TravelMate 8473TG - throttling and modded vBIOS

Hi all!

So, a short story about my laptop evolution. I went from a 15.4" Samsung laptop (R560 with a Core2Duo P8400 and GT 9600M) to a 11.6" Acer (Travelmate 8172T - Core i3-330UM) to a 11.6" Samsung (XE700T1C - Core i5-3317U, 128GB Samsung SSD, 1080p PLS display), 2-in-1 hybrid laptop/tablet with Wacom digitizer for note taking) to an 8" Asus Note 8 (32GB eMMC, 2GB, Atom 3740 - Wacom digitizer) and the 14" Acer Travelmate 8473TG (Core i5-2450M, GT 540M, 8GB, 750GB HDD). So I often went smaller and by way of that sometimes a bit less powerful. The 15.4" Samsung was used as a desktop replacement for a while. The 11.6" Acer was used for university stuff and recreation on the road and some light games on vacation. The Samsung tablet/laptop hybrid was used for games on vacation and note taking, but not enough to justify the price at the time. And now I have an Asus Note 8" Windows 8.1 tablet for note taking and light stuff (browsing the web, casual video and photo viewing) and the 14" Acer for office stuff and games on the road. Those two cost me as much as I got for my Samsung so that's decent. The Acer was used, but in good condition apart from the battery wear.

My reasoning for ditching the decently fast Samsung hybrid were simple: it was not good enough as a tablet (too large and heavy) and so rarely got used at home or on short trips. It really only was a note taking device for university and a laptop at times when my Nexus 7 (2013) wasn't up to the task. But at laptop duties it wasn't so great either, due to the display heavy design. So I decided to get rid of the jack of all trades and get 2 dedicated devices that fullfil each role better (I hope). I bought the Samsung hybrid at a time I only had a Galaxy Nexus smartphone (4.7") and a 10.1" Android tablet and thought to replace the Android tablet and Windows laptop with one device. Once I got the Nexus 7, that took over casual home duties, so I was back to 2 devices again. And, I like to get new toys to play with, obviously.

First off, why get a laptop when I have the Windows tablet. Well, I want something that can play games when I'm on vacation or on short trips. I was looking into the Dell Venue Pro 8 gaming thread and seeing great results for what those tablets are. But I was immediately thinking about getting a keyboard for the tablet, like a Logitech K480 because of convenience. I have a wireless Logitech K400 with a receiver that could work, but it adds a lot of bulk and I would need to use the case stand to prop up the tablet and that would mean the tablet is more insulated and more likely to throttle. I would also need to add a large USB stick or an external HDD for the games, because the 32GB internal memory is a joke. So I would have to invest another decent chunk of money to get my tablet game-ready and even then the experience would be sub par and involve a lot of tweaking and some games just not running. So I looked into small-ish gaming laptops.

Why then did I buy this used laptop from a line that is know for having thermal issues and not a new one. This is actually simple. I wanted a dedicated graphics card or at least something like an Intel HD4600 or better for decent-ish gaming and a 14" size max. New laptops with those specs are priced at least at 350€ (Lenovo IdeaPad 14-2) or much, much higher. While there are 15.6" laptops that fit the bill and are as heavy or even lighter than the Acer 14" here, I wanted the small footprint of the 14" laptop. The Lenovo is a great laptop for the price, 14" IPS display, light, either AMD CPU+GPU or Intel/Nvidia for good performance. But only 4GB (not too much of a deal breaker for me, only a slight turn off) and only a 500GB conventional HDD with no ODD. I can't live in an HDD world anymore. I need my SSD speeds. So I would need to invest another 90€ for at least a 250GB SSD which can hold enough games for a 2 week vacation. That would mean 440€. In contrast I paid 280€ for the Acer and another 8€ for an ODD to HDD converter bay. I put the included 750GB HDD into the bay and inserted a 60GB SDD that I had laying around into the internal HDD slot. 60GB is enough for my Windows installation and critical applications, the rest goes onto the HDD. That means below 300€ vs 440€. That's nearly the cost of the Asus 8" tablet (180€). In order to get more performance than the full voltage Sandy Bridge CPU offered, I would need to spend a lot more on a laptop since most stuff these days runs ULV CPUs that while of newer generations don't clock too high, so the Sandy Bridge is quite competitive still. And the graphics card GT 540M is surprisingly competitive as well. A GT 820M is about as fast and in a similar price range available. The 555M/640M/740M/840M are generally faster, but not available in the same price range and not worth the upgrade cost for me. I've always liked the Acer Timeline series and in turn the Travelmate series that is its cousin. 13.3" Timeline/Travelmate have no ODD, so we are at the SSD investment again, although the 3820TG with it's dual fan cooling design is such a great kit. And 15" is just a tad too large. 4830TG vs 8473TG was a bit about trade offs. The Travelmate has the matte screen, external battery and seems sturdier. The 4830TG is smaller and lighter but has a glossy screen, internal battery and was a bit more expensive and had the slower CPU and less RAM in the used offers I saw.

