Turn Your D810 into a Gaming Monster

Well, long story short, my friend got a deal through his college on a Latitude D810. However, as we know, it isn't the best gaming machine . The stock specs were:

1280x800 WXGA+ LCD
1.73GHz Pentium M
512MB (one stick)
Mobility Radeon X600 (Stock 400/300 I think)
60GB 5400RPM
9-Cell battery


Even with my spare 256MB module and the video card overclocked to 510/380, the laptop would barely play games well. Doom played 1024x768 with good image quality only after I heavily tweaked it. CS:S would have big time drops on large servers with many players due to the (slower) CPU. FEAR wouldn't even play at 800x600 with good frame rates and at least some medium settings enabled. So then, here's what I did about it .

First, he purchased a 1GB stick from newegg. RAM was no longer a problem with 1.5GB, and since Dual channel really doesnt mean a heck of alot on the 915 chipset, performance was much better.

Next, I happened to have a spare 1.6GHz 400FSB P-M from a laptop I fixed, so I popped out that 1.73GHz and pin-modded the 1.6GHz to 2.13GHz. CS:S saw a big performance improvement here (obviously), and overall system speed was noticably quicker.


So then, the only thing left to improve was the graphics processing ability of the laptop. I had just replaced my Go 6800 with a Go 7800GTX, so I still had the card hanging around and decided, what the heck, let's try it . The ordeal of me trying to get the stupid card to work in the D810 is covered in this thread. Anyway, the way to ge the laptop to recognize the card is to flash the D810 BIOS to the newest A04, available here. However, there is a problem, as the stock heatsink on the 6800Go does NOT fit into the D810. Also, you must have an X600 in your laptop in order to have the correct cooling layout for all of this. Take a look at the two cooling solutions for the X600 and the Go 6800, you'll see that they are different and that the X600 is much smaller, but, both cards are the same format and size and so are the heatsinks. So then, you have to put the X600 heatsink onto the Go 6800, making sure to include the thermal pads for the RAM on the Go 6800. However, there's a problem with that:

The X600 sits too far above the Go 6800 core to make proper thermal contact, as the picture shows. To fix that, I cut a small square of 0.025" thick copper plating (gotten from my local hardware store, it's used for kick-paneling on doors). I then smoothed the edges with 600grit sandpaper and soaked it in 91% isoprophyl alcohol to clean it and get rid of any finish or oxidation. Here it is on the core (had to put plastic bags on my hands to get it on) with AS5 in between:

I put another layer of AS5 on top of the copper plating and put the heatsink back on:


Closed her back up and viola!, unbelievable performance and the fastest 15.4" notebook that Dell "sells." Scored 4500 in 3DMark05, FEAR and every other game plays at max resolution (which is only 1280x800 ). The card runs hotter than it did in my 9300, but the laptop has slower fans because it is a business laptop aimed at silence. Still, with a little help from I9KFanGUI, the CPU idles at 32C and the card idles at 50C, under load the CPU goes up to 50C and the card hits 70C, still way within specs . Also, the nVidia card makes the screen look so much better, digital vibrance especially brings the screen alive. The entire mod cost nothing really, he paid me for the card but that's it. Betting on today's newegg/eBay prices, 1GB of RAM is ~$60, 1.6GHz 400FSB P-M is ~$50-70 (you could get a better CPU if you wanted), and a Dell Go 6800 is $100-130. For ~$210-250, it's like a brand new laptop . Hoped that help guys, happy modding

Thanks guys! I'm pretty damn excited about it too. My friend could barely keep me off it last night because I wanted to keep testing it out , it's just great .
Crap, that's what I never did though, a battery life test, bah. Still, here's a rough estimate: The 9300 has the same battery as that D810, the 9-Cell 80WHr. With my undervolted 760 (2.0GHz) P-M and the 6800Go, I remember getting a good 1:30-1:45 of gaming time. Seeing that the D810 has a a smaller, less bright screen, slower fans, and more power saving options, I'd bet he could get 2 hours of gaming or more. That's still pretty damn good. Also, as ZX81 said, he could grab the 6-Cell modular battery and tack at least another hour on that. Three hours of quality gaming would be damn sweet .

Yah, I dunno why, but Dell just charges an insane amount for business class products. However, if you can strike up a good deal (EPP?), then they're great. Right now I just configured a D810 with a 1.73GHz, X600, 512MB (2x256MB) RAM, WSXGA+ screen (1680x1050), DVD-burner, and a 9-Cell battery. It came out to $1510. Still, if you could get an extra $300 or so off with a good deal, the entire laptop, witht he above modifications, would still only cost $1500. That's not that bad of a deal at all, I'd take it over an unmodded 9300

Thanks guys!

Unfortunately, no . The 6000 uses a different form factor for it's cards, so the 6800Go is totally incompatible.

I could try undervolting and unclocking, but I think it would probably only get ~15min. more. The actual design of the card just draws more power, not much to do. Anyway, he's plugged in most of the time, so he doesnt really care about battery life. Still, it'll definitely be better than a 9300, which already gets 4 hours on a 9-Cell.

Yah, the warranty is pretty much non-existant on this laptop by now . I guess if a component blew I could ask them to send it to me, but I hope I dont have to ever cross that bridge .

Yes, the notebook would be incredible and it'd be great if Dell opened up to a more portable gaming machine for the market. Still, I'm glad it's possible as of now with not much extra work. I agree that the WUXGA would be way too small to read, but I think a WSXGA+ would be absolutely perfect for the laptop