M17X Overclocking Thread

Sorry this question is probably a little more relevant to the beginning of this thread than what's being talked about right now, but I'm having trouble overclocking my GTX 280m in my R2. Running W7 64-bit, ThrottleStop 2.70 and I've used PowerMizer switch to disable PowerMizer. I'm on the Forceware 186.64 official drivers from Dell's support site. RivaTuner only detects 3 power plans (3d, low power and 2d - not my performance plan) for some reason, son I can't use its perf level forcing to stay at the plan I want, or even overclock the 3d performance on I'm on now. I've flashed a bios (original modded with NiBiTor 5.6) that raises my 3d performance clocks but not the voltage. When I try to raise the voltages on any of the four plans, I get snow when starting the drivers (under Ubuntu or Windows - works fine with native support and safe mode respectively). I don't know why this is happening - any suggestions? I'm trying to get higher clocks than I can right now with a higher voltage (1.03 instead of 1). I've included a few bios copies - I'm running BIOS5.ROM, OLDBIOS.ROM was the original bios. BIOS6.ROM, BIOS7.ROM, and BIOS8.ROM all didn't work - just gave me snow. There are a couple of GPU-Z 0.4.3 screens there to of running under BIOS5.ROM plugged in to the wall. Power brick is fine, original 240w.

 

Try higher voltage. The cards can take 1.1V just fine. Try 1.05 or 1.07.

Also, just type in here what your clocks you are trying are so that we do not have to open and inspect each of those files. I can tell you right now that 680/1080 was the highest I ever got out of my GTX 280m's (oh ya, and you do not have an R2 if you have the nvidia GPUs, you have an R1)

Putting you system specs in your sig will also make it easier for people to help you and make recommendations

 

Is running the 4870's at 1.15v anything to worry about? They still don't even break 80C, would this affect their reliability any?

 

I do ALL my benching with them at 1.15V

Wish I could take them higher! (Tried but windows kept crashing at boot - something about the vbios was not liking more than 1.15V)

 

What about for normal gaming use?

 

For my "normal" use I do 600/1000 @ 1.1V

This passed OCCT GPU test so I am happy

 

So you wouldn't recommend 1.15v for regular use?

 

No it should be fine. I have a quad core so more power being used. With A03 the higher power of the overclock with the QX9300 combined with the higher power used by overvolting the gpus would cause my system to throttle making it useless. So I limit the gpus to prevent this. Since you have the dual core, your power use is much less so you should be ok

 

How much do your GPU temps differ? GPU 1 is usually 3-4C cooler than GPU 2 for me, even after using AS5.

 

That sounds about right. Mine never vary by much when under load

 

Im running Furmark at 675/[email protected] currently and GPU1 is 73.5C and GPU 2 is 79C. Doesn't seem like there should be this big of a difference.

 

I would not fret over it. Crossfire does not perfectly balance the load, the primary always does more

 

Sorry meant I have r1 (don't know how I could have forgotten that with my dpc latency...). Anyways I think I'll just Try to convince Dell to give me and r2 replacement with a 4870, (maybe that'll make it an easier sell to them) then I can see if I'll get a better overclock.

 

Hi guys, so I decided to try overclocking my m17x -
(QX9300 with NVIDIA 280 SLI) through the BIOS. From everything I've read so far it seems to be pretty safe so long as you don't edit the voltage settings.

SO I set it up at x11 and kept a close eye on my temps. Nothing ever went higher than 60c, and for the most part my GPUs hovered around 47c and 54c. My CPU ran cool the whole time in mid 40s.

I play Mafia II for bout an hour and was pretty impressed by the boost in performance. Everything was working GREAT !!!

I shut the PC down and came back a few hours later, After booting up I messed around on the internet for a while reading more overclocking forums, and then decided to play the great game TUROK. About 30 to 45 min in my system crashed to the blue screen.

After rebooting I thought I would try it again and after about 5 min I crashed back to the blue screen.

On reboot I set overclocking back to default and tried running the game again. Now every time I'm trying to play a game, even though I'm not overclocking, my system crashes about 5 ta 10min in.

