EggXpert

Hi,

 With good intentions, my wife bought me a laptop from the Shopping Channel.  It is an Acer Aspire V5 - 531.  The only difference from the stock model is that mine has 8GB of ram, instead of 6.

The laptop seems to be made for the casual user, i.e. internet and office apps.  I'd like it to be a gaming machine as well.  I tried running a few games on it, and it couldn't really run anything (Not even old stuff like Half-Life 2)

Do I have any options for upgrading the CPU and/or Video Card, or am I stuck with it?

Here's the info I got from Acer's website:

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium - 64-bit version - Intel® Pentium® processor 967 (2 MB L3 cache, 1.30 GHz) - 6GB DDR3 SDRAM - 500GB hard drive - 15.6" HD TFT Display (1366 x 768) - Intel® HD Graphics 3000 - Mobile Intel® HM77 Express chipset - webcam - 802.11b/g/n WLAN - 10/100/1000 LAN - Bluetooth® - HDMI® - 2-in-1 card reader - 1-year limited warranty. Color: silver

 Thanks in advance for any help. 

u can upgrade that lappy by building a gaming computer,,,lol.  there's really no upgrading u can do to make that thing into a gamer,,,sorry bro,,it is what is,,,,

other option would be to upgrade ur wife to one with a lot of money,,and she can get u a lappy custom built to play games,,,,this option may be hazardous to ur health and well being,,,we suggest u do not try this at home

Sorry you can't upgrade that laptop in that manner. Only a very select few laptops can be.

fatboyHD:

u can upgrade that lappy by building a gaming computer,,,lol.  there's really no upgrading u can do to make that thing into a gamer,,,sorry bro,,it is what is,,,,

other option would be to upgrade ur wife to one with a lot of money,,and she can get u a lappy custom built to play games,,,,this option may be hazardous to ur health and well being,,,we suggest u do not try this at home

Sometimes you can get lucky with a laptop. The OEM makes several versions with the same motherboard and bios, you get the cheap one and can upgrade the cpu from a single core to a dual or a dual to a quad(for instance). But that's getting good luck. You can almost never upgrade the video because practically no laptop has a video card in it. It's usually a chip built into the motherboard.

In your case, Acer did not make different versions of this laptop, which leaves you with no path to upgrade.

Gaming is really the realm of desktops. On the plus side, you can build a simple desktop that can play any modern game on lower settings for about $250 including a copy of XP(which can still do %95 of games). Assuming you have a monitor.

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"It was getting a bit boring just watching Mew and Products agree 95% of the time." - Gandalf

MewMint:

Gaming is really the realm of desktops. On the plus side, you can build a simple desktop that can play any modern game on lower settings for about $250 including a copy of XP(which can still do %95 of games). Assuming you have a monitor.

Gaming on $250?  That sounds a bit outlandish.  Care to lay out the specs for such a wonder?   My recent build is not exactly game-oriented, but even so, the video card alone pushes $300...

Sure. A $50 H61 a G530 for $50 a used 4850/250 GTS for $50 4gb of DDR3 for $25 a case for $40 a dvd for $20 refurb hdd for $50 and XP 32 bit for $25

Technically $305 (I was forgetting he'll need a case and dvd drive, you can usually carry those over). That will play any modern game at 1650 on low medium settings. BF3 and Kingdoms of Amalur are about the only things that would run under 30 fps(though you couldn't play them on XP anyway). But 9/10 games still work on XP. And if you spend an extra $10 you can get a 64 bit copy of XP and go up to %95+ of modern games.

Yes, you need $1,000+ to build a game system that can play on ultra settings at full HD and get 60+fps, but that is in no way required to play the game. And it's not how %95 of the game's customers play it.

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"It was getting a bit boring just watching Mew and Products agree 95% of the time." - Gandalf