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

The TS Bench is highly dependent on the amount of background junk you have running on your computer. If you minimize that, your TS Bench times should improve by 2 or 3 seconds. You might want to try wPrime instead.

Try running Prime95 with the Blend test. It does a good job of testing your memory. When you have random lock ups, it is often times memory related.

 

Okay. i actually ran prime95 for ten hours overnight, but i didn't do the blended test. It stayed on all night without errors, though. I've also found that if i don't turn on msi afterburner i am able to play Starcraft 2 without an issue. I will test my memory though for sure. Could i use memtest to test my memory, or should I just stick with prime95's blended test?

 

I like MemTest86+ but Prime95 Blend is probably a harder test to pass.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Memory can degrade over time so it's a good idea to test it every few months if you are having stability problems.

By the sounds of it though, your issues might only be MSI Afterburner.

 

I've used MSI afterburner during extended play sessions of Dragon Age 2 and battlefield BC2 with no issues though. And team Fortress gave me several blue screens without MSI Afterburner on. It's just been so difficult to pinpoint an issue!

I'm going to test my memory sometime soon and maybe I've got some bad memory. Maybe it's drivers? Who knows! But thanks for you're help unclewebb. I'll drop by again if i have any other questions. You've been a great amount of help!

 

figured it out myself

 

Any help would be appreciated:

I reformatted my system and now Throttlestop doesn't seem to be making a difference. Below are screenshots of what my settings are and showing the CPU won't go above 1.2Ghz or so (before the reformat it would hit 2+ when turned on. CPU boost is set to 166 in BIOS. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Your pics show your bus speed as 133, not 166. Also set your TDP/TDC to 30 or higher.

 

Im running an R2 i5 and am curious about overclocking. It seems this laptop is right on the verge of being able to run BC2 online flawlessly but needs a little extra push. I currently run gamebooster. I dont know much about this kinda stuff so when i do overclock, do i constantly need to be checking my temps? if so where do i see the temps? Will i still need to run game booster? Will I also need to overclock in the bios alongside TS? Just a few questions from a computer n00b

 

revo1059: The Alienware R2 has a problem that sometimes the overclock you set in the bios is ignored when you boot up so you are only running at the default base clock speed of 133 MHz. Reboot and try some different values and see what sticks.

Normhimself: To get the most power out of your R2, you need to overclock in the bios and then run ThrottleStop in addition to that. The first post in this long thread shows you how to setup ThrottleStop. If Gamebooster provides you with any benefit, you can run it in addition to ThrottleStop and overclocking. Run ThrottleStop and it will keep track of your maximum CPU temperature. When you are finished gaming, have a look at ThrottleStop and see what it is. When the heatsink is properly attached, these laptops have no problem running just fine when overclocked. Dell did a good job with the cooling system so too hot is rarely a problem. Intel says that the 520UM can run reliably right up to the 105C thermal throttling temperature that they have set so you should have a lot of headroom.

 

Thanks for the reply. I think this will be the fix I was looking for to be able to run BC2 online with a decent framerate. I will try this out tonight and see what happens Also when running it overclocked should I have my laptop on a cooling pad?

 

It can't hurt, but whether or not it's necessary depends on the temperatures you'll be reaching during extended gaming sessions. R2 owners typically see max temps (when CPU and GPU are both under moderate to heavy load) of mid to high 80s. That's way below the rated TJMax value for the core-i.

 

Just wanted to ask a quick question before I start using throttlestop.

What's a normal idle temperature?

I'm on the default high performance battery profile and factory settings (133 MHz, turboboost, speedstep on) and no clogging processes (38, 0% cpu, 30% memory), but i'm idling at 60C on both processors.

I tested throttlestop at turbo and 156 OC (turboboost on and speedstep off) on WPrime 1024M but stopped because my cpu was hitting > 85 C.

On a side note, any reason to keep speedstep on if I am just looking for performance, i.e., power isn't an issue?

 

Hey bzhou it sounds to me like your m11x needs dusting, but those temps are fairly high. I have an i7 oc'ed to 166 and throttlestopped and when gaming for hours I get to 79 gpu and about 82 cpu.

I have had the pc power down due to overheating before, and it was due to dust.

Mine idles around 50

 

These laptops generally don't put out a huge amount of heat, even when overclocked. Try running it without a cooling pad and see what temperatures you get. You might not need one.

 

I don't even have a cooling pad lol...I just elevate with a small book.

But I'll give dusting it a try. Thanks.

 

I elevate the back of my R2 by a small dictionary and guess what, my max temp decrease from 85 to 75.

