How to Supercharge the M11x with Core i5/i7 UM CPUs

Worked like a charm, thanks!

 

ok so I am getting a m11x r2 whats the oc diff between i5 and i7 like max, Is it 166 for both stable and so would that be like 2ghz i5 and 2.3 i7, what am I missing here. will I notice diff between i7/i5 performance alot. ty

 

Get my i5 tomorrow so will be giving this a go. The latest version looks a fair bit different from the images in the first guide. Also I dont see any option to donate to get the full program. Have things changed since it first came out?

 

Lots has changed since this program first came out and mostly for the better I hope. Just check out the first post in this thread and get familiar with that and you will be ready to go when your new laptop arrives. If you have any questions, just ask.

Are you getting an M11x-R2 with an i5? If so then you will love what ThrottleStop can do for your laptop. If it is one of the newer R3 models then unfortunately Intel and Dell have put an end to the modifications so ThrottleStop won't be able to do much besides monitor them.

The full program is available in my sig and there is no need to donate. That's a bad word on NBR. If I was in this for the money I would have quit long ago so if you like ThrottleStop, share it with others and come back to this forum and let others know your results.

 

Yeah its the i5 R2 so lots to play around with. Pretty good with PC's so hopefully will be ok.

I'll post my results tomorrow some time. Fingers crossed I get a good one which will do over 160FSB

 

Right had a chance to have a small play. Good news is PC boots and seems stable at 167FSB with throttlestop. Currently using prime95 to stress test.
Laptop boots at 170FSB but crashes on prime95. Looks like i'll have to play around with my RAM or timings.

Only thing is it seems to jump from 8, to 11 to 12 quite often. Is this right? I'll post some results shortly.

EDIT--
First go I get a 46.899 & 1475.705 on TS Bench @ 167FSB i5. Which does compare to others.

So time to take out one stick of RAM at a time and see if one stick is better than the other and try and push my FSB about 170

 

Is this at idle or at full load? The average multiplier jumps around at idle but when running wPrime on your i5, ThrottleStop should be reporting a fairly consistent multiplier, hopefully in the 11.90 to 12.00 region. You can play around with the Force TDP/TDC option to fine tune this. I think lowering that to 8 is enough while other users like to go a little lower.

It seems to be memory timings that hold most users back when trying to go above 166 MHz. If you can find another 10 MHz or so, post some CPU-Z memory timing screen shots or Thaiphoon screen shots.

 

I've been following these posts for sometime and would like to thank Uncleweb for all the great work with Throttlestop.

I have recently run into some problems with overheating and was looking for some assistance. The overheating occurs when I play Black ops MP for about 20 mins, the GPU heats up to 92 C and this causes my frame rate to drop from the 40-60FPS to 10-15FPS. CPU-Z shows the muliplier drop from 14 to only 8 when temps raise to 90+. I use Throttlestop with 30/30, and force 8, my cpu is overclocked at 158, no GPU overclocking.

I've read through many posts and suggestions ranging from using different Thermal paste to bring down the temps (not confident about taking the computer apart) to using a laptop cooler. I have a laptop cooler that helps but any delays the overheating by a further 10 mins. The GPU fan is working fine and there is no noticeable dust build up (i've only had the machine for 2 months)

Are there any other suggestions anybody has? Could it be background tasks that could cause this, I have AVG running and other security programs.

My machine is a M11x R2 i7 with 4GB ram and 500GB HD

Thank you

 

Every other user that has had over heating problems has replaced the thermal paste and fixed that problem. If you are not comfortable doing this then try watching some YouTube videos of this procedure.

When the GPU heats up, it usually triggers CPU clock modulation throttling. You can run a ThrottleStop log file if you want a record of exactly what's happening. Upload it somewhere and post a link or email it to me so I can have a look. Check the TS Info or About box for where to send your data.

If these slow downs occur when running ThrottleStop in monitoring mode then call Dell and tell them to come out and fix the problem. When the heatsink is correctly installed, these laptops do not overheat even when overclocking and using ThrottleStop.

