Welcome to the M17XR2 Overclocking guide!
This is not meant to be a full out guide, I am sure Mandrake will be able to do a better job when he gets his system.
WARNING: I do not take any responsibility for damaging your hardware, proceed at your own risk!
Now for the good stuff.
The CPU's in the M17XR2 are no longer locked seeing as you can overclock all the CPUs using SetFSB. But that will only give you the ability to overclock BCLK and not the multipliers such as the 920XM and 940XM.
CPU OC
First of all let me start of by explaining what is in the bios. To enter the bios, upon booting and seeing the splash screen, click on the F2 button. Once in the bios go to the advanced tab, go down the options, to performance options and click enter. You will find four options available if you have the 920XM and the 940XM(Extreme edition)
Turbo Mode- Followed by the status
DDR3 Voltage- The voltage supplied to the ram modules
CPU VCore- The voltage increase to the cpu.
CPU Frequency Overclocking- the % increase the BUS speed.
If you have any other CPUs you still have voltage control over the RAM and the CPU.
This will be the same way for both the 920XM and 940XM, but you can follow the steps using both CPUs seeing as its only a difference of one multiplier.
Turbo mode should be on to keep the processor running at its turbo mode value, for the extreme edition it should be 3.2GHz. DDR3 voltage, I do not recommend anyone play around with this, as it will not increase performance. The Vcore is the amount of extra Voltage supplied to the processor, used for stability reasons for really high overclocks. The 5% Frequency overclocking will increase The BUs speed from 133MHz to 140MHz. 133*24(the amount of multipliers) is 3190 MHz, overall CPU Frequency. If you decide to use the 5% boost it will increase the BUS speed to 140MHz*24 is 3360. That is approximately 0.15GHz more.
If the 5% factory overclocking is not enough for you, Well I'm not done! The 920XM has unlocked multipliers. Download EVGA E-LEET tuning utility. LINK.
After downloading and installing E-LEET,open up the program and it will give you information on the processor name, codename, Multiplier, Bus Speed, core speed etc. Like the following.
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Now comes the fun part, overclocking th cpu even further. A note to mention is that some CPUs overclock further than others. To get a stable overclock you are going to have to increase the voltage in bios, save and exit. By supplying more juice to the CPU, it will help it increase the mutipliers and have it running with no issues. Some cpus will not need to increase the voltage as much as others, some can overclock further than others. The main thing to bare in mind is not to overheat and damage your system. I highly recommend using a fan under the system for proper air flow and for it to be flat on a desk.
Go into the overclocking tab in the E-LEET tuning utility, and you will notice that the only thing you can only change the amount of multipliers, which is perfectly normal, and what we want to do. Increase the multipliers to 27 and click on "Apply Selection", Go back to first tab and check on the core speed and the amount of multipliers. They should be set to the same amount as below.
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CPU OC 2
Using the setFSB method you can overclock any CPU in the M17xR2.
Download the Latest Version of setFSB that is shareware
A link to original finder of this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/495203-how-oc-m17x-r2s-920xm-940xm-using-setfsb.html
First select the clock generator from the drop down menu, it is ICS9LPRS365BGLF and click get FSB.
Go to the Diagnosis tab and there will be a few values that are in a blue font.
It should look like this
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Now to increase the BCLK you should do the following:
Change the value at 00 (00) from 21 to 29, click update and apply.
Change the value at 0F (00) from D8 to 96 or 98( both will work), select update and apply.
Change the value at 01 (10) from 31 to a higher value, such as 34 click update and apply.
It will increase depending on what you selected for 0F (00).
It can go higher or lower depending on your processor. In the end it should look a lot like this:
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CPU Tweaking
After a long time of waiting we finally got our wish. We can finally increase the TDP/ TDC limit!!
Using throttle stop you can increase the TDP limit by right clicking on the running application and selecting Turbo Power Limit, from there you can increase it what ever you fin suitable and stable.
I got to 93/73 stable so it can only get better to others.
This will reduce the throttling due to the TDP limit in the M17x's bios but watch your CPU temps closely as they will scale up fast.
It should look like this when done:
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GPU OVERCLOCK
Download the latest ATI drivers.
Download GPU Z
To overclock the GPU, there are three ways of doing it. You can flash the bios, use AMD GPU TOOL, or use a combination of both of them.
GPU OC 1
To flash the bios, you are going to need to make a bootable flash. Follow ZFACTOR' guide LINK:- http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=246530
To flash the bios you are going to need to follow Mandrake's guide LINK:-
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread230061.html
Sorry, for the links, but they posted it first, and it would not be right to take their findings and use my name instead.