 

I bought a Logitech lap desk:

Logitech - Comfort Lapdesk N500

which came with some sticky rubber blocks that you're supposed to mount on the lapdesk itself to keep your laptop in position. They have a better purpose in life by mounting them to the bottom of your alienware to elevate it to allow better airflow:





This mod alone lowers temps 5-10C. I guess if would be better if they were black, but it's nice because they're thin enough to not interfere when putting the laptop in your case (at least the one I have).

Sorry for the quality of the pictures, sun hasn't fully come up yet.

 

When gaming I run the power cord underneath the back side of mine in order to elevate. Drops temps about 8C for both the CPU and GPU.

 

Well I got my lappy overclocked to 166mhz in the bios and I am now running TS.....and all i can say is WOW. I went from averaging 25-30 fps in BC2 online (in a full server) to now I hardly see my FPS drop below 40...and most of the time im in the 50s....this is totally worth it. I gamed on it last night for about an hour and the highest temps recorded was 82...which someone stated was normal. I love TS!!!

 

Do we have any solutions to boosting the R3 CPU's yet?

 

I'm using Throttle Stop to help enforce Turbo Boost and it's working just fine.

 

So, I have a i7 640U. (m11xR2)

I'm overclocked to 166 through the BIOS.

The first time I used TS, I averaged 39.0s on the TS Bench, but now I'm regularly getting 43-45s.

In RIFT, the first time I did it, I was getting 50fps in light load and 25-30fps in heavy population areas.

Now I'm about 15fps in high population and 30max.

No GPU overclocking and my system is dust free.

I'm thinking of getting a SSD, but I'm wondering how I can get back to the gains I got the first time I used TS.

Thoughts?

 

EDIT: As you may notice, I forgot to set the "set multiplier" to on. I did so, and I retested. Still barely any difference between throttlestop being on, and being off.

I'm barely getting any performance increase after setting TPL to 40/40 and multiplier to turbo. Using wprime on 32m, I only got a 4 second increase:


Here are what my settings look like:


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Try setting the TPL to 30/60, that's what I have and I get around 39 seconds on a 160 MHz OC.


EDIT: Whoops, sorry Noah, I was thinking about the TS Benchmark.
On wPrime I just got 25.74 seconds with a 160MHz OC and TPL of 30/60. Give it a try, you should definitely not be getting in the 40s

 

Your PLL is 133, it must have reset in the BIOS. Go back in the bios, turn on your overclock, restart and try again.

 

Good catch Mardon, that would be it.

 

Check that wPrime is set to 4 threads. In the middle of a wPrime run it should be showing C0% very close to 100.0% which will confirm that all 4 threads of your CPU are being fully utilized. Also look in the Task Manager and make sure there isn't a lot of background activity running on your computer when benchmark testing.

What's wrong with the R3? The R3 CPUs have mostly been limited by Intel and Dell so there's not much tweaking you can do to them. The good news is that they generally don't need a lot of tweaks because out of the box, they run significantly faster than the throttled UM CPUs that are in the M11x-R2.

 

YES! It did work
Though I'm having issues with Wi Fi.
Whenever I overclock, (set at 160), I am unable to connect to nearby wifi sources. Not sure if throttlestop is also causing this, but the OCing is for sure. I've got the stock 1520 card.

 

I've used TS for 2 months and it still works great as usual. Since today, when I played one of my game on windows mode with TS turned on, I realised that the multiplier didn't stay on a constant number but jumping from 9 to 12 and even 13. (my CPU is core i5)

Is that normal? And is there any way to make TS run on constant multiplier number? Thanks in advance.

 

Here's what the first post in this thread says.

abcxyz91: Core i mobile CPUs are designed to idle down when they are lightly loaded to save power. There is a registry hack available that can "fix" this but battery power consumption goes way up and so does heat and I think it also limits you to only 1 bin of Turbo Boost instead of multiple bins of Turbo Boost so it's not really a practical solution.

Are you using the Windows high performance profile like the ThrottleStop docs recommend? Can you post or send me a ThrottleStop log file while you are playing this game? It gives a better indication of what the multiplier is really doing compared to watching each thread in the ThrottleStop table. Your CPU performance might be better than it looks.

 

I'm using high performance profile most of the time, but I'm not sure how ThrottleStop docs recommend exactly? I haven't found out it in your guide yet. I also change the minimum processor state to 100 in processor power management.
In order to save log file, I need to check "Log File" option in TS right? So maybe tomorrow I will send you mine. Thanks for your reply!

 

If you have the Minimum processor state set to 100% then that is correct.

Check the Log File option and when you are finished gaming, exit ThrottleStop to make sure it has a chance to write all of the data out to the file and then upload the ThrottleStopLog.txt file somewhere convenient like Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire and post or send me a link. It will show if the multiplier is dropping down and how much load is on the CPU when this is happening. Some games might not be loading the CPU enough when you have them running in window mode but I haven't seen this problem before.

