Overclocking the GT 540M

I have found that the Nvidia System Tools v6.06 works with our GT 540M cards, enabling custom profiles and settings. I just tested a mild 740/960 overclock in 3dmark06 and hit over 9000. CPU temps never got above 89C, and gpu temp never got above 76C. For some reason I want to hit 10,000, so I will be trying to slowly oc this card while watching temps until I hit 10,000, or the temp barrier. Anyone's advice on settings or anything else related to this topic would be appreciated.

Download the system tools here. Install all three apps.
NVIDIA DRIVERS 6.06

Also, while typing this, just tried 780/960 and hit 9337. I've already gained 1,000 points. All I need is another 700. I think it's possible.

 

What screen resolution are you running the test at? Reason I ask is because I was able to get a little over 12,000 with my GT445m overclocked. I'll post a pic of the results if you want it.

 

I'm running the free locked default settings, so it's 1280x1024. If anyone strays from this setting, please provide the resolution you used.

 

Never used the NVIDIA System Tools but I have a question that's not related to overclocking. Can they be used to adjust things such as display scaling (i.e. center a full screen application running at 1280x1024 instead of stretching it) and other similar settings that the Dell NVIDIA drivers lack?

 

Results are pretty much incompatible if people aren't using the stock setting of 1280x1024.

If you are just trying to make a benchmark run, either crank the AC in the house or open a window if it's winter. Should be able to get a couple more degrees on the gpu with cooler ambient temps. If you just fired it up and cranked out a 9000 with only a mild OC, 10K should be achievable. Also, I believe shutting down all non essential background services and running right after a reboot helps a bit as well.

Good Luck, I'm betting you make 10K.

 

See the free locked version for me runs at 1280x800 since 1280x1024 is unsupported by my screen. I am still curious because I got 10,000 with stock settings and 12,000 overclocked. I would think you should be getting higher values then you currently are.

 

Completely stock, I was getting right at or just above the score of 8300 that was accomplished on one of the reviews done on the L502x.

I did hit 10,300 though at 1280x1024 with a gpu overclock to 900/980/1800. I'm surprised it ran that high. Temps are no higher than previously reported. I know there is no way a game should play at this high of oc though. Just a number.

 

Completely stock without shutting anything down or doing any of the other stuff that results in higher scores, I got 9168 @ 1280x800 (I bought 3dmark06 quite awhile ago for hardware review purposes so I can change resolutions), so this is slightly under what you were getting with the 445M, which seems about right given that the GT540M is based on the GT435M and not the GT445M.

 

Hi:

When I receive my L502x, I would like to overclock a little bit the GT 540M card... is there any potential risk by doing this? Would it run better the games or should I leave it as it comes in stock?

Thanks!

 

There's always a risk when you overclock. Generally a mild OC is pretty harmless, but when you start living on the bleeding edge, system stability starts getting sketchy. It's rare that an OC will actually break something, but it can happen. Usually though, you end up with an unstable system and/or graphics anomalies that cause you to back off on the gpu speed until they go away.

 

Mmm I see... but would a mild OC improve the gaming performance? Or the difference would be minimal?

Thanks!

 

Honestly, I don't think you would notice the performance difference. Or at the very least, the performance difference wouldn't be enough to offset the possible instability.

I think the best course of action is to either use a lower resolution or reduce some game detail settings.

The GT540M is a respectable video card for a laptop, but at 1080P, it's never going to be anything more than OK for gaming. It's a compromise solution that does many things OK, but falls short of being great at a couple tasks.

I'm not against overclocking, in fact my computer hobby grew out of overclocking. The difference though is that we have much more control over desktop systems. Laptops offer extremely limited flexibility when it comes to cooling options, which severely limits their overclocking potential. Also they suffer from their mobility because in general you really don't control the environment you use your laptop in like you can control your desktops environment. This assumes you actually bought your laptop because of it's portability. If you bought it to be a desktop replacement, you probably should have gone for one of the larger systems with a better gpu.

