Overclocking GPU on Late 2008 MBP, Yay or Nay?

I've been gaming on my MBP's 9600M GT since I got it in October and I've been pretty satisfied with the results. I just started Mirror's Edge and I get an average of 30fps outdoors on Med/High settings at max 900p res and 2x AA (I'd take off AA, but it just looks ugly to me without it). The trouble is that when I enable PhysX my fps drops down to about 26fps avg. I'd like to make up this difference with overclocking, but wasn't sure if I should.

I game about 1.5 hours at a time, and usually GPU-Z reports nothing higher than about 74C (I'm running 181.22 drivers from LV2G). I have a dinky little plastic cooler with three 80mm fans underneath it, too. I was thinking of a modest overclock, say maybe 10-15%, but was wondering what the dangers were, if any and what temps I would see. IMO the newer MBPs are MUCH better at dissipating heat than last gen, so hopefully that won't be much of a concern, plus I could always grab a program to boost the fan speeds as well right, SMTFan I think it's called. If I do go ahead and overclock, which speeds should I increase, core/shader/mem and by how much?

What say you NBR? Worth the performance gains or stupid risk on a relatively new laptop?

 

You only lost 4ish fps turning on physx? Consider yourself lucky. On my gateway fx with a 1gb 9800m gts, when inside buildings and glass starts to fly, I go from 40-50fps to under 10.

 

You probably need the new 9.09 physx drivers. Updating from the included 8 series was a massive improvement. Still, thoughts on OC the MBP?

 

If I were to buy a MBP (which I am seriously considering) I'd probably leave the settings at default in osx. But in a windows xp/vista environment, I'd undervolt the cpu since the 9600 is the limiting factor, and do some overclocking with the 9600 so that I'll get some performance boost while not stressing out the ac adapter much, if at all.

 

Overclocking a laptop is NEVER a good idea. They don't have the proper cooling abilities to be overclocked.

 

Well Khris has a point, but I suppose it depends really. PC laptops generally are thick, meaning good amounts of room to breathe. Also, if you are to overclock, I'd recommend applying AS5 on it. But that'd mean you have to crack the laptop open and stuff, which voids the warranty if you do it wrong. So....risky stuff.

 

the 9600m gt already runs hot. what's the point of overclocking to the point tht it melts...

 

you can try,but always monitor your temps and !stay below 85C!.

 

Trick is keeping these things cool. Is there a fan control that works with the 15.4" Unibody.
My 17" runs at 82-88c on the CPU when playing WOW and about 88 on the GPU. (In OS x) I guess that is why it's back at apple getting repairs. And I have these new shiny 15.4".

 

mine ranges from 76-85 while gaming

 

Those are ridiculously high temps. My gateway 7801u with a 9800gts never goes beyond 65C while gaming. AND it's overclocked.

 

yeah,but how thick is your gateway?and how much does it weight?

 

Well yea, the gateway is about .5 inch thicker. And weighs uhh....9 pounds? But mainly the .5 inch thicker is the temp assist.

 

so you see,MBP isn't a gaming notebook,it is a notebook that can play games if you want.