 

ThrottleStopLog.txt

Here is my log after few hours of Metro 2033. I guess my clock as well as multiplier rate are stable when playing on full screen mode. That's good news lol

 

Well I did read that, and I was hoping others had gotten this problem and had come up with a solution. I must have a bad wi fi card. No matter, I plan on installing a 1102 or intel 6300.

 

abcxyz91: If your CPU is the Core i5-520UM then your log file looks good. When both cores of these CPUs are active, the maximum turbo boost multiplier is 12.0. Turbo throttling is when the CPU hits either the TDP or TDC power consumption limits and drops below this value. While gaming, the multiplier occasionally drops down to the 11.90 to 12.00 range but that's normal. If you play around with the Force TDP/TDC value in the Options window you might get the average multiplier a little closer to 12.00. The default for the force option is 16 I think but 8 or 7 might be better to reduce the amount of turbo throttling that these UM CPUs are constantly trying to do.

When you get a chance can you post a log when you are playing a game in windowed mode? There's not much you can do to block the multiplier for dropping down when playing like this but I'm interested to see how low goes. I would think that when you were actually playing that it wouldn't be too bad.

 

Just a question as I didn't wan to read 100 pages does this work with the R3
(i.e. second gen Intel i7 cpu's?) its just all my TPL options are greyed out (specs in sig)

 

I'm pretty sure its just for the R2(not yours)

 

Ok thanks /10char

 

I somehow missed the TPL button. I'm not sure what Options-> Force TDP/TDC does since it was not actually forcing anything for me.

 

I dont post on these forums very much, although i do find some useful stuff here, BUT this thread has saved me from chucking my m11x out the window

Before i came here i couldnt play fable 3 at the LOWEST settings, even though the m11x will tear through Crysis 2. My GPU was only running about 56% but was getting horrible framrates due to my CPU bottlenecking, but now im FREEEEEEEE and i can play it fine even with some settings on medium. Yay for this thread. My life rocks.

I might keep this little guy for a while longer yet.

Cheers

 

I know its an old question and probably not relevant for you, but if anyone else is insterested i got an increase of about 15fps in Fable 3 in CERTAIN AREAS, most of them were fine on low settings, but in the busy parts it slowed to about 11 and now im edging on 30

Woohoo

 

With i5 or i7?

 

i5! 520um to be exact, im at 162fsb with 12 multiplier and i just benched 12549 on pcmark05 !

haha, just been tearing crysis 2 apart on very high settings, fun indeed. honestly i never thought this little laptop was so powerful, i only bought it to play league of legends on the go.

Hooray for this thread

Ive stressed everything and it all seems stable, and im getting 85c on my CPU and 79 on my GPU, but i only upped the GPU a tiny bit, looking forward to really overclocking it

 

As it started with Kevin being stressed by me, let me bump this a little bit by upping the game with this mod I did

What you can see in the pictures is my m11x R2 with its cooling modded with a Peltier. In fact a second one will follow for the video card, but details are TBA

This is stage 1 of the project, assessing the temperature gains (at the moment around 30-40 degrees Celsius, from 98-99*C in games to 60-65*C and from 67*C to 48*C idle), the Peltier powering method (coupled in parallel with the CPU fan cooler, 1-5V according to the actual CPU temperature) and the best way to thermally "connect" the hot side of the Peltier with the case.

To-do:
- thermal pads between the peltier and the back cover;
- inserting some heatsinks around there somewhere;
- one more TEC element on the video card chip, although this one seems ok in keeping the GT335M in line as well.

Enjoy the pics

 

Nice mod you did there, still some work pending but very promising!

 

Looks good Cosmin, and they are some great temperature decreases you've got there.

Can't wait to see the final product!

 

Cosmin, did you sand the black anodized bottom plate at the contact point?
just a thought to improve conductivity.

 

i love what your doing. i used TECs before too.

are you sure your going to be able to remove the extra heat these generate?

how are you going to power them?

 

I used it, it made me go extremely fast while browsing web.... now how the hell do I turn this off

 

So basically the TEC is powered by the same connector that powers the only fan in the system, that is controlled directly by temperature. It is a risk, but it's only 1-5V and the TEC pulls enough heat off the pipes to keep the processor cool.

The extra heat goes in the aluminium-magnesium framework of the laptop and in the back cover. Enough said is that at 1-5V from the TEC, heat is negligible on the back of the lappie. Everything is cooler now.

Will keep you posted, but as my job keeps me busy a LOT I can't promise anything before December this year