Anyone here savvy on PCI card expansion slots for notebooks? I just got a hand me down 2.8 Gig P4 Dell 1150, 384 MB of RAM, yada yada. Problem is, and it's the only real problem, that there's no comprehensive 5.1 audio capability. I stumbled upon Creative's new PCI expansion card a la Audigy which provides this capability. Cool. But then there's the integrated graphics. (I hate IG.) Does anyone know if NVidia has a PCI video card out for notebooks? Or is this something I'm going to just have to settle for less on?

OK, so I found out NVIDIA and ATI make mobile cards for something called PCI Express... how do I know if I have this? Agh.

Well you cant really put any PCI cards in a laptop. Most items are intergrated. As for the PCI-E. its a new technology that is replacing the AGP adapters in Desktops. Its not anything for a laptop. Your gonna be stuck with what ya have.


Youkan

Thanks, maybe I have the nomanclature wrong... the expansion slot for, say, a 256 MB card. What is that called?

And here's the 5.1 I was talking about:

http://www.creative.com/products/produc ... duct=10769

Shit.

I meant PCMCIA.

there is no way to upgrade your graphics adapter in a notebook. you might add ram to improve performance, but the graphic chip will have to stay the same, as it almost always is fixed part of the mainboard in notebooks.

laptop card-slots:
basically, there is PCMCIA - that's the slot your sound-card-add-on makes use of. there is plenty of other available material for PCMCIA, including network, USB and other - but no graphics. there is PCMCIA I and II, with II providing more functionality and speed.

then we have MINI-PCI - a relatively new standard for notebook-addons - to date, you'll mostly find WLAN-adapters for MINI-PCI.

btw, another option to upgrade the sound capabilities is an USB-device like this => http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
mostly, USB-devices have a better price than PCMCIA (and provide more functionality).