Upgrading from 7500M to 9000M - Possible?

[Caith]

Well, I'm kicking myself. My brand-new laptop (Presario 2800T) with its Radeon 7500 Mobility arrived yesterday. So of course, when I head to the ATI site today for drivers, what do I see? Radeon 9000 Mobility... Ouch.

So.. I definately want a 9000 in there. I know the 7500 and 9000 Mobilities are pin compatible, so theoretically, it ought to be possible to replace the 7500 with the 9000 (Or so I am assuming).
Problems here are:
1. Getting my hands on a Radeon 9000 Mobility, since they aren't really sold at retail at all. Anyone have any ideas where I could get one?
2. Actually replacing the card. Will almost certainly void my warranty, though I would assume I could manage to do it.

The other option is to return the laptop, pay the ship and restock fees (Since I threw out some of the packing materials yesterday), and reorder the same configuration with the 9000 instead of the 7500 ($50 more). The question here is whether or not it is possible to go the first route at all (Upgrading the video card...) and secondly whether or not it would actually be worth it to do so (I would have to pay ship and restock fees, but I'd still have my warranty, and there wouldn't be any chance of me doing anything fatal to my laptop's innards. Unfortunately, I'd have around a month's delay before the new laptop would ship out.

I have 13 more days to decide on this, beforfe the unconditional return period on my Presario 2800T runs out...

 

[Alphazero]

I highly doubt that can be done. The chip is most likely soldered to the laptop's board, and the internal components are wired to work with the 7500.

 

[DeRusto]

I am entirely unsure about the ability to replace the video chip in a laptop, but considreing the assumed difficulty in aquiring a 9000M chip, I would say the best bet is probably to return the laptop and order a new one with the newer chip in it.

 

[MSantiago]

The Mobility 7500 is soldered on-board with the Presario 2800, so you really won't be able to do anything there. I have a 2800 and I'm not really worried too much about the Mobility 9000. It's nice and it's DX8 compliant, but it's not that much faster than the 7500.

Inspirion 8100/8200 users might be in luck though. They use Mini AGP video cards and you should just be able to swap out your old 7500/GeForce 2/4 Go and put in a new card. The big problem would be actually finding a place that sells one.

 

[hans007]

well if you were an insane h4x0r, basically you'd have to desolder that chip from the presario 2800, reflash the bios on the 2800 to say it has a 9000.


you could get the chip by buying a standard radeon 9000 pro card, and getting the bios from the new 2800 with the 9000 to lower its clock speeds, since the mobility is supposed to be identical to the desktop one.



basically this would be insanely hard.

 

[Dudd]

If Dell ever offers the 9000 in their laptops, then you should be able to pick one up from their spare parts department. If you go on the Dell forums, someone has the numbers. However, that's all hinging on Dell offering it.

 

[TEEZLE]

Here's a differenty response to your question. I have the 7500 in my Compaq 1500 and I updated the drivers to the Radeon 9000. Every feature of the drivers worked. It even gave me the ability to rotate my screen by 90 degrees, 180 degrees...etc Just in case any of you with the 7500 want to try. It actually sped up my system too. LMK when you guys try it.