Guest DJ Josh Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Hello everyone, I'm Josh, I have an account on here, but am having trouble logging on, so I thought I'd post as a guest. Anyways, I was able to get a killer deal on a Alienware m15x earlier this year, being a display model, however the display model was a low end one. The specs: Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.1 GHz 4GB RAM (2x2GB DDR2) 250GB Seagate 7200RPM 8MB Cache nVidia 8600m GT 256MB For the price (undisclosed) I was very very happy with my purchase, which beats my old laptop, Pentium 4, 6800 go. Anyways, I figured it was time to upgrade. I got 2 new things coming in the mail, hard drive thursday, and video card on Friday. + 500GB Seagate 7200RPM 16MB Cache + nVidia 9800m GT 512MB Both straight from Alienware Anyways, the real quick question, what can I expect as far as performance increase goes? I am a big World of Warcraft buff as of recent, Currently I can play 1920x1200 with everything maxed, no vsync and no multisampling, and the shader setting on lowest. 30 to 40 fps. I also am getting Sims 3 this week. I would like to get into some first person shooters, but play most of them on my xbox, this laptop was never really worth playing them on. Thanks everyone for the input, and sorry to the mods if I posted this in the wrong forum, and please move it if you can. - DJ Josh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ChiefULE Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Hey theres Josh, You can expect a huge performance increase. You will be able to play heaps of games you weren't really able to with the 8600m GT. I know alot of people who have the 8600M GT card, if you have the card that has DDR3 ram then you are lucky however if you got the card which had only DDR2 then you would most likely have to had Overclocked the DDR2 card heaps to get reasonable performance from it and there would be no way you could have played games at the current resolutions you were running them on with all maxed out settings. You would have just experienced too much stuttering or lag depending on the game. Sims 3 and WOW will run great with you new graphics card and the new hard drive will give you a little boost in startup time and make overall performance feel much more snappier and zippy throughout the system. I recommend you install a fresh copy of windows 7 too. That will be a nice change too. I just installed a full windows 7 professional copy last week and its great. Startup is phenominal and everything else is just great. Cheers. Also the 512mb VRAM jump from your 256mb you had on the 8600M GT card will help you play better in those higher resolutions of 1900 X 1200. Some games you still wont be able to max out every setting like antialising and the like but for the most parts most eye candy will be fine to boost up to high or near max detail settings. Thanks. ChiefULE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zipper Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 You can expect about 3x increase in performance and even more on demanding software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mushi Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Eh? I didn't know it's possible to do such an upgrade...I really do know only a little :) Mind taking pictures of how you perform the upgrade? Would love to see them :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zipper Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Normally it wouldn't work but perhaps his AW has been designed to accept different cards - don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DJ Josh Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 Thanks everyone for the speedy replies! Zipper and mushi, while I am not the most with computer laptop terms, I do know that the m15x uses some sort of a MXM video card, and that's why upgrades are possible. Thanks everyone, maybe I might post a link of some sort with pictures or video while I do the upgrade. Thanks again! Now I'm more excited than ever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zipper Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 I wasn't too sure about a 15" laptop to be able to contain 9800 series (big) card - but it really can handle it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twisteds7 Posted November 15, 2009 Report Share Posted November 15, 2009 I wish I could upgrade my 8600M GT to the 9800M GT; my GPU is the bottleneck on my laptop. Cheers to you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fdl Posted November 26, 2009 Report Share Posted November 26, 2009 No, you can't upgrade your pc with an 9800m because it's a MXM-III card and the 8600m is a MXM-II card...i think that the best MXM-II card is the 9600M GT GDDR3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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