5553G AMD N930 CPU overclocking: How?

Hi fellow NBR Acer owners,


Made a decision today – my 5553G’s AMD Phenom II N930 CPU must be overclocked. Here’s why.

Bottleneck heartaches... I’ll admit, I bought this laptop for budget gaming (on top of generic tasks), even RMAed an AS5742G so I could get this one (the returned one had i5 460M CPU, and GT420M GPU). However, I’m getting quite frustrating bottlenecking in the ATI 5650 GPU performance, by this CPU. I know it’s definitely CPU bottlenecking in those games (e.g. Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit), because when I lower resolution to 800x600, and all effects to minimum/none, the framerate stayed the exact same!!!

Thermal leeway... to put it simply, the CPU runs really cool. I put it through several IntelBurn tests and the highest it got was consistently 69 C. I put it through Crysis on high settings for an hour and it got to 68 C at some point in that hour. The worst I’ve put it through (IntelBurn on all 4 cores, + Furmark GPU burning), it stayed at 76 C solid after fans kicked in full force. Now if it regularly gets to 85 C then I wouldn’t bother making this thread because overclocking would be suicide, but it isn’t.




So that (just) leaves one thing, how do I do it?

I’ve tried AMD Overdrive, all options are greyed out; tried setFSB, it doesn’t recognize my chipset and doesn’t even load; tried SysTool and ClockGen, they’re all outdated and don’t start. BIOS (Phoenix) is locked of course, and I don’t even know if there is CPU overclocking options hidden.






All ideas and suggestions are really appreciated. Thanks in advance!



(P.S. Specs are in signature)

 

Could look for the PLL on the motherboard, then check the datasheet to see if a pin mod is possible.

 

Could you describe a bit more about how pin mod works MoralHazard? I've read about it but couldn't understand (not a technical person). Also what software (if any) does it encompass?

I can try to get the pll but not sure how complex the taking-apart is. If it isn't too hard, I can do it right now (have some small screwdrivers at hand).


edit: eek just read about it online, it looks extremely invasive! Is there no alternative copper-wire-free method of overclocking?

 

There may be an alternative.

But I don't think the CPU is the problem. Did you check the CPU usage while gaming?

 

Yes, it usually hovers around 40%. That's the problem, a lot of the games can only utilize 1 or 2 of the 4 cores, and each core is only clocked at 2.0 GHz, hence the bottleneck. It's bad enough that if I turn all the settings down to minimum the framerate doesn't change.

Anyway I just blindly opened the laptop for a brief look and could not find the "oblong crystal" or the PLL, do I have to tear the whole thing apart to find it?

 

You will have to take it completely apart and check both sides of the motherboard.

When I said check the CPU usage, I meant check the usage of each core.
If not even 1 core is @ 100% then the problem is something else.

 

Is there any way to simultaneously monitor CPU core usages while running a game benchmark?

 

Can you window the game?

BTW, did you try AMD OverDrive?

That could be able to change the reference clock.

EDIT: Try downloading Playclaw to see CPU usage while in game.

 

I'll try to window the game then.

As I mentioned in first post, AMDOD was all greyed out, except multiplier sliders which are already maxed.

 

Sorry missed that part.

 

I couldn't window the NFS game, but I could see a ~30 second trend with task manager performance tab.

Assuming the 4 green windows are the 4 core usages, the first one hovers ~80% mark, while the other three hover around 50%. Does this mean there is zero CPU bottlenecking? Because I still have similar framerates between "all settings/resolution max" and "all settings/resolution min" in this game...

 

Does that game have a patch?

Do you have the latest GPU driver?

 

Yes of course. The game has the latest patch although it does not contain any updates which concern this (mainly about complete game crash/freezes).

And yes I'm using cat. v10.11.


Another piece of evidence is that, others with i5 / 5650 who run the game at maximum settings, get on average over 50 fps, which is almost double what I'm getting with the different CPU.

 

Did you try running GPUz at the same time to check the "sensors" tab so you can see if the GPU is throttling?