 

Thanks a lot for the explanation.... I think I better don't overclock and take the risk... instead, I will reduce the resolution

Regards

 

NP, I edited my post above quite a bit, but you got the point.........blame the Sambuca. Took me a bit to get my thoughts composed.

 

Depends if you really need those extra fps or higher setting in game, or whatever yo might do with your GPU.

WoW with stock clock ran at ~20 fps with my custom setting, which was acceptable but still choppy. With my current clock it runs at 30+ fps, often 35+, which looks smooth. Totally worth it for me.

 

Sad to say, but the only way I was able to play COD Black Ops with decent frame rates was to oc my GT 420M (L501x) to 740/960. Only then did I get seamless game play. It didn't affect my computers temps either. If you are having problems with laggy games, try overclocking until the game becomes stable. Unfortunately we have medium cards and demanding games out, so overclocking is the only way to play these with a decent resolution and frame rate.

 

I'll give some OC'ing a shot and see if I can't improve a couple things. Right now Resident Evil 5 runs at about 30fps with anti-aliasing and motion blur turned off at DX10, maybe a little less...see if I can't squeeze some things out....oh that's at 1920x1080

 

Did the whole overclock thing at 768x960 or whatever the OP set to.

Got a 9384 in 3dMark 06, and in the Resident Evil 5 Benchmark, I got 8-12fps more than stock at 1080p, so I'm now around 33.6fps in the benchmark avg...that's with AA and Motion Blur off.

If I set to 1600x900 with AA at 2x and MotionBlur on, I get about 38fps average, topping out during game play at around 45fps.

If this is safe and just a marginal increase, I may keep it like this as my temps didn't get above 63C, sitting on my lap, no cooling pad.

 

Temps are fine. That's a mild oc so you should be fine with it. Only if you start to see artifacts during game play, or stuttering issues should you worry about changing it.

 

Excellent. I'll push it a bit more then. Not too much though. What do you think would he safe to push too. Im unfamiliar with the ratio numbers there.

 

The problem is, there is no magic number and everyone's will usually be different. When overclocking anything, you should always test yourself. Don't throw someone else's numbers in. Just go up in small increments and retest with a demanding game. Play it and watch your temps. Repeat.

 

I was wondering if you guys were getting higher overclocks than the GT 435m but looks like until now you are getting the same overclock clocks as we get with the gt 435m..

 

Meh, I sorta disagree. Conventional wisdom will eventually settle on something like "your typical GT 525M will typically handle XXX/YYY fine."

While I agree that every chip can be different the variability between chips is like a typical bell curve. The vast majority will have similar overclockability (yeah, that's not a word) while some may support greater speeds and some, unfortunately, less so.

By following conventional wisdom, you can test your chip at the top of that bell curve as a starting place and then stay there if you're happy with a 20% (or whatever) overclock or continue to march forward, or backward, as needed.

As least with software overclocking, this incremental approach isn't painful, but when I was overclocking my 6600 CPU, I certainly wouldn't want to go the route of rebooting for every 100 MHz increments.

 

While I agree with the bell theory, your recommendations are not wise advice for the novice. Especially talking about oc'ing a cpu. I don't know how much you oc'd your cpu, but I know there is a big difference in 100MHz when you're reaching the limit. For example, when running over 4GHz/core on an i7 920, a 25MHz increase without adjusting either the voltages or frequencies will result in a bsod. And that bsod will show up in 1 minute of running IBT. After you think you have it right, then comes the 24 hours of Lemans (prime95). You'll reach an error between 8 and 12 hours. Keep adjusting voltages, timings, and frequencies. Repeat test. I don't accept anything less, considering the amount of money invested in my hardware, software, and data. I know I am better off safe than sorry.

 

Exactly. I followed conventional wisdom on the Q6600 (2.4GHz) and have mine running at 3.2GHz -- pretty much plug the numbers in that lots of people had reported as stable and then test. Not being overly aggressive and I was happy leaving it there. You're absolutely right as you get to the far end of where the chip can handle that smaller increments might be needed.

 

Anyone else tried overclocking this chip or the 525m? It'd be nice to know if others were getting similarly high OC numbers.

