Vostro 1500 8600m GT Driver and OC Benchmarks

I was bored this weekend so I tried out some benchmarking and overclocking to get my laptop back up to optimal condition and to see if I should commit to buying the PC version of RE5.

You can see my laptop specs in my sig, and I should specify my 8600m GT is the DDR2 version.

First I tried the 195.62 drivers which were the latest ones available straight from Nvidia, and then I tried the 186.82 drivers everyone's been raving about, and then I installed nTune and did some overclocking from the stock settings of 475Mhz Core/400Mhz Bus to 556Mhz Core/445Mhz Bus.

All tests were done consecutively after a fresh boot, with HWMonitor keeping track of the temps throughout all tests. The temps listed are the highest temp recorded after having run every single test.



On the second column the percent is the percentage increase over the first column, and on the third column the first percent is the increase over the second column and the second percent is the increase over the first column.

I forgot to record the overall 3DMark06 score for the first test so I didn't record it for the others, but it shouldn't really matter anyways since the CPU scores didn't change. IIRC I broke 4400 on the last test.

Going from 195.62 to 186.82 drivers resulted in virtually no change in 3DMark06 and Source engine related tests, but an amazing 16-32% increase in Crysis and RE5 benchmarks.

Overclocking further increased scores across the board by a solid 9-15% with a couple exceptions (that were probably bottlenecking at the CPU) and there were no signs of overheating, instability, or artifacts throughout the whole thing.

Temps didn't really change much even with overclocking. It should be noted that my processor is undervolted (which dropped CPU temp under load by a whopping 14C) which has significantly improved overall cooling, and I do not use any external cooling solutions like a fan or pad.

I think this is a great example of how big of a difference different drivers can make, and how just because you don't see a difference in one benchmark or game does not mean there won't be a large difference in other benches/games. And it's nice to see how the increased 3DMark score from overclocking related pretty closely to how much game performance increased.

P.S. Yay, I'm getting RE5

 

I appreciate that you used concrete benchmarks in your comparison.

The Vostro 1500 has the greatest cooling solution, ever. I miss mine.

I ran mine at core/mem of 565/525, but this was back when I thought all those little yellow things were supposed to be in ATITool.

 

T61p has a great cooling system... never tried the Vostro though.

 

Great OC scores. Those days of good ol' Dell Vostros 1700/1500 and Inspiron 1520/1720 armed with GM/PM965 Santa Rosas were considered the best cooling solutions at the time. Max temps of 68*C on my 1720 here. 2 1/2 years and still running as new. Don't forget the build quality of those machines - hard and tough, zero flex and built like a tank.

Kinda funny they're armed with the 8400M/8600M which were said to be defective.

Great scores. Keep it up.