G51VX - New CPU *again*

I've read pretty much every page of the threads regarding the G51VX-RX05... and they've been extremely useful. Still, I have a question.

I created this nifty little chart to help me pick out a new processor. I've checked ebay prices, read intel's specs, visited cpuworld, ebay & wikipedia more than I want to admit. Still, I can't make a solid decision. With the poor heat management of the G51VX, and my own energy efficiency desires, I am sorta driven away from the higher wattage options.

My current setup can hit 2.8Ghz with the stock P7350 & manage some performance/benchmark tests rather easily. The CPU itself doesn't get much warmer than stock, but the GPU likes to warm up a bit more during gaming or 3DMark. That's the norm, so I hear, and I'll address it with a CPU swap. I'm not willing to keep it @ 2.8Ghz becuase that's really one heck of an OC for the whole machine. I'd rather idle it down. Still, I want the performance... if for testing only. I'm greedy.

Which brings me here. Am I putting too much weight on the heat issue? Can the G51VX easily handle a 44W CPU (I'd be dreaming for 55W, huh), or a C0 version of the faster CPU's, or will the GPU fry? Even with cooling mods; Copper blocks, drilled backplate, new paste, etc? Also, with the MB & Memory being capable of hitting such a high FSB, should I target a higher or lower multiplier? As you can see, I jokingly thew a column on the sheet to theorize the overclock potential of each CPU based on what the other components have known to hit. I do realize those numbers are crazy... ;-)

Any advice would be appreciated. Don't analyze the chart too much, I'm sure it has plenty of flaws. It's just something I threw together to compare each one in relation to the P7350. I generated numbers for the Mac CPU's based on their PC alternatives with a 5% reduction. I've read they have slightly less performance... maybe I'm wrong about that.

Thanks in advance.

 

Jeez that's a freakin' crazy but very informative chart. If it weren't for the SB chips rolling out soon and rendering most C2D chips obsolete, your chart should be stickied.
Anyways, I have an OC'd 44w X9100 in my G50vt as well as a swapped and OC'd 260m, which unleashes a tremendous amount of heat during gaming and benchmarking.
Without external coolers, my GPU hit 110C couple of times playing SC2, and CPU hit around 85C. Granted that the g50 fan is weaker than that of a g51, I wouldn't imagine your temps to be that much better if you dropped a X9100.

However, if you have an adequate cooling solution and don't go crazy over the OC (i think running the 260 above 600 on the core is the main culprit of heat problems), you should be fine with a X9100 as far as heat management goes.

The prices of X9100 you had there is pretty high
NEW Intel E8435 SLAQD 3.06G 6M 1066>T9800 T9600(=X9100) - eBay (item 280614591784 end time Feb-09-11 04:39:16 PST)
perhaps you should give these "alternative" chips a try, I got one of these running in my G50.

Btw how did you get your P7350 to 2.8? That's an insane amount (40%) of OC on a non-extreme CPU! My roommate has a P7350 as well, maybe you can shed some light?

oops didn't see that you had the E8435 chips at the end of your chart. Why did you cross out the SLAQD?

 

I crossed out the SLAQD because it's rated at 55W... and from what I read about heat, that would destroy the G51VX. Do you have that version in your machine?

I'm not sure how my P7350 hit 2.8. I just kept bumping the FSB with SetFSB until it wouldn't go any higher. It stopped at roughly 2.85... and began crashing. I rolled it back and ran some benchmarks. I have my Passmark Performance Test score if you're interested. I ran 3DMark06 too, but didn't save the score, unfortunately.

I would really like to know if you used a SLAQD in your machine. The prices are low... and I'd love to go that route if she can handle it.

 

hmm, I'm actually not sure what mine is. I got it for about 160 off of ebay last summer, the serial number on the chips says "35812560A2344"
CUP-z says Intel X9100 (ES).

If you're worried about heat, just build a cheap custom cooler that blows air straight into the vents at the bottom. I made mine like that with a couple of 12v fans and it dropped load temp by around 20C on both the CPU and GPU. Otherwise you can always undervolt a bit. I don't imagine the different TDP rating on two otherwise identical CPUs would make that much of a difference, since Intel is known to round off a couple of watts to fit into certain TDP categories. Who knows, maybe the extra TDP would allow you to OC pass that 4GHz barrier too!

 

oh, an ES.

I'll figure something out. I'm a little worried about temps, as my friends and I do gather for LAN parties at times. A session of Crysis can sometimes last an hour or more without a break. That's pretty stressful, especially for the GPU...

Thanks for the advice. I'll check things out.

 

Remember, double digit GPU temps only. For a 260m, I'd say 95 is your target temp - anything +/- 5 degrees from 95 is about where you'll be at ... the 360 runs a little cooler, but doesn't have the oomph. That laptop you've got is a beast, it'll never die ...