 

Can anyone comment on whether the 525m and 540m available for the dell l502x have the same gddr5 memory? The memory speeds are listed as being the same, but you can never be too sure...

 

ITs ddr3 those chips mate. It sucks that its not gddr5 though

 

Why the whole 5xx mobile line is hobbled by ddr3 memory is completely beyond me - gddr3 is twice as fast and gddr5 is a whopping 4x faster! Moving to gddr5 could't cost more than a few dollars and since newer memory should be lower voltage it would also go a long way towards reducing the wattage / heat / power envelope for these chips...

 

550m speeds work on my 540m. but not too much beyond that.

 

I've got my 525M benching 3dmark vantage stable right now at 800 on the core - 820 and the test still completes, but I start to see some minimal tearing / artifacting. Time to start raising the memory .

The cooling system in the L502X can deal with a ton of heat - even with these overclocks I'm only hitting ~68C load on the gpu. This thing was built to handle a 50W graphics chip so hopefully Dell will start offering one for the XPS 15 series soon.

 

I concur. I am able to play games at 740/1000 no problem. It does get up to 80 degrees celsius though.

 

Final stable speeds for my 525M are 800 / 1050 giving me a 3dmark vantage bench of P5324 (up from P4096 stock).

After hitting 1000 on the memory additional speed increases only yield very minor gains (1050 gives me ~15 points in vantage) - looks like I'm going to leave it at 1000 for normal use.

 

dang you guy's 525 is yields better clocks than my 540m. Well that is just 3dmark though not a few hours gaming correct?

 

not hours but i had crysis 2 going for 45 minutes
full 1080p in low settings no lag

 

I'll have to check those speeds with my 540m....I'm looking to give it a boost. Maybe a bit lower, so I'll check with a couple benchmarks

 

I ran a bunch of benchmarks with the GT540m OC'd to 800/1050 and here are the following results:

Code:

Idle Temp: 47-52C (note these temps are on a chill pad)

3d Mark06: Default settings 1024x768
Score: 9688
Temp:  77C

Resident Evil 5:
1920x1080 Resolution (1600x900 gets me over 50FPS consistently)
No AA, No Motion Blur
Max Settings
Variable: 38.5 FPS
Fixed: 35.4 FPS
Temp: 79C

Street Fighter IV:
1920x1080 Resolution
No AA, VSync Off
Max Settings
Average FPS: 71.4

I've not yet went over 80C, but I'm getting ready to play Sogun II: Total War for a bit, so after a couple hours we'll see what happens, I run everything on High or Ultra at 1920x1080 with Medium Unit size and detail. The map is laggy sometimes, but the battles are awesome and silky smooth

 

i thought default 3dmark 06 was 12x10 res?

 

Whatever it was, it's the default, 1280x1024 if that's what you mean...I don't know what 12x10 is.

I should add that Dragon Age II runs on High with 1920x1080 resolution quite smoothly at least in the beginning battle.

 

Hello, I did a 10% overclock on 540m, ran several tests on 3dmark06, 11, Cinebench, ect. but I experienced BSOD while benchmarking Metro 2033, hm what do you guys think... I am an Acer 5750g user though.

 

THATS INSANE! Stock core speeds are 600MHz. Hopefully, mine will be able to overclock this good. Did you notice much improvement in games? How many fps did it increase by?

 

Just to confirm after a couple hours of gaming (Shogun II: Total War) Temps never rose past 81C.

 

interesting, your 540m overclocks were higher than my 525m overclocks and yet your 3dmark06 scores are lower by 500 points.

 

Honestly I think 3 d mark just kinda throws whatever number it wants in there don't think there is a real accurate algorhythm. But at one point it slows to like 9fps during the ship thing. I wonder :f my cores are all running.

 

I think it's accurate enough since it reponds to overclocking.

 

It does, but I get a different number everytime I run it.

 

What program are yous using to overclock?

 

The Nvidia Control Panel

 

make sure its same screen resolution to be comparable.

 

It's ok if it's slightly different. It's the percentages that matter. If the scores are within 1-2% of each other that's within the margin of error.