I need to upgrade my videocard and if possible my CPU

[Toffeelegs]

Hello everyone.

I have had this notebook (HP Pavilion dv8 product No VJ746EA#ABU) for nearly 9 years. It is an old friend. Notebook wise,  It has never let me down. It was state of the art when I bought it. I play World of Warcraft every day, and recently it has struggled with the graphics. Even with everything at low settings it struggles to manage 25fps. As it was a high end business laptop, I am hoping I should be able to upgrade my onboard video and maybe the processor. I have 8GB of ram. Currently it has the Intel i7 720QM 1.6ghz CPU and an Nvidia Geforce 230M videocard with the GT216GPU. I really do not have the funds to buy another gaming laptop at this time.  I am hoping someone out there has a solution. It really is a super reliable workhorse and I am loath to throw it onto the scrapheap.

Kind regards

[Huffer]

This is always difficult news to convey but people, even sophisticated computer users, often misunderstand how a laptop is made. Unlike a desktop computer which has room inside and expansion slots for industry standard devices like video cards, laptops are made from a flat motherboard that has all its components soldered on, with the possible exception of processors and memory and storage. On almost all consumer laptops the video "card" is really a chip soldered flat to the motherboard, which cannot be altered in any way; upgrading requires replacement of the motherboard. Some very high end gaming and engineering laptops have what is called an MXM video card slot, but even these are not really comparable to the PCI-e video slot on a desktop as upgrades are limited and very hard to locate and buy. But I digress as your laptop has no MXM slot. 

Your model the dv8-1000 series came in two variations. One has a Core i7-720QM and a GeForce 230M video card and the other had a Core i7-820QM and a GeForce 250M. This is the Service Manual:

Manual

The processor is socketed so you could replace your i7-720QM with an i7-820QM and that would provide some level of performance upgrade but would not upgrade video. For that you must replace the motherboard. However, the Manual only lists one part number for the motherboard so it is unclear to me what part you would need to get to have the 250M graphics. 

I do see on eBay a dv8 motherboard which is advertised to use DDR3 memory:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-HP-DV8-DV8T-Laptop-Motherboard-591382-001-Intel-DDR3-PM55-DAUT8AMB8D0/1...

This part number is for the dv8-1200 series and may fit in your chassis. You could compare images and see if the mounting holes appear in the same places. The dv8 was a unique machine...not a lot of them were sold so supplies of parts are somewhat limited and HP would no longer have anything in stock for it. 

I think any of these upgrades would not improve gaming performance enough to be worth the investment. 

Post back with any other questions and please accept as solution if its the info you needed even if not exactly what you hoped to find out. 

[Toffeelegs]

Hi Huffer

Thank you for the reply.

You are right of course about the laptop motherboards and I will now have to accept that my laptop has effectively reached the end of its gaming career. I will still use it for my workaday stuff. I guess I will have to go back to building a gaming desktop. I got rid of my previous desktop because it annoyed my beautiful bride with its messy periperals etc. And had to go to prevent strife.

thanks though for the solid information..

kind regards.