Aspire 5102 overclock

Well guys,

I'm new to this forum and I like to share some of my experience with my Aspire 5102WLMI.
My notebook has Turion X2 TL50 at 1,6Ghz , 1Gb Ram ,80Gb hardisk ,Radeon Xpress 1100(UMA Graphics) ,no bluetooth and no TV-out(only VGA-out).
I would say that I'm happy with what I got for the money I paid.
No overheat, no software problems(those can be fixed),no functioning problems.
More than that,because I'm an overclocker,I tried from the very first moments to improve the performance of this affordable laptop.
Using ClockGen,I rised FSB from 200 to 250,wich made my CPU run at 2GHz
Accordingly,the memory bus rose from 266Mhz to 333Mhz,wich made the DDR2-533 to be DDR2-667. This improved performance with no less than 25% -lets say,in pair with a Turion X2 TL60(2GHz),or aprox Intel Core Duo 2500.
In very stressful test,I may get a glitch or two with the processor at 250Mhz,but if I decrease a little to 249,3Mhz,everything is error free.
To be mentioned that memory performs without any error even on higher bus than 250Mhz,wich is quite amazing.
Overclocking the memory improves also the performance of the video card by 15-20%.Not that is a great video card,but it helps.
Video card can be overclocked also using PowerStrip or Ati Winclk -default core clock of 300Mhz could be rised up to 450.But 430 is enough to avoid overheating.
Of course I would like to upgrade to a better video card,but from what I read,is not posible.
Still,I,m not totally convinced -maybe I have to read more on the subject.
As for the driver,and the confusion with 200 Xpress,is just that Radeon Xpress 1100,didn't get yet an ID and is not present in the driver inf. file.
But you can use ANY driver with ANY settings,and you can name your card whatever you want,as long as you know that ID is 9575 and vendor 1002.
Is a simple mod of the information file.
I have to say that even overclocked to max,I don't get more than 65 for the CPU.I'm more concerned about the temp of the northbridge,wich has a ratter weak cooling solution.
And if there is no way to control the fan,I was thinking to design a custom fan in the battery bay -of course,for the time when laptop is plugged in and I need performance.This fan has to make suction from outside and to blow fresh air in the case(there is some space in the corner for the air to get in).
Since the cooling fan takes most of the air from the case,I think this mod will help a lot cooling MB,memory,HD,CPU and chipset.
I'm gona need an exausted battery to do a nice work,but that will be very hard to find.
OK,that's it.I hoppe you will look at your laptop with other eyes after reading this.For the money you paid,you can get a lot of performance.
Good luck !

 

Thanks . i enjoyed reading that. the x1100 uses system memory so i always wondered how high you could overclock it. Especially mem that runs at 667. You would think it might handle pretty high overclocks. Not that i would run it near 667 but its defaulted to 300.

You could someday buy a 5110 motherboard to upgrade the Video card, It uses ATI X1600. Thats what i might do someday if i want to increase the gaming for this notebook.

 

Don't think buing a mb is a solution.Better sell the notebook and buy another one.And would be quite difficult to find a mb in Romania,where I live.
I would like to dismantle this baby,to make an ideea how the mobo looks like.
Don't think is much difference with 5110.I understood that x1600 is just a chip planted in a socket in mobo.Can you confirm?

 

Yes, in some notebooks, the Mobility X1600 is imply on a package with more resemblence to a processor. t has the core, and a few memory chips positioned close to it. There are many pictures on google. Have a look here:

http://www.nbinside.com/graphic_info/images/A7G-1.jpg

 

For "deltafx1942"
PLL for Aspire 5102 is ICS 951462.The PLL chip could be seen if the big bottom cover is removed.

Thanks for the info "Zero" but I can not acces that link.I saw some pictures somewhere else.

 

Sorry about the link, seems like the website doesn't like people viewing their pictures. Anyway, yes, the Mobility X1600 can be installed ona smaller package.

 

From the "readme" file that come with the bios for 5102,one can understand that this bios is used also for the units with X1300,X1600 or X1900.
I hoppe I'm not wrong thinking that those units have same mobo(Acer Navarro),same chipset(X1100).Following this ideea,could be concluded that those mobo's have this extra socket where the discrete graphic chip(aka X1300,X1600,X1900)is plugged in.This will give a chance for a possible upgrade.
Once again - I might be wrong -I didn't read enough on the subject.

 

Heres a photo of the Mobility x1600. i will add more photos if i find them. it does look like a processor so if you find something like this inside the 5102 except no video card then you know what its for.



heres a picture of the x1600 covered by a aluminum heatspreader. right corner.

 

i bougt one of these and thougt it would have bluetooth because it has the swicth on the front but when i try to turn it on it says "no bluetooth device

 

Great Post,

I also wondered if thats true or not. It's been said about so many notebooks

 

Don't bother about bluetooth.You can allways use a dongle,if you need.

jabba,I understand that you have a 5110 series with X1600 ?
Sure 5102 looks different inside,but lets make it more clear,if they use same mobo or not.Can you tell us,what is your mobo ?
And maybe you can post a picture where I can see better the inside arrangement -with the shape of the bottom cover.
Maybe anyone can mail me the service manual for 5100 or 5110 series.I would by it from Ebay but this is almost imposible from my country and the place where I live.

Thanks

 

I've now overclocked the FSB of 248. However, I'm not going to overclock the x1100, since my fan has been almost constantly on (very quiet in low speed) since overclocking just the processor.

I've gotta say that the speed has really increased. Firefox loads so much faster now. I think the best way to fully realize the potential of this computer is to replace the 4200 rpm harddrive with 5400 or 7200 rpm. They don't drain the battery that much (7200 actually uses less than 5400), and everything will be faster.

