Did I screw up?

[Puddle Jumper]

My thoughts are this. Did you get a Core 2 Duo or just a Pentium Dual Core? There is a difference and the Pentium Dual Core is not that much better than a Pentium M. It is just a Dual Core Pentium chip compared to that of a Core 2 Duo.

Actually Pentium Dual Core's are Core 2 Duo's that have less cache and perform just as good. You might be thinking of a Pentium D but to my knowledge they never made a mobile version of it.

I'm with zedman, I think the 8600gs may be slower than your old systems 7800gt

 

[philbar71]

hmmm the 8600gt should be as powerful as a 7800gt one would think. and there are mobile versions of the pentium dual core.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

. and there are mobile versions of the pentium dual core.

Yes but a Pentium Dual Core is not the same thing as a Pentium D.

Pentium Dual Core = Core 2 with less cache= good

Pentium D= two Pentium 4's stuck together = bad

 

[philbar71]

yes i will say the pentium d's are pretty bad. on paper they look good, but in real life they suck. that's why i'm getting a 45nm supporting mobo and going e8400

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

My dv9700t is similar, 2.5GHz C2D, 8600M GS, 1680x1050. It runs Spore pretty well even at 1680x1050 though I overclocked my GPU using a BIOS mod. When your FPS drops is the HDD light coming on? It could be loading some stuff.

 

[philbar71]

^ that's what i'm thinking it's loading something, or something in the background

 

[zedman3d]

Actually Pentium Dual Core's are Core 2 Duo's that have less cache and perform just as good. You might be thinking of a Pentium D but to my knowledge they never made a mobile version of it.

I'm with zedman, I think the 8600gs may be slower than your old systems 7800gt

That was about to be my exact post. Its pretty much the same.
But yeah i think it was indeed a downgrade video card wise:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.4
TH-Timedemo (1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAF, High Quality)
NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GT : 35.30
NVIDIA Geforce 8600 GT : 31.50

And thats the GT dont forget, not the GS. In other reviews they were close as well with the 7800GT loosing on some occasions but not by much.

And considering that its a mobile 8600GS, i think it was a downgrade.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If you want a performance boost out of the 8600m GS, overclock it a bit. Mine's at 630/475 (stock is 500/400) stable and gaming performance is better.

 

[Naphtali14]

You're sure that you have the latest driver for your graphics card?

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

HP's releases of nVidia drivers aren't very good. I recommend going to LaptopVideo2Go.com and download their drivers and modded inf. You run the exe which extracts a folder, then put the modded inf in the folder, then run setup.exe, it allows you to run new (desktop-only) driver releases on laptop hardware. Works great on my laptop's 8600M GS.