 

So i'm looking at a laptop with very similar specs, and definitely agree that the ability to overclock this processor would seal the deal for me right now.. however, in the quote above, i wonder if you turned off the v-sync... if your v-sync (or vertical refresh rate) is enabled, it will cap your framerate at a max, usually 60 fps.. can you check this setting?

interestingly enough.. there was a review on newegg on a very similar HP model that claims he/she overclocked the N930 to 2.5ghz.. sadly no details were added about how to do the overclock and no one else seems to know how to..

 

Definitely no GPU throttling, just checked.

 

Yeah I'm still seeking any advice as to possible ways to overclock it, there has to be more ways than setFSB/OverDrive/pin mod!!!!!!

 

Bump.

Just did a test whereas I underclocked the CPU by 20% and benchmarked, the avg fps dropped from 30 fps to 20 fps according to fraps benchmark.

 

Ok then. I think that I have not very good information for You. If You check schematic on this side: http://laptop-schematics.com/view/5906/, it shows that 5553g take all necessary clocks, including cpu clock, from southbridge.
Unfortunately this is what databook for SB820 is saying:

"If the SB820M is set to integrated clock mode, only a 25MHz crystal for master reference and a
32-KHz crystal for the RTC are required. The SB820M will then generate all of the system
clocks needed, which include the CPU, NB, and graphics reference clocks, the 25MHz clock for
SATA, the 48MHz clocks for USB, and so on. Overclocking is not supported in the internal
clock mode."​

For some reasons in some models Acer didn't add external clock generator but in others models it is presented, like in 7551G: http://laptop-schematics.com/view/7871/. I'm curious myself how will oc'ed N930 stands against intels cpu, because being onest 2Ghz is little to low for Amd K10 architecture.

 

I half-understood your post lol. Are you saying the 7551G can be overclocked because it has a separate clockgen?

Edit: also, are you more or less saying that based on the 5553G schematic, it's 100% impossible to overclock the N930 CPU then?

 

Yes, exactly. Laptop makers can add external clock generator or use clocks provides from southbridge. It looks like We will able to overclock only if laptop use external seperate pll.

 

:| I see. (died a little inside haha)

Have there been cases of the 7551G successfully overclocked yet?

 

Also, is it rare for laptops nowadays to have no clock generator? I'm finding it hard to believe that this is so, when pretty much every other laptop overclocking story discussed here on NBR ended up with someone looking at their clockgen and writing down their pll.

 

I don't know about any . I'm just saying that based on the schematic for 7551g it should be overclockable, offcourse if this specific pll used have option for changing the frequency. I see from the schematic that there used new models of pll like ICS9LPRS480, but maby using old from setfsb like ICS9LPRS477 will work with it asswell. Or maby we will need datasheet for this new pll to add support for it in setfsb.

 

It all because of AMD. They included internall clock generator to they last model of southbridge SB820 which is part of they last mobile platform. And no wonder that notebook desiners use this solution in some new Amd based laptops. And if I no mistaken new upcoming Intel platform will have clock source located in cpu directly and overclocking will be possible only with so called extreem processors which have unlocked multiplier upwards.

 

I see :|

So I'm the early victim of an anti-overclocking oppression rolling our way.

 

Hello jerg. What is are the stock clocks on the hd5650 on 5553G? Also what is the the stock 3dmark06? I see that you get 8800 oc.

 

Stock clocks = 550 core, 800 mem. I can't remember exactly but I think I got ~ 7.5k in 3dmark06.

 

what about the bios mod Aspire 5553G BIOS_1.18 MOD.rar ?
Did you try it or not... ?

 

I requested that BIOS mod, and tried it. It did not offer any overclocking/improvement options.

 

You can try to use RadeonPro and force the CPU affinty in any game you want to 4 cores instead of 2 or 1 .... maybe that helps .... I use it to force the games that use 1 core to use 2 ..... wont lose a thing if you give it a shot

 

I returned the laptop earlier this month already. AFAIK it did in fact use all 4 cores in almost every game I tested (CPU graph shows consistent load across 4 cores), it's just that one of them which gets the heaviest load always bottlenecked.

 

damn.... this is not cool.... not cool..... only overclock may help.....