sorry, I didn't even realize that this is an old thread - so I just looked at the introductory posting (from June) and was referring to those specs/settings (no ALS mentioned there at all), I didn't look at the subsequent postings (which also happen to be old).
Still, the truth is that people who are GPU-limited can usually do something about it, while being CPU-limited is a completely different issue, and very unlikely to show up for power users (like the two of us).
Honestly, you cannot really understand the importance of the difference unless you are able to patch FG and build from source, using tools like a CPU/GPU profiler and debugger to differentiate between CPU/GPU level issues and vice versa.
There are major issues like the mark/sweep Nasal GC or redundant/leaking listeners, memory management issues (or the effects cache) that don't show up for people on powerful hardware with plenty of horsepower, like Torsten, ThorstenB, you and I have repeatedly confirmed.
This was never about you owning a 8600M-based laptop or not, if anything, it is about enabling people to draw the proper conclusions by using all the tools at their disposal, including CPU/GPU profilers - like Mathias, Tim, Fred and others did.
Otherwise, we will keep on seeing end-users with lower-end hardware who report bugs that we cannot even see, let alone reproduce, due to the sheer horsepower of our hardware, or simply our unwillingness to fire up a profiler to see what the CPU and GPU are actually doing.
And doing that would be useful even regardless of ALS or other effects/shader based features, because the majority of end-users are likely to be CPU-limited anyway (as per the core developer comments quoted above)