Yeah that’s right… 6300 3DMarks in 3DMark06 on standard settings…
System Config:
Dell XPS M1530
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7250 (2M Cache, 2.00 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256MB GDDR3 (OC@680/990) 195.62 drivers
3.00 GB RAM / 250GB 5200 rpm HDD
Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7600
Default GDDR3 8600M GT’s Clocks are 475/702 which give a Base Score of ~4200 3DMarks… That is a monstrous 50% increase for an approximate 40% overclock! And the amazing thing is that there’s only about a 4ºC change in peak temperatures… Have a look at the babe…
This babe plays Crysis 2 at a passable 30fps with Advanced Settings@1024×768… Astounding for a 4 year old laptop!
PS: To be a little on the safe side, it would be advisable to overclock to 650/950 or so… That is considering the game crashed with 690/990 clocks in less than a minute…
(edit: 05/05 2011) After loads of gaming—almost done with Crysis 2, played quite a bit of SimCity 4, restarted Unreal Tournament, even took a jab at CS again—I must say, it is completely stable for all ranges of games at 630/940…
I’ve also got a lot of traffic querying for original clocks and best drivers. So here’s a bit of info:
The 8600M GT comes (or rather, came) in 2 variants—one with DDR2, and another with GDDR3. The bandwidth difference makes the Effective Memory Clock at 800Mhz (400×2) for DDR2 and 1404Mhz (702×2) for GDDR3. The rest of the clocks are same.. So here we go:
| DDR2 | GDDR3 | |
| Core | 475 | 475 |
| Shader | 950 | 950 |
| Memory | 400 | 702 |
And as for the best drivers, I have noticed that 195.62 drivers I use here tend to be unstable, and specially so for games like SimCity 4. The latest nVidia Verde drivers—267.76—did fine too. In fact, I have them on right now…