Has anyone ever heard of such a mod?
You can't do it.
The graphics components are soldered and incorporated into the logic board - the PowerBooks (and iBooks, MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Mac mini and 17" and 20" iMacs) don't have graphics "cards" as such, the bits are just merged into the logic board design.
no.
im no electrical engineer but ive seen hard soldered chips like these GPUs before.
there is absolutely NO way you could remove the GPU from the board.
i dont understand your question anymore...
hardware swap what?
Has anyone ever heard of such a mod?
The GPU is surface mounted. There aren't pins sticking out the other side of the logic board that you could desolder.
that answers my questionIt can't be done. Period. End of story.
If it is an academic exercise and we are going to make the assumption (albeit a false one) that the GPU could be swapped between the machines, we would have to know which 12" PB and which 15" PB as there are many different revisions with a few different GPU's.
But it is quite pointless as it can't be done. The GPU is surface mounted. There aren't pins sticking out the other side of the logic board that you could desolder.