processor swap? (Celeron M to Pentium M)

I have the sudden urge to modify a clunky old laptop and make it into a light gaming machine. While i like power, i dont have a lot of money to spare. I was thinking about using an older celeron laptop and swapping it out for a faster PM chip. I figured it would be a cake walk as long as it has the same socket number. Until recently I had assumed that modern chips are not soldered onto the mobo(except ULV chips). But while playing around with my omnibook 510's PIII-M im pretty sure that one is soldered on.

So before i do spending a bunch of money, i wanted to make sure this was even possible. any ideas? and if it is, do any of you know some models with an ok video card? mostly i find models with ATI 200Ms...like the satalite l25.

Also, if this project is possible, i want to keep total costs under $500 including the a new proc, additional RAM and a faster HDD so ideas are more than welcome

 

I would have sold you my old Pentium M notebook with Mobility radeon 9700. But the Mobo is dead...

 

That's £250. go for the Dell precision M20. it's based on the Dell Latitude D610. I played with one not long ago. It has an Ati fireGL graphics with 64MB. It able to handle games like NFS Most Wanted and Carbon.

The chipset is i915 which allows pin modding

 

for 250 you'll get a 40 to 60bg HDD and 512mb to 1gb ram

 

Ar yes, the old Latitudes (D800 i think? or D810?) had the ATI X300 which should be ok...

 

the D810 can b modded but not the D800. Instead of the D810 you culd go for the M70 which has the Gforce quadro fx = Go 6800 with 256mb

 

You talking about pin modding the Dothan?

 

While I am open to pin modding, I pretty much want to make sure those laptops are socketed to allow for the swap. Im assuming by your responses that it's a yes haha I'll look into the D810 and the M20. thanks!

 

yes. Get one with a pentium M740 then replace it with an M725 or M735 and pin mod it

 

I did the pin mod in the m20 with M715, result 2Ghz.

 

Yes that is a good way of gaining performance with the DOthan... Well Mr Bankai I've got a PM725 lying around. PM me if you need anything.

 

hey so question about the M70...will loading the GeForce 6800 driver make the Quadro Go 1400 work like a 6800???

 

From what I read the GPU bios wil have to be flashed from Go 1400 to FX6800 using nvflash. You can get the video bios by googling it.

For the M20 and the FireGL 3100, I didn't need to flash the GPU as the Omega drivers were detecting it as Ati X300. So try the omega drivers and if you're not happy with the performance then flash the GPU.

Tell me how about the Acer 5050 and its ATI X1100. You could look for one with an AMD Turion and upgrade it later to a Turion X2
Or go for the Gateway MX3101 as I did and upgrade it CPU from a celeron M to a duo core or a duo 2 core. I upgraded mine to a core duo T2500. The GPU is a ATi 200M (X300) and can take up to 128mb or ram

 

2.13 ghz after pin mod

 

Yah I was never able to do it with mine because it had 1st gen centrino chipset...

 

I did it both way. I used a pentium M 715 (first gen.) on an intel 915 to OC via pin mod to 2ghz (dell M20). I also used a celeron M360 to OC via pin mod to 1.86ghz (dell inspiron 1300).

I also help a friend to upgrade from a celeron M to a pentium M on an Intel i855 based Acer laptop. The pentium M was an M740 second gen. (13x133 = 1.73mhz) and was downclocked to 1.3ghz (13x100).

 

Yah I had the 725 and a i855PM (i think). PM notebooks runs very cool, I love em. Mine died a month ago...

 

I sold mine 2 months ago just after upgrading my Gateway and I'm starting to regrate it. With the CoreDuo T2500 the fan doesn't stop spinning althought the temperature is only about 42-46c degrees

 

How much do you think a Inspiron 9300 with a Gefore 6800 be worth?

 

I sew an M70 sold in ebay for £290 2 months ago.

The 9300 with ATi X300 and 64mb Vram about £300
here

 

yes i know the 9300 with x300 is around $300-400 but how much more would it be worth for one with a geforce 6800?

 

I checked ebay world wide and didn't find any 9300 with the GO 6800.

 

i dont know about world wide but one with it just sold for $510 shipped...

I think i came across it by pure luck, all the other ones i've seen are all x300s

How about the 9200 or a dv9000? the first seems to be going for $250-350 while the latter is around $450-600?

I believe the 9200 has a Radeon 9700 while the dv9000 has a GeForce 7600(obviously better) but is it worth the extra $$$? Faster proc too but i dont really care about that. A single core PM modded will be more than enough for me, the card is the main bottleneck

EDIT:hmm...interesting how i've starting finding a ton of other computers on the cheap...

so after seeing so many laptop designs i realized how much i dislike the dv9000's look(to the point that it's on par with the m70 to me LOL) But value wise, which of the following is the best bet?

17"
dv9000 - GeForce 7600
nc8400 - X1600
9300 - GeForce 6800(If i can find another)
9200 - Radeon 9700(about the same as the X600)

15"
m70 - NVIDIA Quadro FX Go 1400(Geforce 6800)
nx4900 - X1600