I have a Dell 600m with 1 gig of ram and 1.5ghz mobile cpu. Is there anything I can easily do up improve performance? Civ 4 plays really slow

9/27/2008 7:10:58 AM

you can always upgrade the RAM (1gb is pretty low, regardless of what OS you're running...you can pick up 4gb of DDR2 for $30-40 after rebates) and, depending on what hard drive you have in there (i'm too lazy to check), you could throw in a 7200rpm hard drive with a 16mb cache (though unless you're running a 4200rpm drive, it won't make much of a difference)

i suspect you have shared video, and with that little RAM, that might be part of it...i don't know what sort of requirements civ 4 has

9/27/2008 7:58:24 AM

i have a 600m too (i think), max ram is 2gb.. i just ordered the 2gb kit from newegg, ~$50

9/27/2008 11:09:09 AM

The only thing you can upgrade on this laptop is the ram and the harddrive. Mobile CPU sockets have changed and graphics cards are not upgradeable.

9/27/2008 12:42:52 PM

Thanks for the input. Next two questions: How can I tell if my mother board can support addiontal ram? #2 - What process/software should I use to transfer data (OS) from the old drive to the new?

9/27/2008 4:04:04 PM

^ http://crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Inspiron%20600m

9/27/2008 4:05:37 PM

^^ acronis, no contest

9/27/2008 6:03:25 PM

2 Gig is the max amount of RAM.

9/27/2008 7:20:59 PM

Quote :

"The only thing you can upgrade on this laptop is the ram and the harddrive. Mobile CPU sockets have changed and graphics cards are not upgradeable."

Not exactly true...some laptops actually have removable graphic cards that are upgradeable. they are very limited and usually your option to upgrade is very limited but it is possible. In fact, Dell is the one manufacturer where I've actually replaced a damaged video card on a laptop.

Now don't get me wrong, 9/10 the video card is part of the motherboard which means there is no way of upgrading it...but it is possible.

9/27/2008 10:22:54 PM