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Hi Sgt-Whiskeyjack, welcome to Club-Vaio.
I have an AR21s and would love to upgrade the graphics card too, but as far as i know this is not possible. 
Maybe some other forum members with more knowledge can help.
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Hi Gang!
Here is a picture of the insides of an AR21S
You can see the nVidia chipset of the GPU circled in red with the cooling fan removed.
You will see that it is an integral part of the main board and cannot be economically upgraded as the chip is soldered in by hundreds of connections.
Hi Gang!
Here is a picture of the insides of an AR21S
You can see the nVidia chipset of the GPU circled in red with the cooling fan removed.
You will see that it is an integral part of the main board and cannot be economically upgraded as the chip is soldered in by hundreds of connections.
Hmmm!! Further question guys, especially Blencogo - When you look at the Go GPU in device manager, does it give the way it is connected? My states PCI bus 1. Could the 31S differ?
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Hmmm!! Further question guys, especially Blencogo - When you look at the Go GPU in device manager, does it give the way it is connected?
No such luck.
PCI or PCI Express in this context is the GPU's internal graphics architecture - nothing to do with the type of connector. You cannot upgrade the graphics on ANY Sony laptop. Forget it.
There are only a handful of very expensive laptops with interchangeable GPUs which use nVidia's MXM technology and (if anything) the number on the market is decreasing. No common interface has been agreed for these cards and they are not guaranteed to be supported in the future.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20040515296771.html
Cheers buddy. That link says it all.
I have my Vaio running really nicely at the moment. I tried a windows vista anytime upgrade, but it lost my soundcard and though it was "this device is working properly" in device manager, nothing I did made windows see that it was installed.
I did a restore to factory settings and since then a lot of little problems I had (distorted sound on Dark Messiah if I tried to use anti-alaising) were cured. I'd recommend doing it if I knew the reason things were fixed 
There is another option for laptop users with upgrading graphic card, and it's gonna be available soon.
Asus is releasing XG Station. I think it's due to be released in May.
It's the very first external docking station for graphic cards (fully sized cards - not GPU chips only) which offers also many other things like 5.1 Surround via Headphones, additional USB ports, 2x LCD ports etc. They gonna sell it with NVIDIA Geforce 7900GS for sure but there will be more I think cards to choose from, they are not going to sell it barebone (without graphic card). The good news is that you can always put any PCI Express x16 compatibile card in it, the only thing that matters is size of the card (as far as I know latest GeForce 8800 are TOO BIG to fit inside )
Anyway, it's cool, it's new and it's gonna cost YA. Although there were no official word about how much, but on one forum I found speculated price of 600$. But it's not for sure.
Just take a look at the screenshot, looks nice doesn't it ???
Unfortunately this docking station doesn't feed picture back to laptop display so you are forced to use external LCD monitor. No problem with people that already have one, additional cost for guys that do not What a shame, maybe they gonna change their mind but ASUS said that they will not give this option.
This is example of setup:
Anyway, if you want to find out more about it visit links below:
more screeshots: http://www.engadget.com/photos/hands-on-with-the-asus-xg-station-external-gpu/
more info: http://www.fareastgizmos.com/computing/asus_xg_station_worlds_first_external_graphics_card_station_f...
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