low 3dmark and not overclocking

hey everyone, im having a few problems here. just to preface iam a seasoned overclocker (have dealt with many vmods, bio mods and have built phase change systems)
i just got my dv2500t and have been playing with it. my original 3dmark score was 1300. i cannot remember which drivers this was with. after overclocking my 8400gs to 630/950 i got 1600.
here's problems number one, i could only get 1600 if i ran the first test exited and started it again. the frame rate would be roughly double on this test.

the next issue is i tried installing the 169.17 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com . after i did that twhenever i would try to overclock the sliders would reset. i tried reverting to the 101s and 158.45 to no avail. after reinstalling vista i tried the 169.21 drivers though they didn't work either. the only way to overclock is to reinstall vista and use the stock hp drivers then not touching the drivers. How do i install updated drivers
(main problem with 101s is speed and lack of control over shader clock)

the next problem is that i added a 2gb stick of ram giving me 3gigs since then i couldn't hit over 1000 in 3dmark. could the lack of bandwidth effect my score that much? or is something else wrong?

thanks!
btw all scores are in 3dmark 2006

 

That's an interesting story, thanks for sharing.

Which program are you using to overclock? I'd recommend installing the 169.04 drivers and then (re)installing Rivatuner.

Make sure you do a clean driver install - completely uninstall the old drivers, then clean out the registry with a program like RegScrubXP. Instal the new drivers and then install Rivatuner. See if that does anything for you.

My last question for you - do you know if anyone else has successfully overclocked a dv2500t?

The decreased performance from adding RAM definitely sounds like a bandwidth issue. The 8400M-GS uses shared memory rather heavily so in any game that uses more than 64MB of video memory you are going to see a big decrease in performance if you do not have dual channel memory.

 

thanks for the reply, ill give those drivers a go but iam not to confident..... i tried crysis on the 101s and it wasnt even running it on low spec. is there any way for me to tighten my ram timings? it seems pretty hard to do on a laptop.
as for the dual channel.... good pickup. i should probably run ssandra and see what im getting bandwidth wise. the question is now do i switch back to 2x1gb chips or do i buy another 2gb stick? if i buy another 2gb stick iam afraid that they wont match.

thanks! ill try and post results

:EDIT: I have been using rivatuner, ntune and atitool. when i said i cant o/c that with all of those

 

it worked! i used the drivercleaner from guru3d and installed the 169.04 drivers. u can now overclock. my stock score is 1300~. which is the same as before i switched the ram..... should i still switch back

now here the doozey..... i overclocked to 660/955! the problem is that i got 1100 on 3dmark06. which is less than stock. both rivatuner and atitool pick up the clock so it isnt fake. if i restart proxicon enough times the speeds will get close to doubling. im going to try it now to get the real score.

any idea why this happens? thanks!

:EDIT: I jus got 1703 in 3dmark06 :-D , thats my highest so far. and the clocks iam getting on this thing are sick. thats without frags for a while in atitool. it seems that the fast runs are initiated more often when there is an IE window open... go figure. any ideas on that?