When using ATI Radeon Bios Editor, I would recommend increasing it 10MHz at a time from 600/1050 for each to find the maximum clock speed of your cards. You should also increase the voltage of the cards for more stability. Proper cooling is needed to get the best out of the cards, make sure the temps stay below 85C.
GPU OC 2
For the next, GPU overclock, you will need AMD GPU TOOL.
This will allow you to overclock your cards whilst in windows, which will relly cut down the time of finding You maximum clock limit. After downloading ans installing AMD GPU TOOL, open up the program. You will notice two different numbers. Like the image below.
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One is the Core clock speed(left), and the other is the memory clock speed(right). Increase it up to 600 GPU clock and increase the memory to 1050. Set the voltage to 1.1(the program usaully sets it up for you.) If you plan on overclocking you cards to the amount tick the little checkbox on the left that says, "Same clock settings for all devices". It should look like this
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Then click on Set clocks, and open up GPU-Z to check out your new clocks.
GPU OC 3
The third and final type of overclocking the GPU, is a combination of both. Instead of having to flsh every time to find the maximum clock speed. Flash the bios once using mandrake's guide, but do not change anything other than the voltage. Increase it to 1.15 and then boot into windows and gradually increase the GPU clocks using AMD GPU TOOL.
In the end you should end up with a system running like this or higher.
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Or perhaps you increases the BCLK, and had better luck with higher clocks![]()
This Guide is not meant to be a full out EXPERT guide on how to overclock the M17XR2. This what I have been experimenting with.
Feel free to add any new content.
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Very nice of you!
I'll surely need it soon.
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Thanks, I noticed that there was no guide, and saw lots of member ssking for one , so i wrote it up in the last hour
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What's the fastest the 920XM can run at using all 4 cores and hyperthreading?
btw, very nice guide -
OK I'll say it again....you figure it out sooner or later...settings the multipliers to 27 on the M17x does nothing! Once you test it out properly you'll finally figure out what I'm talking about.
Regarding the rest of the guide good job! -
So Mandrake, how about 26x, or 25x? Those have a good benefit?
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but i did it to try and beat Rengsey's score. You never told us when you get your system.
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21K in 3dmark 06 = Core i7 @ 3.8+Ghz + GTX 285
ATi's natural boost
So can anyone answer my question?
What's the fastest anyone has ever gotten their 920XM to run at using all 4 cores. Such as winrar, 3dmark 06, vantange, lost planet, GTA IV etc..? -
Play with all your voltage/multiplier/memory settings available to you and see how high you can get all four cores running at once. -
Well, the highest clock speed is not technically the best. But to answer your question, Rengsey had the highest in 3dmark06 @ 3.97XX he got 21987 in 3dmark06. In vantage, using 27 multipliers would actaully decrease the score.
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. What are it's intel cpu burn test temperatures?
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The M17x is actaully limiting the 920XM, and we can not oc as much as we want, they should really update the bios, so we can overclock better.
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/10char -
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I knew it was the ASUS seing as the TDP was at 131 watts
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dammit i really want a 920xm now, its going to end up being 5k -_- -
This program also reads your 4 cores and 4 threads.
http://addgadget.com/all_cpu_meter/ -
The G73's power can not and should not be compared to the M17XR2 , if asus release a daul card version, the M17xR2 is going to suck!!
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they should merge designs for once.
i mean cmon, i set ram to 550Mhz in the bios and the cas timings go from 7 to 11(i hate nvidia sys tools/ntune) .
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If you are still wondering why it is taking so long for the RMA, a guy made a thread about it, and an ASUS rep came in and apologized.
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I hope you get everything cleared up soon. How can anyone loose parts from a laptop??? For stress testing is stability test or prime95 okay?
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LINK:- http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/8681/stressing.png
VERY Interesting, this was on balanced performance, I'm going for high performance now -
This is with high performance. http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/825/stressing2.png runnning orthos and prime95. Both are with 27 multi+ 5%+ Vcore @ 150Mv
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Starting to see what I mean now?
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Sure do, but what can we do? I'm guessing nothing.
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Plus you can also email the guy who wrote setfsb. He got his program working for the G73 so he should be able to do it for the M17x. -
Email him, if an email is all it takes, i'd gladly email him every day
How will he unlock the m17x ?
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He just asks for a $5 donation to do the work. -
I will try that whole process out tomorrow(it's 4.12 a.m. in Kuwait). Is it going to work for all 920XMs equally? Do you want me to run any tests?
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Rengsey R. H. Jr. I Never Slept
Different class
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It should work for all the procs.
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Off-Topic; Just curious how far can G73 Push the 720qm? -
Now why don't they teach me that kind of stuff in computer classes
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http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=458025
M17XR2 Overclocking Guide
Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by TheCodeBreaker, Apr 16, 2010.