Toshiba Laptop Improving Video (internal graphics card)

[niva441]

I've just started using my Toshiba L500-19X and am mostly pleased with its performance. The only thing that detracts from it is its graphics performance.

The most graphically intensive program I use requires OpenGL capability. The computer has difficulty displaying this program, there are errors in the display also the animation is very slow and jerky. The desktop I also use copes fine with a 1/2 Gb video card, so is the installed card not as OpenGL compatible as it claims to be?

I have found that by reducing the screen resolution the display and animation become adequate, although the initial rendering still takes some significant time.

My natural inclination is to improve the video performance by increasing the memory. Is there anyway to force the laptop to dedicate more of its system memory to video?

Can anyone suggest a way to upgrade the machine and improve this aspect of its performance. I see on the website that the Toshiba Ginga USB stick can be used to upgrade the computers memory, would this allow the video memory to be increased.

Otherwise I may have to admit that I specced the machine wrong and think about upgrading very soon (this would please my niece, as she get this rather than the old machine).

I'd appreciate your thoughts

Thanks

Todd

[The_Jackal]

I'm afraid, unless it is something like an Nvidia or ATI internal card your are stuck with lacklustre graphics ability.
If you are lucky you may be able to find some bodged OpenGL drivers for onboard laptop graphics, but you will have to do some digging around.

[niva441]

Thanks for the reply. The original Toshiba driver claims to support OpenGL, as it didn't do a good job I tried the Intel's own version of the driver. Unfortunately it didn't make much difference, although by tweaking settings I was able to get the application to run rather than spending lots of time, before deciding to lock up.

I'm assuming that there aren't likely to be any other driver sources.

I'm thinking that I may have to bit the bullet and upgrade to a machine with a dedicated video card. Which as I've not had it a month yet is a bit galling, but guess who specced the machine...

Edited by niva441 on Saturday 23 January 20:36

[Holst]

Before you buy a new laptop try setting the power saving options in control panel to disabled, this might gain you a bit more performance.

There might be some options in the bios to allocate more memory but you are really limited by the very slow onboard graphics processor.