Upgrades for my laptop?

So when I bought this laptop last year, I wanted a cheap mid/low end, sub-$1000 laptop that could handle games. Now however, I find that I can't run games like Arkham Asylum at any settings with frame rates over about 5 fps. I know that this is an older laptop, and I can't expect a whole lot for it. Lately however, I have been wondering if there is a possibility of upgrading it. It is a Lenovo Y510. It has a custom OC'ed 8600m GT gpu with 256 mb GDDR3 memory @ 602 mhz core, 1425mhz shader, and 955mhz memory. (which I know is doomed, and know can't be upgraded). It also has an Intel C2D T5750 running at 2.0 ghz, with a rated FSB of 650mhz (this is from CPU-Z btw). The memory is 2GB DDR2, at 330 mhz (this is what cpu-z tells me, though I can't imagine it's that low). The hard drive is a 250GB model, with 5200rpm speed. So basically I'm wondering what I can upgrade, what I can expect in cost, and what I can expect in terms of performance. Anyways, thanks in advance.

 

Lenovo suggests that you've got a 965 series chipset. Assuming that's right, the fastest processor you can get is a T9500, the most memory you can use is 4GB of DDR2. You should be able to use any SATA HDD or SSD as well.

The 333MHz refers to the actual clock speed of the memory, but since it's DDR (double data rate) memory, the effective speed is 667MHz, which is the effective and sticker speed. Don't worry, there's nothing unusual going on here; this is the fastest memory the 965 chipset will support.

 

Processor and RAM performance boosts in games pale heavily compared to the gpu. I would say instead of spending money on 2/3fps boosts, use the money from your current laptop to get something newer. Depressing advice, but those are my 4 cents

 

I agree getting a new laptop is the best option...

 

Before upgrading, try to figure out why this happens. Your laptop is old, but it really shouldn't be this bad so unless it happens to games other than this one, I suspect there is some software or driver conflict. What drivers are you using? Have you tried it with any other games?

 

I'm using the latest drivers released for XP (190.89). It's fine with other games, but it seems like I have problems with any game using Unreal tech (Mirror's edge, Arkham Asylum, Bioshock, UT3). Bioshock is the best, probably because its not completely UE3, and AA is the worst, probably because its the newest. Even ME and UT3 though, I get almost unplayable performance even on lowest settings.

 

I looked around and you're definitely having issues unrelated to your hardware. Check out this post about Arkham Asylum:

Have you tried disabling PhysX? If so, have you thoroughly uninstalled all of Nvidia's previous drivers? That is, reboot in Safe Mode, uninstall driver via Device Manager telling it to delete all files, run Driver Sweeper (or something similar), delete the leftovers and repeat after rebooting until you're down to generic VGA drivers?

It could be that your processor is severely bottlenecking you, but I don't understand why this would be the case -- your clock speed is only 20% less than the quoted one and the lack of cache shouldn't have that drastic an effect. It's far more likely that something is wrong with a part of your operating system that the Unreal engine relies on. Have you considered upgrading to Windows 7?