Want to upgrade the system board for HP dv7

I

Invisible-Bob

New Member
Hello all

I would like to upgrade the system board on my HP laptop.

I have HP Pavilion dv7 laptop. The specs are as follows:

processor: intel core 2 duo T6900 2.80 GHz

ram: 4 gig

system: 64 bit

OS: windows 7 home premium

display adapter: NIVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT

This was considered a very fast setup several years ago but now I'm trying to run Far Cry 3 and it struggles with high settings. Is there a system board that is faster and still available to replace the current one?
 
To my understanding, laptop motherboard is designed to fit individualy classy. And thus, you can't use motherboard from other model to fit yours.

The easiest thing you can do is add RAM, change slow HDD to SSD.
You may stand a chance to upgrade CPU as well.
 
HDD and RAM is usually all you can upgrade in a laptop. You could try and see what CPU's are supported and maybe upgrade to a faster one, but forget about upgrading the motherboard.
 
This is not always right. You have to look at the design of the motherboard and the case to see if it will work, and generally you need to keep the basic design the same. If you have one of teh early DV7s, you can likely get a i7 motherboard to go in it, but it will not give much advantage.

It is easier on Dell's where they keep the design the same over generations. Like you couls use the board from a M6600 (XPS1730) in a M90 (XPS1710) without issue.
 
My 2 cents is this..

I wouldn't say it's impossible..

However, being straight-forward, cost effective, no hassles...I wouldnt bet on it one bit.

As crappy as it sounds, I'd look into a new, modern laptop--or a PC rather than spending money to attempt an upgrade on an old laptop--which has a high probability of failure!

It sucks--but laptops are what they are and except for Ram, HDD, SSD, optical drive..the guts of a laptop in 95% of cases are what they are.
 
Laquer Head said:
My 2 cents is this..

I wouldn't say it's impossible..

However, being straight-forward, cost effective, no hassles...I wouldnt bet on it one bit.

As crappy as it sounds, I'd look into a new, modern laptop--or a PC rather than spending money to attempt an upgrade on an old laptop--which has a high probability of failure!

It sucks--but laptops are what they are and except for Ram, HDD, SSD, optical drive..the guts of a laptop in 95% of cases are what they are.
Click to expand...

Well thanks for all the helpful replies. I guess the old dv7 is what it is and I won't be going down the upgrade road. However there is a silver lining. Actually a very silver lining. It turns out that my new MacBook pro has enough power to run Far Cry 3 at high enough settings to make the game visually applealing with decent frame rates. Just had to install Windows 7 using the boot camp option and upgrade the ram from 4GB to 8GB. The only down side is that it's MacBook pro 13" so it has a small screen but the game looks great.
 
Good thing you had it then.
I hear a lot of people complaining about small screens, but you have to look at it like this. It is resolution over screen size. A 21.5" 1080p looks horrible compared to the 17" 1080p that I use most of teh day. A 15" with IPS would look a little better than the 17" IPS in my laptop. The smaller you go, the higher the pixel density, and the better it looks in game (also make the need for AA go down).
 
wolfeking said:
Good thing you had it then.
I hear a lot of people complaining about small screens, but you have to look at it like this. It is resolution over screen size. A 21.5" 1080p looks horrible compared to the 17" 1080p that I use most of teh day. A 15" with IPS would look a little better than the 17" IPS in my laptop. The smaller you go, the higher the pixel density, and the better it looks in game (also make the need for AA go down).
Click to expand...

When the price comes down a bit I'll probably get a solid state hard drive.
 
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