I have a laptop that is a couple of years old now, but it still fairly good, a Toshiba SATELLITE A200 PSAF3A-08P01N. The problem I've found now is that the onboard video card is insufficient to run some games, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100.

My question is, I've heard of and see a couple of different programs that, how do I describe it, emulates the physical video card as a newer, nvidia card. I'm not sure if I described it the best. What i've read about them is that when the program runs, it allows the game to run using the physical hardware in your machine, but the game runs somewhat slower.

Does anyone know of this or something like what I'm looking for?

There are "wrappers" which translate code to older hardware, for running things like 3D games on video cards that don't support it. However, your real limitation is the amount of available video RAM. There's no way to emulate it, and running a game on a card with insufficient memory will cause a lot of problems.

Edit: ToMMTi-Systems might be what you're looking for. I've never used it, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness.

Just buy a new laptop.

Or better yet:

Upgrade it.

Or even better:

Build your own

^last two are not as hard as it sounds like.

Upgrading most laptops is a huge pain, and I imagine if buying a new one was an option she would have already opted for it.

Upgrading a laptop isn't really that hard if you know what you're doing. Just youtube or metacafe a how-to video.

Sure it's a pain if it's your first time, but when you know what to do, you can keep upgrading instead of worrying about buying a new machine.

I guess it just depends on the design of the particular computer. I've had laptops I've tried to upgrade the RAM/video card for that required a prodigious amount of work - removing the motherboard with a putty knife being at the top of the list. If you can do it berenene, then by all means - a decent video card will be fairly cheap.

If anyone who reads this does decide to go the upgrade route, _be extraordinarily careful_

I've found the easiest way to upgrade a computer is to hurl it at a wall until the part you want falls out, and then you can just jam the replacement in.

This sounds like my dad's way of fixing viruses. He uninstalls everything on the computer then loses every disk required to reinstall it, curses quietly, attempts to use a copy of the disk, fails, can't figure it out, then declares the virus fried it.

lol at getting viruses.

That sound exactly like something my dad would do

@jonathin I've never been able to find cases/motherboards/graphics cards for building a laptop. Where do you get them?

Googling 'where to buy laptop parts' gave me this and this and this and this, and that was just the first page.

First of all, he.

Now that that is out of the way, I did consider upgrading the video card in it, but I don't use the laptop all that much, and I don't want to have to pay for something that is essentially going to sit and gather dust, also after asking a couple of the people at work who have actually upgraded a laptop, they advised against it. Most of my games I use my PC for as it's got the grunt. The only reason I bought it was because my older one was about 5 years old at the time, and we had a special deal on with work with getting these types of laptops. I used to take it with me when I traveled with work, but taking that and my work laptop got to be a pain. So now it will usually go with me whne I go on holiday somewhere so I've got access to the internet.

Thanks for all the advice though.

My bad. Both your avatar and signature have chicks in 'em, so I just assumed.

Did that ToMMTi-Systems program work for you at all?

Avatar was an animated gif I made that I thought looked freeky/funny. Sig is from a webcomic - www.darthsanddroids.net - a hilarious strip about what it would be like if the Star Wars movies were tabletop RPG's like DnD.

I haven't had a chance to try ToMMTi-Systems and probably won't get a chance before I need it. It is for a LAN night we're having tomorrow and Sunday.

What kind of games are you planning to try and play? I mean, it's one thing to trick your system into being able to physically play something and it sort of working at minimum settings, but another for it to play it, but at 5-10 FPS and thus not really worth it.

Left 4 dead and Supreme Commander.

As it was, I hauled out my PC over to the event and played on that