That's enough about my thought process on why to buy this thing.

Now to the actual thing itself.

The condition is top notch. I don't see any scratch marks, the display has no dead pixels, no weird noises come off the laptop. Great.

After installing everything essential I start the IntelBurnTest 2.4. Temps quickly reach 100°C for the CPU. I decided to try my luck with a repaste. I've done laptop work before, exchanged the CPU and repasted CPU/GPU in my 15.4" Samsung, damaged the hinges (weak part for the design to begin with) while doing that though and it was done with a video and picture guide. Nothing of that sort for the Travelmate. So I just start removing all the screws I see, disconnect all the ribbon cables, pry things apart slowly and gently. Eventually I get to the motherboard, remove the heatpipe/heatsink/fan construction and see that the CPU and GPU are covered in clay, basically. Repaste with Noctua NT-H1, notice that the fan is basically clean and put it all back together, but only after removing the dust meshes covering the intake fan slots. Temperatures drop, not sure how much, didn't run a test yet.

I see the custom BIOS in the TimelineX thread done by Nedemai, that either unlocks more menus or lowers GPU voltages. I'm not interested in the unlocked menus, as I don't need virtualization (don't have it on the i5 anyway), don't want to disable HT and can already disable the iGPU in my normal BIOS, where I can select "switchable" and "discrete". I run "discrete", because I don't want to mess with Optimus and the battery only functions as a UPS, not intending to use this thing off the mains. I'm too chicken try flashing the TimelineX BIOSes on my Travelmate, don't wanna brick it. But I install MSI Afterburner to see if I can lower the GPU voltages in software. No dice, voltages locked. So I try to increase clocks a bit. Saw many people run 700/1000. I set it to 699/950 to being with. Run MSI Kombustor -> driver crashes. Darn, crappy card it seems (temps were below 70°C for the GPU when it crashed).

Now I download Nedemai's AcerTool package and dig around in it. Thought I could use the included vBIOS for the 4830TG, edit the voltages and insert it into my .ROM DOS flashable Travelmate BIOS. But the utility included (EzH2O) does not recognize my BIOS, as it only works for Insyde and I have a Phoenix variant. So I look around for tools myself and end up finding a guide that uses PhoenixTool to get the vBIOS and that guide uses it to increase clocks, I use the guide as much as I can, but I don't want to increase clocks, I want to decrease voltages. PhoenixTool can read my .ROM BIOS and extract the modules. To figure out what module corresponds to my VGA BIOS, I extract the VGA BIOS with Aida64, open the DUMP in Notepad++ Hex Editor and look for a string that is recognizable. I see some "Nvidia copyright" stuff. I then open the DUMP modules with the size that matches a vBIOS (64kB) and look for that string. I find it. Now I load the module into Nedemai's "540mEdit.exe" which is his tool to edit the voltages to custom values. Doesn't recognize the file. I open the file in NiBiTor and it recognizes the voltages, but I can only select the 4 pre-defined ones (0.830V, 0.900V, 0.980V and 1V - 1V does not seem to get used by default for any state). I put all the performance states to 0.830V and save it. Nedemai's default undervolt vBIOS was 0.850V, I figure maybe I get lucky. I use PhoenixTool to repackage the BIOS, make a bootable USB DOS stick, put the files onto it, launch my laptop in DOS and flash. It works, it starts up, it boots Windows. So far so fantastic. I launch Hardwaremonitor and MSI Afterburner, start MSI Kombustor -> 0.830V for the GPU at all times. Awesome! 5 seconds in, the driver crashes. Darn! Not enough juice. At this point I can either try and underclock the card in software with Afterburner (losing performance and being reliant on software) or go back to the 0.900V voltage setting. I do the 0.900V setting, a respectable 80mV lower than the default high performance voltage of 0.980V. Edit the module in NiBiTor, repackage the BIOS with PhoenixTool, reflash, reboot. Thing runs well now. I launch MSI Kombustor and IntelBurnTest. I also use ThrottleStop with this setup: 1st profile with turbo enabled (28 multi for 2 cores, 31 for 1 core) and BDPROCHOT disabled (no throttling of the CPU when the GPU reaches 75°C) and switch to 2nd profile when CPU temp reaches T_junction - 15°C, profile has turbo disabled (25 multi).

