upgrading CPU in dell inspiron 8600

hi,
i have a dell inspiron 8600 (had it about two years now) and have just come into a good amount of money and whant to upgrade to its full extent, i am about to max out the ram to 2gigs and upgrade the video card, i have tried both dell and intel and they refuse to help as my warranty has run out and "they dont do upgrades for there systems"

is there anyone who can either recommend any other upgrades or help, i dont know what to do with the processor, what do i need and how much will it cost and what is the max ghz it will take ?

thanks in advance
Adam

 

Hello and welcome.

I am sorry, you most likely cant upgrade the video, and as for the cpu, you cant upgrade to the latest cpu. But you can upgrade, HD and CD/DVD drive.

JC

 

The fastest processor your system will support is the Pentium M 1.7 GHz model. This is Banias model, and not a Dothan. The Banias runs on a 400 MHz, unlike the Dothan which runs on 533 Mhz. The only Dothan to run on 400 Mhz where those models ending 7X5. Banias processors are quite old, in comparision to the processors of today, and you may aready have the 1.7 GHz model installed. In that case, there is no processor upgrade for you.

 

Spending large amounts of money to upgrade that computer is kind of pointless, and it would be much more beneficial to take the money and buy a new computer. You just can't upgrade things like that unfortunately.

 

thanks for the help,

although the news is not good on my dell i still will have a try, there was very very old topic on here about some guys upgrading there dells (same specs as mine) but i cant get any replys because its so old, they managed to up there CPU's to 2.0ghz and wanted to go further,

anyway thanks for your help
Adam

 

What processor do you currently have installed? The Banias Pentium M won't be able to be upgraded to anything but another Banias. Later in its lifetime, the Inspiron 8600 did get a revision and had a Dothan Pentium M CPU. That is not compatible with the Banias. The Dothan went up to 2.1GHz.

Adam, what do you do with this machine? Remember that, being a mobile processor, the Pentium M runs at 800MHz most of the time to save power and produce less heat. Therefore, even if you do get a 2.0GHz CPU (assuming that it can even be upgraded to something better), it won't make much of a difference for the vast majority of tasks.

In gaming, a faster CPU won't help much because the video card is the bottleneck.

Upgrading the RAM is a good idea. I would suggest upgrading the hard drive to a 7200RPM model to increase performance. That will make the most noticeable difference.

Just to clarify, the Banias did not have a processor number; the Dothan processor ended in the 7x5 as you said.

There are two versions of Dothan - those in the Centrino platform that used DDR RAM, the Intel 855 chipset, and had a 400MHz FSB, and the revised Pentium M Dothan's that appeared in the Sonoma Centrino platform; they used the Intel 915 series chipset, had a 533MHz FSB, and DDR2 RAM.

 

Dothans are 400MHz fsb and 533MHz fsb, depending on whether they are 7*5 or 7*0 model numbers respectively.

 

That's precisely what I stated.