Amazing what a driver can do.... (M1530 8600M GT OCing).

Just a kind of random post. But with my venture of trying to OC my 8600m GT on my M1530, I have had very little success. I have tried most of the lastest drivers that most people have good results with. 174.74, 174.93, 175.16, 175.70, 175.75 (which I found to just be bad all around). I honestly never found my limit in OC'ing this video card within 3dmark06 (I stopped at 675/900 just because). In 3dmark06 I found that 175.70 would give me the highest score, of 6100ish (@ 1280x800). But with all these drivers the highest I could OC was 525/850.

So doing more research, I found that 169.04 were very popular for our cards. So I decided to try it out. First thing I noticed was my idle temps were a good 2-3c Cooler. Ran 3dmark06 @ 675//900 and netted 6022. So a little lower then the 175.70's but not enough for me to care. So I tried to OC. And right now I am at 600/890 and just got done playing a solid game of TF2 for about a hour (I know a hour is not long enough to test if it is stable). But compared to the other drivers I have tried, it is a good sign. All other drivers at this speed would hard reboot within 15 minutes. Also my max GPU temp was 78C and CPU temp of 70C.

So to me it "feels" like I finally found my driver.

 

Yeah I second that... 169.04s and 171.16s are the greatest drivers, for 8600M GT whether DDR2 or DDR3. I'm using 171.16 for me, seems to be excellent too. More or less on par with 169.04

EDIT: I think I found a thread that tests all the drivers for 8600M. Seems like my findings are right! , 169.04 and 171.16 are the two best drivers on the net.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16952

 

Did you ever compare the 171.16's to 169.04's? I downloaded the 171.16's but had just good results with the 04's I have yet to install them.

 

174.31 worked well for T61p and R61.

 

Oh yeah I tried the 174.31's also lol. I have a HUGE folder full of drivers right now.

 

Since you got yourself a whole set of different drivers, maybe when you're free can you try to put up a new thread about the testing of different drivers? It's good for all of us to see, rather than I see new users making a new post. Posting about the same "what driver for 8600M GT?" thread. Maybe if it's good, your thread can become sticky like a reference thread.

 

That idea actually came to me when I was writing this post. If I was smart I would have kept the data while I was doing my testing. But it is a great idea, and I will do it

 

yea just write your score in a notepad or something. that is going to save users thousands of hours finding the perfect driver

 

Yeah well here is my issue. In that, at least for OC'ing reasons I could get a higher score in 3dmark with a different driver. But try to OC with it, and bleh no good. I will come up with some sort of "scoring" convention of Temps/3dmark/and OC. Even tho the OC will be the hardest because to test if it is stable it can take hours.

 

Wow I OCed 625/525 and I got a 3Dmark of 4759 using 169.01. Seems like I have a lot more room to improve.

 

Actually you don't. Remember that the M1530 has the GDDR3 version. Our memory clocks stock are @ 702mhz.

 

Hmmm.....do u think going from 169.01 to 171.16 would be an upgrade?

 

You could always try it out. It will not hurt anything. My point behind this thread, was to show how much a driver can really affect things.

If you do "upgrade", make sure you use a program like driver sweeper to get rid of all the "residue" that is left behing from your current driver.

 

I think I'll just leave the 169.01 alone. I got good results and still running cool.

 

Then just stick with it. I have that issue of always wanting to try something newer. Hence this post