 

Ok... so after thoughts of posts, can someone provide me with a simple and exact procedure I should follow/change to get the most out of the machine in my signature?!

Thank you so much!

 

All you have to do is read the first post in this thread and follow that. After you make a change to the TDP setting, reboot, go into the bios and start overclocking. You might be able to go up to 160 MHz or higher in the bios reliably. You need to run ThrottleStop each time you boot up.

Once you are finished maximizing your CPU's performance then you can head to a thread about the GPU and learn to overclock that. The CPU part is simple. Use either the built in TS Bench program or wPrime so you can see if the adjustments mentioned in the first post are improving the performance of your computer. If not, post some screen shots so I can see how you have ThrottleStop setup. If reading the first post is too confusing then just follow the pictures.

 

I know C1E should be good for battery life, but when under load would C1E effect performance? Is it safe to leave it on at all times?

 

I think on a lot of CPUs, this setting won't affect performance or battery life any meaningful amount. On a typical Core 2 mobile CPU, they are usually in the C3 or deeper sleep state over 95% of the time when idle so the C1E option should not make any measurable difference.

At full load, the CPU is spending as much time as possible in the C0 state so once again this option won't change anything. There might be some benchmark on some Intel CPU model where having this enabled or disabled will make some slight and repeatable difference but I haven't found or looked too hard for a test to show this.

 

Thanks uncle.

 

It isn't letting me tick the "BD BROCHOT", like the in screenshots in the OP. Does this matter?

 

Did you go into the Options window to unlock this feature? It's locked to encourage users not to adjust this unless they know what they are doing. If you haven't read what this feature does then it's probably a good idea not to play with it. If by default the M11x doesn't have this checked then just leave it. Asus uses this to throttle some of their laptops as far as I know.

 

Here are my latest results at 197BLK Using Throttle Stop and SetPLL.
38.411 TSBench and 24.535 wPrime.



I can go further with 3DMark 06 now i'm not dealing with a bad stick of RAM. Will update later in the week.

 

As an update to my own post earlier in this thread, I reapplied my thermal paste a few weeks ago and now I max out at 79°C. That shaved 5 degrees off when using Throttlestop. I also blew air into the fan, but it really was not very dusty at all inside the laptop.

I used Arctic-Cooling MX-2 (yes 2, I bought it a couple of years ago).
ARCTIC MX-2 (4g, 8g, 30g & 65g) · Thermal Compound · Cooling · Arctic Cooling

Stain

 

does this support the R3? just wanna keep the CPU at its max multiplier when loaded across all 4 threads instead of throttling down to 2ghz from 2.6ghz

 

Nope. SB can't be changed though TS.

 

Hi all ive read the thread by unclewebb about how to use throttlestop to supercharge my m11x. Ive followed the directions and am not sure its making a difference to my gaming whatsoever. Im currently on an m11x i5 OC to 154 mhz as high as it would go stable. My default settings in TS were at 11/11 not 10/30 like it said it would be in Unclewebbs thread. i set it to 30/30 and changed the force number to 8. I then apply it turned it on and saved then opened up Starcraft 2. It seems to me that im getting no greater FPS and no less FPS than i was before messing with TS. Can any1 tell me if i followed the directions correctly. Sorry for the long post just wanted to be precise on all the info i have. Thanks

 

Start with the simple things, make sure that Throttlestop is on and not just monitoring (Does it say Monitoring Only at the top?)

Alright, are you using the overclock setting in the Bios? Both Turbo boost and speed step are on?

Also have you checked CPU-Z to see if it is actually clocking? I read somewhere that there were people having problems with the Bios resetting the over clock as soon as they booted up.

Also, try running Sc2 with NO shadows on. Shadows seem to be a major drag down for the 335m. I have seen games gain as many as 15 FPS simply because I turned Shadows off.

How many FPS do you get in SC2 to begin with?

 

Also try the TSBench with throttle stop on and off. You'll see the figuers will be lower with throttle stop on. If the game is GPU limited you wont see much of a FPS increase.

