Overclocking 8600mGT on Inspiron 1520 WITH Windows 7?

I have seen plenty of threads of people overclocking the nVidia 8600m GT on their Inspiron 1520 but on Vista OS. Is overclocking on the Windows 7 OS any different? What programs should I have aside from Rivatuner224c and 3DMark06?

 

Nvidia system tools + get drivers form laptopvideotogo.

Also I like to use ATItool to find max core and max mem, it makes it easy so you can walk away, come back and it's already found the max

 

There should be no difference between overclocking in Windows 7 to Windows Vista. They are very similar, so most programs will work in both.

 

Plus with ATITool you can check for artifacts. Also 3DMark Vantage and Unigine benchmark.

 

What drivers should I be looking for to effective overclocking? There's quite a bit of them out there with varying results.

 

I recommend RivaTuner for general-purpose overclocking, and it should work fine on Windows 7.

I haven't overclocked my 1520 since late 2008 (on XP - Vista isn't required), and can't tell you which drivers are best right now. However, do note that the 8600M GT (and all other nVIDIA 8-series GPUs) has a defect that makes it far more suspectible to heat cycles than most GPUs. In other words, on average it will fail far sooner from normal wear and tear than most GPUs. Practically speaking, if your average GPU temps while gaming are already 75ºC or higher, you probably won't be doing it much more harm by overclocking, as you are already putting it though heat cycles at those temperatures, but you won't be doing it any good, either. Google "nvidia defect" (without quotes) and you can read up on this. This is why I haven't overclocked my 1520 in more than a year - along with the fact that I didn't really need to.

Not saying your GPU will fail - mine's survived more than 2.5 years, so it's certainly possible that you'll be lucky - but more than standard caution would be prudent.

 

I second the above.

 

you can definitiely overclock the 8600gt and its the same in vista and win7
i used to have a 8600gs anf i overclocked it using dox's 169.09 which i think i the best for the 8600gs. not sure if its also the best for the 8600gt and on win7 tho
but llike mentioned previously, you are risking gpu failure by o/cing the 8xxx series cards.
mine failed once but luck for me it was still 2 weeks within warranty!
on my second card i had to adjust my o/c downwards after 4 months or so - a sure sign of impending failure.
if you have the finances, maybe its better if you sell your laptop while its still working and has some resale value and pick up a new one as there are some good deals to be had atm.

well just my 2 bits anyways