Planning To Upgrade CPU/RAM

First things first, I am not a huge techie, but I'm willing to learn more about these sorts of things.

Current Specs: Intel P8700 C2D, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 4670, BIOS Ver. A14

Anyways, hi, I purchased a Studio XPS 1640 back in December '09. I do a lot of "CPU intensive work" (gaming) on my laptop. In order to extend the lifespan of my laptop, I plan on upgrading my CPU/RAM seeing as the GPU is integrated into the motherboard. I want to buy the T9900 CPU and another 4 GB RAM in order to increase gaming performance.

My question is, are these upgrades worth it for gaming? And if so, can my chipset (PM45, I believe) handle a CPU w/ a higher TDP and another 4 GB RAM? Also, is there any way at all to upgrade the GPU without getting a different chipset? Thanks.

 

You won't need more than 4GB for gaming anytime in the next 2+ years. Monitor your ram usage if you want to see just how little ram the newest, most powerful games use.

 

I find that you can never have too much RAM and yes your motherboard can handle another 4GB but if you currently have 4GB then you most likely have two 2GB sticks that you would have to change to two 4GB sticks. I have the T9550 CPU and it works great for gaming and 3D design work. One day I may upgrade to a bigger cpu but for gaming, your best bet for improvement is overclocking the GPU like I did which works great.

 

Gaming isn't going to be bottlenecked much by your processor. If you really wanted to see significant gains, you'd need to better your GPU... which you pretty much can't on the 1640. Upgrading your CPU might get you some small gains in some corner cases, but it's probably not worthwhile. Increasing your memory probably won't that much either.

 

True!!
If purely for gaming, the price increase for upgrading the CPU/RAM, is simply not worth it. One is better off, buying a new laptop, once it gets outdated.(For me, personally , it might be when my laptop doesn't run most current games properly @30 fps avg. at medium/high settings at native resolution).

PS: Maybe, in the future,if some specific popular games become heavily dependent on memory usage/CPU(like GTA4. thought with GTA4 it was primarily due to poor porting;But seems unlikely), you may feel the need to upgrade.

 

Gaming won't require a faster processor, maybe a CPU with 6 MB cache at most. I'd stay with the P8700 lol

For other CPU intensive tasks, depends what they are?

 

Pretty much the only game you'd see an increase in performance with is GTA4.

 

So would I get more out of all this if I just waited to get a 1647 or a 1645 w/ a 5730? Also, I play games like Dragon Age (optimized for quad core CPUs like the i7) on max settings w/ the AC adapter plugged in. Is this, in any way, damaging my CPU or GPU?

 

I think your specs are pretty good in terms of gaming on a laptop for now. If you have a lower rez screen this can last even longer (less pixels to draw). I'd wait until the next line of laptops after the 1645/1647 since it's not like your system is total crap. If you do upgrade though, I'd get an m15x.

 

So I suppose overclocking the 4670 is out of the question for you? I have seen great results with it. Just throwing that out there.

 

How did you cope with the additional heat generated by an overclocked 4670?

 

It really is not that hot... I just play while the laptop is on a flat surface and it can breath fine. I have not had any issue with heating at all

 

Do you know how to overclock the GPU and is there a significant risk of damaging it when OC'ing it?

 

What are your idle and stress temperatures? My GPU, on a Zalmann cooler (and AC room), is like 48 C idle and 70s C stress. Discouraging to OC since I'm used to GPUs that are a lot cooler lol

 

The highest temps without any cooler is 86 C. It is fine. Also on how to overclock the GPU, there is a thread dedicated to that. You would need rivatuner which is free. I have also overclocked my GPU somewhat high so if you want lower temps then mine, just don't overclock too much. You wont hurt it.