Inspiron 1720 Upgrade Recomendations

I am still waiting on my Dell Inspiron 1720, but I feel like I've owned it for months from the amount of research I have been doing on it. I am still happy with my purchase but the lower-powered version of the GeForce 8600m GT kinda irks me...but hey as long as BF2 runs nicely I'll be cool.

1. Anyways I am interested in squeezing the largest amount of performance power out of my rig. I am quite willing to overclock my video card, but I need some recomendations as to some good OCing guides and a good OCing program for my nVidia chip. So any help on this front would be faaaaantastic.

2. I also want to increase performance by adding more RAM and a faster HD, but I have a question about the number of RAM chips that are going to come with my Inspiron. I am planning on upgrading the RAM from 2GB to more shortly after I get my laptop, but will I have to totally replace the ones that Dell put in there or are there still going to be some empty slots? This is VERY important to me as it determines how much I will have to spend.

3. Finally, any other recomendations as far as getting the most out of my rig in games? What are the BEST drivers for the GeForce 8600m GT?

Thanks a lot guys!

 

1. 2gb of RAM is enough for now.

2. Don't OC your GPU until you notice you want better performance in your games if you are getting poor performance.

3. Your HDD is fine. High density + 5,400rpm speed = near 7,200rpm HDD speeds.

Your best bet for upgrading RAM would be to remove one of the 1gb sticks and insert a 2gb stick. Or you can replace the two in their now and replace them with 2gb sticks each.

 

Mehh He doesnt need 4 gigs yet... I would say 3 gigs max right now, then MAYBE upgrade to 4 gigs later, because in order for vista to see that you have 4 gigs, you would need to have Vista Ultimate, then other versions see 3.2 gigs MAX.

Anyways,

Dont OC until you deperatly have to, so you can play a game at low settings. An Exception would be Crysis, you may want to OC there. I good one for Nvidea is NTune.... i believe.

And you HD is compleatly fine.

 

thanks for the quick responses guys!

Alright then I will only begin to consider OCing if I end up being dissapointed with my framerates. But I think I may still upgrade the RAM and HD just because I will eventually want to in the future and I have a good deal of $$ right now.

I am still wondering what a good set of drivers are though. Will the 8 series Driver off of the nVidia website even work on my machine? And the Laptopvideo2go website is SO HARD to understand...it simply gives you a big list of drivers but you have no clue which drivers are for what GPU...

 

b u m p