Thanks for the info on PLL.

 

You are welcome !
Use SysTool to stress your CPU.It does a complete stress on both CPU cores,unlike other burn software.If it can last for half an hour,is OK.
Aplications benefit a lot from the memory bandwidht increase,too.
Don't forget to use power management software,to lower the clock of your CPU when not neded.

 

No i have the 5102 just like you, i just know the 5110 uses the same BIOS so i figured that motherboard would fit the 5102 model. I was curious if the 5102 model had a slot for the X1600, since i have not taken this apart. My guess is it does not.

 

From what I could see through the bottom cover,it doesn't. But can you tell me what is the white small slot,PCI like in the middle? Is for a TV addon card?
On the other hand,I browsed little bit today for some info,and I could see that 5110 has X1150 chipset -no word about X1600 in Acer specification.
What about those MXM cards.What kind of slot they use?

 

Lol maybe it isnt the 5110 but something simular to this notebook uses a x1600 because the bios has video instructions for it. I have not taken my notebook apart yet so i dont know what the white slot is for. Just because the chipset is X1150 doesnt mean it cannot have a different grahics card. Our 5102 chipset is the X200.

 

Our chipset is X1100 but does not have a proper ID yet to be recognized by the drivers and software.ID is 5975 for X1100, 5955 for X200M and 5974 for X1150.Also chip code is RS485M for X1100, RS480M for X200M and RS482 for X1150.
ATI,I think,didn't push for a proper identification,because chip is very similar to X200 -they claim to be 30% more performant.
Also southbridge for this chipsets are SB400 series,but they can be anything in the 400-460 range.(460 is ours).
I think,x1150 does have a clock of 400(ours is 300) and could share 256Mb memory.
When I bought the laptop,I didn't knew this things(I have Nvidia based desktop computer) and I was tricked little bit by the name,asuming that video card would be similar to X1300.

 

I also have 5102.

seaman, I downloaded ClockGen but could not figure out witch PLL to chose. I crashed my computer several times after trying to change freqs.

And is there any update about "can we upgrade video card?"

 

RealArt,

I wrotte the PLL on the first page of this thread - it is ICS 951462.
ClockGen or SysTool could be used for overclocking -the latest does not function very well sometimes.
What I couldn't do,was to use the option "apply at startup" with Clock Gen.
If I only restart laptop,it works -I get the overclocked fsb,but if I shut down and than start again,system crashes after entering Windows and loading ClockGen setting.
Anyone was succesfull with that?
About video card,I didn't dig any further into the problem(I was busy geting a new car),but I think is upgrade is not posible.More than that,mobile video cards have kind of high prices,and may not be worth.

 

Thx. Mine is now runing at 1,8 Ghz. Perfectly stable. And Clock Gen sets up freqs even when I turn off and on again. maybe 2 Ghz is too much and there is some kind of safety feature witch lowers freq to default.

 

i decided to go back to standard settings after ClockGen crashed repeatedly on startup. Also, while overclocked, the fan was constantly on at high, and that got annoying very fast. Otherwise, there was a tremendous improvement in speed while overclocked.

 

I can use ClockGen startup option for 1900 Mhz.I don't have problems with the fan,since the clock at idle and low load is only half(950Mhz) -and voltage for CPU is set to 0,8V.I use NHC now,but is the same if use Acer Power Management.

 

Yes. I deleted ClockGen aswell because of crashes at startup. But at 1850 Mhz my little X2 Turi is faster than 1,8 Core Duo and any other single core processor. Atleast at arithmetic calculations.

 

ive had a couple of crazy weeks with my 5100. first thing that happend was it got hot enough to melt the case and i didnt know how to overclock the thing. so we sent it to get fixed and when it got back there is a giant scratch on the top. but they decided to give me an upgraded version of the 5100 and now i have a radeon x1100 with 256 mg. i have since looked at this thread and havent looked back thank you guys for helping me play games 10 times better i cant thank you enough

 

is the process for overclocking the 5002 similar to this model or is it a whole different thing

 

Well,

I live in Brazil which means my Aspire 5168 (same as yours) can't be fully overclocked due to the warm clime.However an small overclock with clock gen (1.75 ghz) allow a quite interessant performance increase:

From 2:35seconds to 2:08 in Super PI higher test.

Im pretty convinced about overclock capacity of such machine but nowadays we got more than 30 celsius degrees here wich means I must be carefull about overheat.

The turion64 x2 appears keeping the AMD easy overclocking tradition .
The xpress 1100 is weak but I will not overclock due to overheating.

 

Seaman thx for great post -
My lap is Aspire 5102 WLMI
AMD Turion TL-52 X2
2 GB DDR 2 667 MHz 5-5-5-15
X1100 Radeon
Now when i run ClockGen and choose the correct PLL then i see the strange thing: my RAm i clocked with 320 MHz and bus is 200 MHz.
When i increase this values with ClockGen i can overclock my CPU to 1700 withaut any problem - then my memory it clocked at 340. Everything is OK. But when i increase clock a little more to 1800 it's stil OK - but not in the cpu or RAM stress. So Can i increase the FSB only ??
But it's realy goes little faster then 1600. So thanks any way...
How can i disable the ClockGen and return to the default core clock ??

 

Please add me on msn [email protected]

I really want to overlock mine just like yours, i use exact same aspire 5102! please add me, and we will discuss from there, thank you SO much

 

i overclock my 5103WLMI to 1.99Ghz...running fine though, i placed it over a airconditioning unit on my desk so temperatures are always on 30

Has anyone had this thing where when you try get on 2Ghz, or passed it, using clockgen, the system just crashes, and screen goes blue, or white?