 

Thanks DC. Under benchmarking the 260 will hit 93... but doesn't go higher once the fan kicks in. A simple cooling pad would do wonders prolly. I see in your sig where you converted a G51VX to a G51JX. What's the diff?

 

VX is core2duo with 260, J was i7 with 260, JX was i7 with 360.

I had a dead pixel on my VX and I returned it rather than deal with the zero bright dot. Then I got a JX, thinking the 360 was better and the i7 was better... but it was terrible. BSOD problems, power draw issues, no glowing backside, only room for 1 hard drive ...

Spec-wise, the JX is a better computer, but the VX is so much better. The performance difference between the 260 and 360 is funny - the 360 is actually slower (... but does stay stable at a higher overclock , but what's the point when the cooling system isn't enough to keep it cool?), and the i7 had terrible downclocking problems because of heat.

So I got rid of it, and got a g73. Cost almost 2x more, and performance isn't that much better. Honestly, I'd have stayed with the VX, and spent the extra 1k on ... ANYTHING else.

 

Gotcha. I'm happy with it so far... and since I'm the first in our LAN group to go with a laptop, most are impressed with the performance. I debated between this & a M11x, I'm glad I made the purchase I did.

I just ran some tests @ 2.8... checking temps. I OC'd the 260 a little for 3DMark... and tried to keep the temps below 100. It hit 100. No biggy, I knocked everything back down to stock after the test.

I left stepping activated, so you can see where it idled back down after running 3DMark. The speed is still shown in the back on the 3DMark banner.

Not too bad. I still don't believe it's 100% stable tho. I'm sure it would die under Prime95 after a while. Performance Test is a good test for comparing upgrades and overclocks with stock settings, but doesn't torture the CPU like Prime95.

Like I said before, a cooling pad would probably do wonders.

 

Can I insert a little input here? Take from it what you may.

Forget about TDP. It's unreliable and incorrect and does not follow a specific format. If you look at a certain series CPU and compare temps, the temps won't follow the pattern of their TDP, but rather follow a more realistic relationship among stepping, clockspeed, and voltage. IE: even though a T9900 and a T9300 both have a 35W TDP, at stock clocks under load the T9900 will be hotter because it is clocked faster and has more voltage. TDP is a marketing tool and just tells you very very roughly what size laptop you'll need to cool something.

Rely on steppings (E0 and C0). An E0 stepping will run cooler at idle and load, and I suspect has the potential to overclock further and use less voltage doing so. Don't get a C0 stepping CPU if you can help it, it's not worth the investment. Notice the C0 and E0 stepping TDPs of the same CPU are different.

You are limited by voltage. Your CPU voltage will determine how far you can OC using SetFSB (or throttlestop if you have an extreme series CPU). It's more than likely not the RAM, but how many volts your CPU has that determines your OC. I lucked out when I got my E8335 (Mac version of the T9800, no DFFS or IDA) because it runs at an insanely high voltage of 1.225V, which lets me OC a little past 3.5GHz (that's a +20% improvement over stock). I haven't seen anyone with a T9800 clock that high, because the T9800 runs at 1.2125V. That extra .125 of a volt means another 100MHz or so of OC headroom. Your P7350 overclocks to about the same levels my P8400 did because the voltages are similar.

Just shedding some light on what I've found from a year or two of stalking this stuff on this forum!

 

Thanks for the reply!

What exactly does it mean to not have DFFS & IDA? What do you notice under regular use?

Also, what temps do you hit with the E8335 & G50?

 

DFFS is Dynamic Frontside bus Frequency Switching. Similar to multipliers on a CPU, the CPU will tell the FSB to power down to one of like 4 different levels on the fly. So this means my CPU doesn't do that, it only toggles between HFM and SLFM (high/superlow frequency modes) or 2.93 and 800 MHz when idle, instead of going down nearly all the way to 0. These switches can happen many dozens of times every second.

IDA is Intel Dynamic Acceleration. If you ever see your CPU going up another 266 MHz for a split second, this is why. It overclocks one core during single-threaded loads.

Not sure what you mean by "notice under regular use..." but 2.93GHz is pretty darn fast enough for everyday tasks. It un-bottlenecks the system a little bit, so between naturally increased temps from 1.225V and the clockspeed, my GPU heats up more. At 3.5GHz it becomes unsafe to play some games like Crysis since that's GPU and CPU intensive so everything heats up pretty well. I set my GPU critical temp to 105C, so my system downclocks at 102C, and thus I've never seen it hit 103C ever. The GPU is still the hottest component in the system at stock. At OC the ACPI (Northbridge) heats up very well, I've had a few shutdowns because I wasn't monitoring the northbridge temp (I have an OLED screen with the GPU temp always there, and a manual fan controller).

Max temps on the E8335 are about 80C at full OC. Undervolting and stock clocks kick it down to the low 60's (!).

