Compaq Presario V3010 performance.

a friend of mine wants to buy a cheap yet featureful notebook
after some browsing with him in a few shops we found the compaq v3010
the specs are:

AMD Turion 64X2 1.66gz
512MB RAM (1x 512), 60GB HD
Geforce go6150 256MB (shared i think)
all the "features" can be found here.

he doesnt need to play doom 3 or far cry
but he does want to play some slightly older games
like gta san andreas and the sims 2
will those games run on that card/config
i will advise him to buy another 512MB so he can get dual channel
but i doubt that increases gpu performance

ive also read the turion 64x2 is almost up to par with a 1.6gz core duo
is that true? please let me know what you think of this system
and are there ways to increase the performance a bit
like overclocking the gpu or other tweaks you may have
thanks in advance for any comments and idea's
his budget is about ~850$ which is the price of this system
any other suggestions for a system within the budget are welcome too

 

I suggest your friend buy 1gb chip and increase the RAM to 1.5gb. The performance boost will be huge; don't worry about dual channel, this won't give you any noticeable performance imporvement.

Make sure the RAM is 667mhz as the Turion will benefit greatly from it, as well as the shared video. I hope the original 512 stick is also 667mhz.
The older games will run perfectly on this card, even Doom 3 will run, provided you have enough (and fast) RAM.
The Turion will lag behind the Core duo in benchmarks but for the normal office/home work I can guarantee you will not notice the difference.

Try customizing v3000z at shopping.hp.com. I don't know but it may turn out cheaper.

 

You won't get single 512MB stick out of customizing v3000z. I don't know if V3010 will get that configuration.