Pentium M bottleneck if upgrade gpu (and yes I can)?

Here would be an attempt by a reasonably cash-strapped academy cadet to squeeze a year or so more life out of his 3-year-old gaming lappy.

In my hiatus that was basic I had not noticed that MXM cards had started to appear en-mass on ebay for prices that finally make an upgrade of my venerable (aka getting too slow) gf 6600.

My question is, if I were to get an 8600gs/gt (haven't decided which I am willing to pay for yet) and put it in, would my 1.73gHz of single core Pentium M start to bottleneck new games like CoD:WaW too much?
I'm not looking for anything spectacular with graphics settings but I would love to be able to get games like that from just below playable at minimum to playable at like med-low. For the most part I am happier with older games and don't get a chance to game too much right now as it is, but I would just like to be able to have something to hold myself over until my pay goes up a bit and I can save the money to get something a few generations newer.

Advice from anyone who knows a lot more about processors than I would be greatly appreciated.

 

Short answer: Yes.

You'll still get the same minimum fps even if your avg and max might be up.

It'd be worth running a game with say, task manager running in the background and alt-tabbing out after you've gotton some bad lag to see if your cpu was running at 100%, then you'll know for that game.

 

Yes that CPU is abit outdated and will bottleneck recent games but the GPU will bottleneck it even more.

Is your current CPU a Pentium M 735?

If you have a Sonoma 915GM/PM chipset, you can do the OC pin mod which will overclock your CPU to around 2.2ghz

 

I do believe with better GPU you will get improvement when gamming.

when you play say CoD4 now, how much does your CPU get loaded ? Does it hit 100% or close ?

 

As others have said, the CPU will eventually bottleneck some games, but the GPU upgrade will definitely benefit your gaming experience as it is a bigger bottleneck than the CPU though. I mean, my desktop has an outdated single core CPU(AMD Athlon 3700+), but an ok GPU(8800 GTS) and my gaming is still alright.

 

Funny you should say that, because I just did that actually when I was home for Thanksgiving, problem is that the 725 that I got ($17 on ebay so I'm not too concerned), once the pinmod was applied and it was running at 2.1gHz, invariably caused instability and it BSODed on me. I'm going to do more tests when I go back home for Christmas, may try to resell that one and pick up another chip to see if it is just the particular core I have.

but anyway, thanks for the replies, I think CoD4 will ramp it to near 100% quite often, but I also have other things running like skype that I could probably ditch. In any case, what you all have been saying is what I suspected. Probably worth 100-175 depending on which card I get then. Should last me until this time next year or so...

 

You cant just upgrade to any gpu you want. You need to find out what MXM slot your system has, and what cards it can accept. I doubt you can upgrade from a 6600 to a 8600 series card. The highest you can probably go is a 7 series card.
To find out, please visit MXM-UPGRADE's website:
http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/

That site is run by a nbr member, who goes by the username "ice-tea"

As for the processor, you can always upgrade it to a PM 780 if you can get one for cheap. The 2.26Ghz clock speed will be a fairly good upgrade.

K-TRON

 

Between the GPU and a better PM series CPU you're probably looking at anywhere from $400-800 anyway. Better off putting that money towards your next purchase.

 

Believe me, I know what I'm doing with the MXM I've been keeping up with it for a very long time, and thankfully the price of the card is reasonable now

 

Believe me, I know what I'm doing with the MXM I've been keeping up with it for a very long time, and thankfully the price of the card is reasonable now

 

go for it. Upgrade the GPU and overclock the CPU. That should do it