 

Yes i turn it on and save it. And yes i also have that program and it shows it overclocked. I have speedstep and TB on in the Bios. I get around 62 FPS starting out with around medium settings and anything CPU intensive turned down or off. But within a few minutes it drop 20 fps and then another few minutes it drops 20 fps again by the end of the game im around 14 or lower fps. what are you able to play on Xtrophy?

 

Ive also ran wPrime with throttlestop on and off and compared the differences. It gets done testing faster with throttlestop not open at all compared to it being open and on.

 

zealot11: When asking a question, it's a good idea to post a screen shot of ThrottleStop so then it is easy to see how you have it set up. If you take the screen shot about half way through a wPrime run with your CPU fully loaded, it will answer several questions I have. You can upload screen shots to ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting and then just post a link here.

If you go from 62 FPS down to 14 FPS then you could have a separate GPU overheating and throttling problem. A ThrottleStop log file while gaming while your frame rates drop like this is going to show some valuable information about what is going on. You can upload log files to Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire

If you can't turn on GPU temperature monitoring in the ThrottleStop Options window then you can upload a GPU-Z log file while you are gaming and have these huge drops in FPS.

If ThrottleStop is not improving your wPrime scores then it is possible that you have half of your CPU disabled. Does CPU-Z show 2 Cores and 4 Threads like it should? Post some more info so we can help you.

 

To be honest I don't remember. When I first got the laptop I ran it on Highish settings, but I only play with friends in 1v1s and 2v2s, and I never noticed any Visual lag. Its been almost 2 months since I've played it. I hate lag so if there was any at all I would have been bumping settings down.

Check and make sure that you have both cores enabled and you didn't accidentally disable one. Unclewebb has found that Throttlestop will seem to hamper performance when one core is disabled as opposed to running like it should. This sounds like it is the case considering you get slower times when you have Throttlestop on.

Do you have to multiplier set to turbo?

Also have you adjusted the power settings to max performance by clicking right clicking on the battery in the system tray? Going from 62 FPS at the beginning of a game to 14 is a huge drop that can be caused by a few things. Get us some screen shots as Unclewebb asked and we will see whats up. In the meantime I will run the game and checkout what my frame rates look like in a 4v4 Ai game.


EDIT: Running a 180 overclock on my i5 (Stable) with my GPU clocked stock I was getting a min of 20 FPS on extreme settings with 65 marines attacking a zerg base in a 4v3 AI game (I did 3v3 AI and I played on one team to mass units up).

Only when I was fighting the Zerg did I even see it get to 20, everywhere else not even a fraction of video lag. And even while attacking it was Perfectly playable. Mind you it was on the "Extreme" setting under Graphic options. I'm sure that if I dropped it to medium, even high and not ultra it would be perfectly playable. I don't believe the problem is in your GPU or your CPU however, I think it is in your power options or some kind of throttling since you play at 60 FPs at the start of a game.

I don't have time right now but when I do I will clock back to stock and see what results I get on both CPU and GPU at stock.

SECOND EDIT: I was at 166 not 180, I forgot to run SetPLL when I opened my laptop today lol.

 

Ok im not completely certain on how to take a screenshot seeing as ive never tried to do it on my m11x or any computer. Whats the keys i push? And it shows 2 cores and 4 threads but what's wierd is that when im doing anything other than gaming "like browsing firefox like im doing now" in cpu-z it states im getting around 2000-2200 mhz. But if i start up say Starcraft 2 it drops down to only 1800-1850 mhz. Is that correct? And its the same when i turn TS on. My TDP is set to 22 and my TDC is set to 22. It was set at 11/11 when i first turned launched TS. Ive tried different combinations of numbers like 30/30 and 30/60 and none of it makes a difference. Does that mean my m11x is running its full potential without TS. Or am i doing TS wrong. Ill upload screenshots if u tell me the keys to do it. Thanks for the help tho

 

Push the print screen button, which makes an image of your screen. You can then open MS Paint and paste the picture there. After that you can crop the picture to just show the throttlestop info.

