What can I really do?

Hi All, been looking and looking but can't seem to find anything decisive.
I have a 5 year old HP 8510w currently setup as below.

Win 7, 8Gb ram DDR2 800 (I was told 4Gb was absolute max, but yet the PC sees it), the Video Card is a Nvidia 256 570FX, (showing as a 3Gb Nvidia 570FX now with the ram upgrade), with a 500Gb 7200rpm drive, T8300 800FSB 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo (I think the chip is T8300 might be T8500, I know its a T8X00 chip for sure)

Can I upgrade the CPU to a T9600 1066FSB? Is there any other Socket P Processors that will work with this machine? Does anyone know if the BIOS "White List" can be edited or removed all together? Can I pop another Video Card in it like an older PCI 512 or 1Gb card?

Has anyone on this form pushed an 8510w to its absolute max? and what did it all involve?

Thanks for your time in advance

 

Here are links to modded HP BIOSes with whitelist removed: This is no request thread! HP COMPAQ bioses, how to modify the bios? - Page 29

Looks legit enough to me, but I haven't tried any of these myself so you'll have to check them out and use at your own risk.

 

I'd stay with my T8300, its already 45 nm so the jump in performance to another 800 Mhz processor (imo) is not worth it. Also procesor upgrades in a laptop rarely give a good bang for the buck. I'd save the money for an ssd or a complete machine upgrade since the Quadro FX in your machine has thermal issues (iirc). Good luck.

 

After reviewing the site I was sent too, I found a solution to my issue that seems to be working, the nVidia 570FX drivers are not the best, there were some driver mods on the site that improved performance. In looking up more info on how to do that I came across a nVidea 570/770 FX Win Vista/7/8 beta driver I installed and have gotten a performance boost that is now allowing me to run the programs I set out to run. Thanks for that jimbob, the site has been bookmarked

For the heat, since the 8510w's run hot, I got one of those USB powered fan boards thats been pretty good, but I do have an old leaf blower downstairs and some PVC pipe, with some imagination I think I can make a superpowered Laptop cooler

Anyway thanks again , I guess as for what I can do.... buy another PC next year.

 

Whats an SSD?

 

SSD = Solid State Drive, it replaces your mechanical hard disk with an electronic "disk" made of flash memory chips. They're still much more expensive than comparably sized mechanical hard disks, but the prices are coming down and SSDs are much faster. There's a whole forum here on this site where you can ask any questions you might have about them: SSD Forum

Edit: I looked into your question about upgrading the video card, apparently it is possible but you're limited in what you can upgrade to unless you modify the system BIOS. See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-upgrade-nvidia-quadro-770m-blank-screen.html

I think the "thermal issues" that fakeplasticblah referred to might be the "nvidia defect" that affects nvidia G84 and G86 graphics chips (your FX 570 is based on the G84). This is a manufacturing defect that causes connections within the chip to break. Nvidia apparently corrected the problem, but your GPU might be affected if it was made prior to August 2008.

 

I put in a x-9000 on my 8510 , runs much cooler .never gets over 64c running boinc at 100% , good boost in speed as well it can be overclocked easily . running @ 3.3ghz now