w/ interchangeable GPUs.
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post #3 of 12
8/14/06 at 12:02am
Thread Starter 
so im guessing thats that and i cant do anything to have my macbook play games better?
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post #4 of 12
8/14/06 at 5:14am
Yep - not much you can do re changing the video card. What games are you trying to play. You can play Guild Wars and WoW on a MacBook, as well as a number of other games ). Unfortunately, playing games like Oblivion and BF2 would not be a good idea.
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post #5 of 12
8/14/06 at 12:54pm
you can do something...

play pong!!! it shouldnt struggle with that
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post #6 of 12
8/14/06 at 9:18pm
Thread Starter 
well im trying to play warcraft 3 which (i dont think) is nearly as graphically demanding as WoW. when i tried, it ran worse then my pc.
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post #7 of 12
8/14/06 at 10:00pm
under windows, OS X, and if in OS X with PPC based code or with a universal binary patch?
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post #8 of 12
8/14/06 at 10:47pm
Thread Starter 
under osx and i believe ppc based code, but im not too sure.
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post #9 of 12
8/15/06 at 12:22am
W3 plays fine on my macbook. odd
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post #10 of 12
8/15/06 at 12:23am
PPC would be the reason. OS X is having to translate the code on the fly (rosetta) to try and render the game. a quick look shows that there isn't a universal binary, tho i did come across the following:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60617212917760
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post #11 of 12
8/15/06 at 1:05am
Thread Starter 
well the thing is, im not sure at all if its ppc, but based on your response i would guess that that is the case. is there a way for me to find out?
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post #12 of 12
8/15/06 at 5:48am
Warcraft 3 is PPC. To find out whether an app is PPC or Universal, right click (control click) on the app and hit Get Info.
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