 

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

The first one is running CPU-z
second one shows basic TS
third one shows TPl settings in TS

Thanks for telling me

U may have to zoom in once to be able to read cuz i just straight up uploaded it and didnt edit it srry

 

I need to see a screen shot of ThrottleStop while the wPrime benchmark is running.

http://www.wprime.net/Download/

Ignore what CPU-Z says when your CPU is lightly loaded. It's a meaningless number for validation purposes only and won't give you a good idea of what your CPU is doing.

The M11x Supercharge thread shows settings of 30/30 for TDP/TDC so use that. You also need to click on the Turn On button in ThrottleStop. Your screen shots show that it is in monitoring mode only.

Once you have ThrottleStop turned on, a Core i5-520UM should be showing a multiplier of 11.90 to 12.00 for your Core i5 when it is fully loaded with wPrime.

When taking screen shots, highlight ThrottleStop by clicking on it with the left mouse button and then hold the ALT key down before you press the PRINT Screen button. This trick will take a snapshot of just the highlighted program so it will be easier to see when you Paste that into Paint.

Edit: If this seems to be working correctly then leave ThrottleStop running, check the Log File option and then minimize it to your system tray and go play your game. When finished gaming, stop ThrottleStop and upload the ThrottleStopLog.txt log file to www.mediafire.com

 

Here is the wprime score and TS while its running. Changed to 30/30

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

Will come back with the log file link in a sec

 

How do i save the log file? i dont see where to get it from?

 

You should be able to see the log file in the ThrottleStop folder. Remember to exit ThrottleStop so it has a chance to write all the data to the file, ThrottleStopLog.txt

With ThrottleStop enabled, you are getting the full 12.00 multiplier which is correct for your CPU when both cores are active. Most of these laptops don't have throttling problems but run a log file to make sure the multi is staying up near 12.

 

Ok so i guess my m11x r2 i5 must be performing like everyone else's with Ts. I just thought it could handle SC2 better than it does but than again im playing 3v3 and its very CPU intensive. Thanks for the help everyone. But i have one more question. How much percentage CPU usage do u get sitting idle or even just browsing the web or watching a movie? I seem to be getting like random surges anywhere between 0% and 60%. I could be sitting idle and it will shoot up to 30% or browsing the web it might shoot up to 60% or even higher. Is this normal?

 

Follow the guide in my sig to overclock further if you want more performance.
You cans still get an nice bump in performance.

 

thats called background processes lol.. you will need to turn a crap load of them off if you want to idle better. my R1 idles at 0-1% usage and my windows installation is very very optimized.

 

So i just recently got myself a R3 i7 and wondering if there is any reason to instal TS on this machine? I understand that Sandy Bridges don't overclock particually well without an unlocked multi but still. Is there any guides around?

 

I was wondering, if you set the TDP, TDC and Force TDP/TDC to high levels like 100 ea (I usually keep TDP TDC and Force TDP/TDC around 50-70), could these levels cause any damage to my processor? If i were to make them around 35 each, i would have relatively the same performance as no TS. Can anyone also tell me what values should for force tdp/tdc

 

If you are setting Force TDP/TDC to high values then that means you haven't done any wPrime testing and haven't read the first post in this thread. Force TDP/TDC needs to be set to a low number, typically about 8.

There have been no reports of anyone hurting their M11x-R2 no matter how they have ThrottleStop setup. Even when fully optimized, a UM processor in the R2 is still running at a fraction of the speed that a 32nm Intel CPU is capable of so you are not pushing it to anywhere near its limits. It's usually the memory that reaches its limit long before the CPU does.

schpeedy: ThrottleStop is a good monitoring tool. It has increased the performance of some Acer, Asus, HP and Lenovo laptops with Sandy Bridge processors by over 90% but that's because many of them have built in throttling issues. If your R3 is not throttling the CPU, then ThrottleStop isn't going to be much use other than as a very efficient monitoring program.

