Laptop graphics upgrade?

catwoman

I have a Sony vaio vgn-nr31j with a nvidia Gforce 8400m GT dedicated graphics card and I play final fantasy online but find when playing with other users the 128 card produces a lot of lagg. Its on windows vista. Is it possible to upgrade the card to resolve this problem?

jaydeeuk1

I doubt it, as from the specs it seems its the only choice available - often models that can be upgraded would have options to configure them.

And even if you could, it would be incredibly expensive for the upgrade you would be able to get.

You can try the following to get a bit more performance. Increase the size of the graphics card memory within the bios, in addition to the 128mb. Check to make sure its set to share another 128- 256- any more is likely to have a negative impact.

Next, update the graphics card drivers to the latest versions.

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/winvista_x86_178.24_whql_uk.html

You can also change the resolution down in the graphics options, or if it as at the lowest you can reduce other graphic details.

vyseyboy

If it's fine when you play offline, then there's nothing wrong with the graphics card.

A graphics upgrade won't help you with online lag.

You need to get the ping time between you and the game server down to minimum. Start by making sure no one else is using your internet connection at the same time (e.g. if you have a router.) and that you have no minimised peer2peer software or anything else using your connection. Then make sure that you select a server that's geographically nearby (presumably in the UK is what you want to be aiming for.)

There are other tweaks you can do after that but you'd get more relevant information on a gaming forum.

Some tips here, but I'm not entirely sure about the effectiveness of some of the suggestions (and you generally don't want to pursue any of the overclocking options when using a laptop - you can't increase cooling. [easily, anyway...])

http://www.pcgamingrally.com/online-gaming-lag-reduction-tips/