8600mGT/GS, 1.6/2.0ghz C2D, questions

Hello all, new guy here looking to purchase a new laptop. This will be my first time upgrading to a laptop (or even desktop for that matter) with a dedicated graphics card so I'm pretty excited and I have a lot of questions. I hope you can bear with me.

I've done a bit of research beforehand and considering my budget is <$1000, I came to the conclusion that the 8600m GT is the best card available under that price.

I've put an order in for a Dell Vostro 1500 (15.4" WS) with the following specs:

1.6ghz Core 2 Duo (T5470)
8600m GT GDDR2 (Dell )
XP Home (I'd rather save money keeping XP, Vista can be upgraded later if needed though I doubt that would be any time soon)
120gb HD 5400RPM
2gb RAM (I already purchased 4gb separately so the included RAM isn't really significant other than resale value. I realize XP32 will only recognize about 3gb, but it was on sale and I thought maybe I'd upgrade to Vista64 in the future if it becomes necessary.)
Price ~$870 shipped

During my build waiting period, I've been scouring the net for other laptop deals to see what is available, since I'm assuming I can cancel my Dell order (expected build completion is next week). One caught my eye, the HP dv9500t (17" WS) with the following specs:

2.0ghz Core 2 Duo (T7250, the only difference with the T5470 aside from clock speed seems to be the inclusion of Intel Virtualization Technology, whatever that is)
8600m GS GDDRversion?
Vista Home Premium (I'll have to put XP on there)
240gb HD 5400RPM
1gb RAM (again, I have 4gb waiting to be installed)
Price ~$980 shipped

I will be using this laptop mainly for 3D CAD/modeling/rendering, numerical computation, programming, photoshop, and casual gaming. I don't plan to keep the laptop mobile too often so weight isn't that much of a concern (I've been lugging around an 8lb laptop for the last several years). I'd like to be able to keep this laptop for at least 3 years.

Now, I wouldn't even be considering the dv9500t if it wasn't for the fact that upgrading the Vostro 1500 to a 2.0ghz processor would cost me $85 extra. So for about $25 more, I'd get a 17" screen, more than double the HD space (which I doubt I'd ever use more than 40gb of, at least now anyway), and a few quirky extras from HP (webcam, fingerprint, lightscribe). The areas that do concern me, however, are the video card and spending the money now to have both XP and Vista on there.

My questions are:

How much of a performance difference would I see for my purposes listed above between the different CPUs? Would it even be worth upgrading the CPU?

How much of a performance difference would I see for gaming between the two cards listed above? I'd like to at least be able to run COD4 (with respectable fps, >60 on low/med settings and resolution), though I'd probably stick with sports games, RA2/Generals, and CS:S. Would both cards be able to handle COD4 at my desired settings? If not, what type of fps can I expect?

For the shooters, how much of a FPS decrease can I expect between the different cards (I don't mind a 5-10 fps decrease, but a >20 fps drop would be too much especially if the answer to the following question is no, i.e. I'd get better results from the Vostro 1500).

Will the CPU bottleneck the GPU? If so, how much (in terms of fps difference)?

I guess what it comes down to is this:
- Would it be worth spending $100 extra for the CPU increase, screen size increase, HD increase, and GPU decrease for my purposes? (But my other questions still stand so I can make a better judgement for myself. )

Please feel free to be as detailed as possible and to include any additional information you'd deem important to consider.

Thanks!

edit: Will both above configs blow my current 3.2ghz P4 HT, 9000igp, 1.25 gb ram out of the water in terms of CPU?

 

For the purposes you list, it would be prudent to get the T7250. Ideally you'll want a T7500 or T7700, but given your budget constraints, the T7250 is better.

The two GPUs offer roughly equal performance, and no, the CPU does not bottlenect the GPU.

 

The 8600 GS is significantly less powerful than the 8600 GT.
Now, the 8600GS is on par , or better than a Geforce7700, which from my experience is pretty impressive in CAD applications. If you do not plan to game very often (you`ll be able to play games though,even new ones) I`d say go for the 17` WS (larger is better,don`t care what anybody else says) and the 2.0 Ghz CPu,since 2.2 these days is already considered mainstream . Twice the disk space, Fingerprint reader(awesome feature), great company reputation, altec lansing speakers...
I have an nx9420 hp laptop with the x1600 GPU, which is a tad slower than the geforce 7700, and autocad 2007 runs like a charm on it .
Go for the higher specs, cpu , screen and disk space - wise. And if you can afford it, then go for the 8600GT and the 2.0 Ghz processor

 

the 8600m gt handles COD4 really well. I get around 30 FPS with max settings and 12x8 resolution with 580/445 clocks. not overclocked I get the same performance with textures reduced to high rather than extra. the 8600m gt is a much faster card than the 8600 gs. CPU wont effect gaming much, but will reduce performance in photoshop and your other rendering programs. I'd suggest seeing if you can configure the dell with a better proc.

 

For your kind of use the HP sounds like the best option to me. The bigger screen is really nice for 3D modeling and photoshop, and the graphics card should still be sufficient for the games you play. You didn't specify the screen resolutions though, they could make a bit of a difference.

 

I've been running 800x600 on games with my current 9000igp, with the exception of 1280x800 for CS:CZ. I'm used to squeezing as much fps out of the lowest detail/resolution settings as possible.

Oh, and will both above configs blow my current 3.2ghz P4 HT, 1.25 gb ram out of the water in terms of CPU?

 

MOST DEFINITELY. C2D is one of the greatest CPUs out there,2nd place after the C2Q (core 2 quad)

 

Thanks everybody. I decided to go for the HP...

But then I checked Dell's website one last time only to find they've discounted it some more. Upgraded to T7250 for only $25 more than my previously ordered config, a pretty good deal IMO. While the extra HP goodies would have been nice, I couldn't justify spending $75 more on stuff I didn't really need.

Happy Holidays!