 

As a future R3 owner, i read in a review that the R3 cpu will throttle on high load (Furmark, Prime). I don't think it will throttle in a normal gaming session...

 

Can you use TS to undercharge your CPU? I'm trying to tweak it for my flight tomorrow.

 

Yes, you can set your multiplier to 5, which is the lowest it will go.

 

What about TDP/TDC? Would setting it 1/1 Do anything?

Edit: Nvm thanks

 

Here's an interesting paper called Power Optimization – a Reality Check.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~krioukov/realityCheck.pdf

It challenges the myth that a slow CPU saves power.

They use the term "Race to Sleep" which means you should run your CPU really fast when it is working so you can quickly put it back into one of the energy efficient C3/C6 sleep states where the real power savings are found. Running a CPU slow saves you very little but ends up costing you because it prevents the CPU from spending the maximum amount of time in the C6 sleep state where power consumption is zero on the new Core i series.

If you want a slower CPU, you're better off just using the Disable Turbo feature. That should do the same thing as a TDP/TDC setting of 1/1.

 

[edit] forget it. I already found it....

 

As to clockspeed stabilizer, it's great, but for saving power, you'll end up using more watts due to monitoring and set of instructions processed..

 

i was wondering if anyone could tell me why my last and second to last cores are always hotter than m first two. In every picture i've ever seen of anyone elses computer, it is the opposite. Could this be why I get freezes and lockdowns? I've been lurking this thread for months, and I've had some good times and bad times with my M11x. First my Right side speaker mysteriously stopped working. Lately it's been acting up more than usual during games as well. I get lockups during Starcraft 2 that i never used to get, even with the same drivers installed. I can't even play team fortress 2 without getting random choppiness and lockups. I've been pretty sad about this because i won't be able to afford a new computer for a long while. Dell tech support has been a nightmare to deal with... I don't know what to do. I just want to be able to use this laptop for the reason i bought it. To play games. Any ideas on how to proceed, anyone?



EDIT: I'm sure this isn't why im getting freezes and lockups but i'm out of ideas.

 

The sensors that Intel uses are not 100% accurate temperature monitoring devices. At best they are accurate to within +/- 5C so if you have one sensor reading 5C too low and the other sensor reading 5C too high then the result might be a reported difference of 10C between the two cores even when the two cores are running at the exact same temperature. It's nothing to worry about. You can try pulling your laptop apart and redoing the thermal paste but you might not see any difference in the spread between temperatures if this spread is being caused by inaccurate sensors. Keep in mind that Intel only designs these sensors to trigger thermal throttling and thermal shutdown. They don't have to be super accurate to be able to control this so Intel saves a few pennies and uses sensors that are not 100% accurate.

I see you have your BCLK adjusted to 160 MHz. What sort of stability testing have you done and for how long at this setting? I've seen the Core i5 which uses a lower multiplier run at 160 to 166 MHz without too much problem but it can be more of a challenge to reliably run a Core i7-640UM at a BCLK over 160 MHz. It's summer where I live and higher ambient temperatures can also reduce stability so you might have to decrease your overclock and see if stability improves. What sort of ThrottleStop TDP/TDC settings are you using and what do you have Force TDP/TDC set to?

 

Thanks for the quick reply! I've ran 3dMark06 with and without throttlestop on and with a BCLK of 156, 158, and 160. I've also ram MSI kombuster/furmark for half an hour or so. I've never ran any kind of stress testing for longer than that. It's summer here and has been pretty hot but my temps seem to stay at a steady 62 C or lower during gaming. TDP and TDC are both set to 30. I just went through and did everything that was posted at the first of this topic. I've been using throttlestop and MSI afterburner to OC the GPU and whatnot for the past 5 months or so, and i've had varying results. I've always kind of had an issue with random lockups, it just seems to be a lot worse lately.

EDIT: 3dMark06 tests the GPU and CPU I believe, and i've gotten a lockup on the GPU sections but only once on the CPU section.



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My fastest TS bench is 42.9. This seems slower than all of the others I've seen on this thread.