76°C GPU max - 95°C CPU max - ThrottleStop

Decent, but not excellent and the difference between 0.830V and 0.900V is a lot. Maybe my card can run higher than 0.830V but lower than 0.900V? But how to get those values. So, I take one of Nedemai's vBIOSes, edit the voltages and compare the original and the edited file in a HEX editor. too many differences to figure out which stuff controls custom voltages. The I use my own vBIOS module, change the voltages in NiBiTor and compare the original and the edited in a HEX editor. Now I'm getting somewhere. I write down the 4 places that seem to control the 4 voltage states and edit them in the original vBIOS to 0.860V. Save and then load in NiBiTor. It shows integrity orange instead of green and when I go to "Fermi Voltages" it shows nothing. So I think I may have botched it. After some thinking I decided to save the HEX edited vBIOS in NiBiTor, load again to see if something changes. It now shows green integrity, but still no voltage readings. I go for the flash anyway, worst case I hope, the iGPU still works and I can flash back. All works fine, boots Windows, I launch MSI Kombustor and 0.860V sticks. I run MSI Kombustor and IntelBurnTest:

74°C GPU max - 92°C CPU max - ThrottleStop - 8x runs in IntelBurnTest take 675 seconds

I make the vBIOS 0.840V (pushing it here, as 0.830V crashed). Works and sticks. Stress test numbers:

71°C GPU max - 89°C CPU max - ThrottleStop - 8x runs in IntelBurnTest take 625 seconds -> 50 seconds faster means less switching to 2nd profile and more time in turbo mode, sweet!

I try ThrottleStop without the 2nd profile turbo boost disables, which of course increases temps, but I want to see the performance increase I can get:

77°C GPU max - 98°C CPU max - ThrottleStop gets CPU to run at 27 / 28 multi- 8x runs in IntelBurnTest take 605 seconds -> 20 seconds faster than above, not worth the increase in temps for me.

I go back to the old ThrottleStop profile and run the stress tests again:

73°C GPU max - 92°C CPU max - ThrottleStop - 8x runs in IntelBurnTest take 680 seconds -> a bit slower than even the 0.860V mod, but at that point the room was quite heated up already, so ambient temps were much higher than before -> not scientific, just a nice piece of data.

I then started just the IntelBurnTest CPU stress test:

56°C GPU max - 74°C CPU max - no throttling 28x multi all the time - 8x runs in IntelBurnTest take 470 seconds -> 135 seconds faster than fastes GPU+CPU stress test number.


So that is my little story about the Acer Travelmate 8473TG. I hope you enjoyed it. A thanks to all the posters in the Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 Owner's Lounge thread who posted great mods!
Things I'm looking into: putting some more metal on the heatpipes and maybe doing a fan mod that allows me to run it @ 100%. Gonna try some games soon to figure out if it is game stable, sometimes power virus stable does not work in games for me. If anyone is interested in more detailed instructions or the finished modded vBIOS/ full BIOS to flash in DOS, I can provide it. Can't give any guarantees that it works obviously.
And if someone has any ideas or insights into undervolting the CPU, I'd be very much interested in doing that. Though I don't have much hope that it's possible with that generation of Intel CPUs on mobile.

Cheers!