Any recommendations ???
Is my system prob shot now???

 

Did you run a stress test like Intelburntest to check the stability of your overclock?

 

Ill do that.

 

Test completed successfully.

So my graphic cards must be messed up. Is there a program that I can run to test them to be sure?

I'm hoping that there is just some setting that needs to be reset somewhere.

Games start, and run for a while, but then everything locks up and I just have to reset, ***Similar to the crash when I was overclocking x11.

 

It passed Intelburntest on default settings and overclocking x11.

 

Try just reinstalling the video driver (with the cpu at stock speeds). It may have just gotten corrupted

 

overclock stable

CPU 3633 at 1.275 volt

GPU 700/1066/1700 at 1.10 volt

farcry 2 benchmark: 57.20 fps (1920x1200 dx10 all ultra high with vsync on)
nurien tech benchmark: 63.55 fps
3dmark vantage: 14k

many games and benchmark tested. all work fine. can go further more but temp too high even with current overclock the cpu is easy to reach 100C max if i go 4Ghz the temp reach 105C then everything go slow and sometime BSOD.

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Those are some decent runs! Run vantage again with PPU disabled to get an honest CPU score and put the results in the benchmarking thread. I have a pair of GTX 280m's coming so we can go head to head

Keeping the CPU cold is crucial for that level of overclock

 

Keeping the CPU cold is crucial for that level of overclock => totally agree

but what else i can do... need more herz then it need more volt.. more volt mean more heat.. after all it just run on stock fan... its a laptop anyway..

 

haha.....look at the 2 scores linked in my sig to get some inspiration on what these laptops can do

Those were with more extravagant cooling though of course

 

new problem...
when overclock the cpu and to volt up to 1.3250 - 1.450 then everything work fine. but when overclock GPU to 1.10 and cpu 1.3250 running at 3.68Ghz (fsb 1280) performance goes very powerfull with that combination. mafia 2 setting with 1920x1200 with AA 16AF all high and APEX physx at high (particle and cloth running full no physx tweak) average frame rate is 48 - 54 but it can be play just about 1 - 2 hour then the power adapter will go for protection mode and cut off it power completely. i have to turn the power socket off for a while then on it back then i got back the blue light and it will work fine again. the m17x still running but performance slow because it run on batt. my guest is the system draw to much power/watt from that power adapter. maybe if i have kill-o-watt meter then i know exactly what happend..

same thing happened to GTAIV with that combination.
but if
CPU 1.2880 + GPU 1.10 = no problem
CPU 1.3250 + GPU 1.05 = no problem

hmmm... strange.. if somebody have the same problem, lets share opinion.
this is my last week with this m17x-r1. my m17x-r2 with i7 940XM and crossfirex 5870 will arrive next week..

 

Yea, your drawing too much power. My vantage scores would be much higher with a more powerful PSU. I've had benchmarking nights where I tripped the PSU 10+ times in an hour with the 940XM/5870 XF

 

so my guest was right... from what i've learn theres no way to fix it unless we can find alternative power supply with more juice... so the same prob still happened with R2... damm...

 

Yep. psu.

The R1 can trip it with the qx9300 and either the 4870s or the GTX 280m's

 

Hello, I am able to overclock my M17xR1 (stable tests passed) to 3.06GHz (x9.5; FSB 1288MHz, RAM bus 1288MHz) and I also can set it lower to 2.9GHz (x9.5; FSB 1218MHz, RAM bus 1218MHz). Which is better? (at 1288MHz, the RAM timmings are 9-9-9-24; at 1218MHz, the RAM timmings are 8-8-8-22). Thanks.

 

the higher mem and cpu speeds will out weight the difference in timings

 

When I've got some spare cash, I'm going to pick up another power brick and wire them together in parallel. It's weird that no one has done it yet.

 

I've got two but I don't feel like trashing them I've tripped mine before too but not since I've switched back to running completely stock.

I could grab a 24v battery charger from work, adjust it for 19.5v and wire it up. Then I'd have limitless power available, that would be awesome!