JJ91284 Posted April 11, 2010 Report Share Posted April 11, 2010 Hi I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 that I purchased less than 2 years ago and purchased it almost totally decked out. Unfortunately, I didn't know I purchased the laptop at the end of that chassis/chipset design as they switch over to the 965 instead of the 945 chipset. I have always been displeased with the ATI x1400 video card which is a shared 256mb (hypermemory) video card which utilizes your ram for the additional video memory. Being that I enjoy cracking open electronics and modifying them I under took the task of retrofitting a Dell 8600m gt card. I had to desolder the NIC port on the board as well as the wireless apdapter port on the motherboard and the wireless card attachment on the board. I made a 1/4 inch thick custom copper heatsink that mounts where the stock heatsink went. I had to do a bunch of other tweaks but it looks to be good and you can't tell from the outside that anythings been modded. I will be getting a wirless and ethernet card that slides into the side of the pcmcia slot of my laptop. Now the problem I can't get my laptop to take nvidia's 8600m gt video drivers. I think this is because my bios doesn't recognize the card. When I enter Dell's bios, it states under video settings (can't modify them) Video Controller = Unknown Video Bios Version = .060.084.050.000.002.000 Video Memory = 256mb I believe that my bios is reading the card since it picks up that my 8600m gt card is 256mb of video ram. SO the question is, how can I get my bios to pickup the card. I checked under device manager and it shows my video controller (VGA as having 14mb). Now as far as I know, I thought the 945 chipset that has the pci express video slot didn't have integrated graphics at all. Not to mention my laptop screen does work fine and I can put the resolution up to 1680 x 1050. I ran the vista score test and it gave me a 1 in graphics score so its definitely not working. In a nut shell, Need to get Dell inspiron E1505 with an ati x1400 card to read a Dell 8600m gt card. I have the latest E1505 bios version which is A17. I was thinking of flashing my motherboard with a inspiron 1520 bios or a XPS M1530 bios, but the chipset is a different family and that could render my motherboard dead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJ91284 Posted April 14, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2010 Pics Added Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest John Posted August 20, 2011 Report Share Posted August 20, 2011 Did you ever figure out how to make this work? This would be an awesome mod. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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