Vostro 1500 GPU upgrade

You can use a Vostro 1500/Inspiron 1520 8600GT -- however, be sure you realize that the chip on this card is one of those that nVidia has admitted to being of faulty engineering.  You may or may not wind up with one that lasts for a significant period of time.

Whole Dell Vostro 1500 is a lack of engineering, the noise from sound card is killing me.

So, now would be great to somehow find out was is the DELL part number for their 8600m gt that was installed in 1500 vostro's or Ispiron 1520, because i don't want to end up with another 8400m gs card bought from ebay. Any suggestions where to find part number for 8600m gt's?

UW390 is one of them

http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=6032

Okay, now I have all necessary information.

Thanks:)

I have the 8600M GT in my vostro 1500 with 3 gigs of ram, and I manage to play Grand Theft Auto IV, albeit at low settings on a cooling pad, it does occasionally mess up the video, but it's easily remedied by windowing out for a second and re-entering. It doesn't happen often.  GTA IV is one of the more intense games and some are surprised I can even play it on a notebook.

Have you tried overclocking 8600M GT? Because even my 8400M gs can be overclocked quite a bit, and give Fps increase of 25%, so I imagine overclocked 8600m gt would be really powerful gpu.

I have the 8600 GT in my vostro 1500 with 3 gigs of ram, and I manage to play Grand Theft Auto IV, albeit at low settings on a cooling pad, it does occasionally mess up the video, but it's easily remedied by windowing out for a second and re-entering. It doesn't happen often.  GTA IV is one of the more intense games and some are surprised I can even play it on a notebook.

Yes, it decreases video card life if you overclock it too much, and results in heat increase, but if you are overclocking very wisely, than overall performance increase will be way better than just a few celsius impact. For example, I had 3 overclocked Nvidia cards, and no problems with video cards melting down. If  you don't know what you are doing, than I would recommed forget about overclocking.

Since the 8600GT is known to be of faulty design to begin with, overclocking is highly unwise for this model.  It can't cope with the thermal cycling of normal operation without failing in large numbers, let alone cope with the added stress of overclocking.

Thanks both, for the answers. I think for now I'll just keep it the way it is since i really don't know what I'm doing. The FPS is manageable, Im not all that worried about winning the races in the game on a laptop, mainly just having fun.  :)

Hi there. I've got Vostro 1500 2.2 GHz 2GB RAM, GF 8600m GT for 2,5 years. I was wondering about GPU upgrade.I noticed that my GPU is not intergrated and has a slot. and could be released if I wanted so. Also I seen on dell, that they are offering GF 8800m gt, 9800m gt and some gtx's. I was wondering if someone already tried to upgrade to something?

Nothing but the 8400GS and 8600GT is available in a format to fit your system - so  no, there is no upgrade.