 

Great. Your temps keep me encouraged.

I was just curious if you noticed the lack of DFFS & IDA in casual everyday use. I reckon not, or you would've mentioned it.

I'll keep an eye out for the E0 series CPU's... and learn more about downclocking. Thanks.

 

Ah ok. Well yeah it does affect battery life a bit, I reckon I lost about 30-45 minutes since it doesn't really downclock the same as the P8400. So now with a 9 cell and no undervolting I manage only about 2 hours. If I undervolt and stretch it I can push it to 2.5h, but that's it (hence my attempted 18-cell battery! lol).

But man it's fast! I think the 6MB cache speeds some things up beyond just the clockspeed increases, too. Especially photo editing! Zooming in and out of photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery is very fluid compared to before. I made a comparison chart actually, it's here. A little incomplete but the last two columns are irrelevant really. Note that some benchmarks (including most single-threaded ones) are faster than an i7-720QM. The stuff under the E8335 columns are the most relevant to your interests.

http://i.imgur.com/5gWvi.png


PS: Thanks AllUrGroceries!

 

Also, don't forget that people with regular temps don't tend to visit the forum (on average, those that do come here end up lowering them eventually by taking drastic measures! Copper mods, vent mods, etc...) - so if your temps are ~5 higher than what people tend to report here ... well, that's probably still really within normal.

And yes, everyone ought to know by now that the 720qm isn't "way" better than a faster c2d proc, it's actually a bit slower in many cases. The real benefit to having a quad core i7 is resale value, IMHO. (Or video work, but whatever...)

 

Good point.

I've been thoroughly testing the OC of my P7350 today. I put it @ 2.65Ghz and let Prime95 run for an hour. No errors... and temps bounced around 68-69... and would go up to 70-74 when the office heat kicked on. :-|

That seems like a nice speed and temp to keep it at for now. I'm still looking for a better stock CPU tho. I'll get a pad and do some mods when I do the swap.

 

that's a great temp. My big problem working with laptops is remembering that they're not desktops. I can easily keep my desktop at ~40-50 degrees at load, but my laptop idles at that temp.

 

Great read guys, thanks.
Been thinking about upgrading from the P8700 installed a few months ago but might try and do an OC instead. Though the larger cache models have become much cheaper lately and the Aussie peso a lot stronger..
Great chart dustyz, confirmed my initial CPU upgrade on a few points.
Hiya dtd, thanks for the tips again.
Could any of you be bothered posting a link to any OC guides for the G51?
Regards from down under,
Dave

 

*Update*

I have a T9600 coming this Saturday, so that should help with the performance boost I wanted. Now, I want to ensure I have adequate cooling for it and the GPU.

Here are a few pictures of my cooling block modification. These are newegg 14mmx14mmx14mm forged copper blocks. Being forged, they are easy to bend and manipulate without breaking. In the pictures they aren't mounted yet, this was just a test fit. The panel fits fine. It's a little tight around the GPU, but it works. I went with these over the 4mm ebay blocks some others have used because they were easier to get, and I thought they'd give a greater surface area for cooling.

When it's all said and done, these should correspond with holes drilled in the backplate. I created a template in CAD to put the holes where I need them.

Everything should be complete Saturday... with temp test results to follow.

 

Wow that looks awesome! Very nice mod, I never thought to bend the pins, I saw these and thought 9mm was way too big.

 

dustyz!
Be interesting to see what kind of temps you get when cranking!
Regards,
Dave

Would you mind linking to where you bought the spiders?

 

Here are the "spiders" I bought. Like I said, I bent them as needed to fit within the case, and within the clearances of components. Each one is different, and it took me a bit to get them placed back where they belonged after the test fit.

Newegg.com - Enzotech BMR-C1 VGA Cooler

I'll post updated temps a bit later. I am still running some tests. I do know the 9600 with OC to about 3.2, and that's it. 3.3 will boot & run, but 3.4 is completely unstable.

Results.

The variable is the boot time. Some tests were run back to back, which probably causes temp increases on the second test. Others were ran directly after boot. The diff can be seen in the "MIN" temp in HWMonitor.

Amb = 68-70

The blocks ONLY test... with the 9600, was probably the most impressive. I'm not sure how much the holes helped. I think the OC test shows how effective they are at higher temps. I hafta believe the temps at those overclocks, without any mods, would be much higher.

Also, this lappy also had the back fake duct gutted in all tests. I did that when I had the 7350.

 

Thanks Dustyz,
Will be looking to crank the 9700 a bit soon as I'm expecting to be away again soon. SSD boot wouldn't upset you I'm sure...
Regards,
Dave

 

WOW, that is insanely cool!!! Do you have a shot of the bottom of your cover inside and out? I am upgrading to the E8435, it I get the same temps as you, I will be super duper happy!