Overclocking the GT 540M

Any idea on how to undervolt the 525m/540m? The nvidia tools have the voltage control section greyed out.

 

820/1000 Stable. 540m

 

OK I've been trying to find a good setting to play games like cod:mw2 and cod:black ops and so far I've found that 746/1000 plays pretty smooth. Is heat the only thing that could damage my card or could it just randomly kill itself? Also the speeds you guys have been benchmarking at such as 800/1050, are they stable for gaming as well or only benchmarking?

I don't want to damage my laptop

 

I've been just now playing around with benchmarking and overclocking my 540m. Heat is the main factor determining the death of electronics, though the initial state can vary, and things can physically happen along the way, that can have an affect.

For my overclocking, I found that 872/1037 was at the edge of stability... a bit higher and noticable artifacting begins. It's possible that there are a few artifacts now and then that I'm not catching though.

<strike>However, an interesting result appeared: overclocking the 540m resulted in worse CPU performance. (The CPU, at least for the 2620M, is what the NVIDIA software chooses to do PhysX on, and of course also handles AI). The reason for this seems to be that there is so much heat being generated by the graphics card that the CPU can't sustain as high a TurboBoost speed as with the stock clocks, since TurboBoost is capped by CPU temp and the CPU and GPU share the same heatsink. So there's a trade-off between graphics performance and physics/AI performance. I would imagine this trade-off is bigger for those with quad-core processors.</strike>

I'm still collecting data, so I'll put up some numbers later on what I described above.

EDIT: The apparent CPU performance degradation appears to be an artifact of the fact that the first run I did was on an idle system. When I re-ran the stock clocks, I got the "degraded" CPU score.

 

I was running 760/980 before and running crysis 1 and it was working fine with temperature not going above 75C but then it froze and i couldnt do anything except for hold down the power button. Its running fine now. Is it possible to damage the card even if it doesnt overheat? I think ill just run it at low clocks from now on

 

I don't think you can. The system has an automatic shutoff fail-safe. So if it gets too dangerous it will shut down. I run at 820/1000 for the most part. I get temps at like 80 on the high end.

 

Oh ok, what kind of games do you play on those settings? Have you ever had it freeze like what happened to me? Thanks for the reply

 

These events will be more likely with overclocking--even if frequent graphical glitches aren't apparent. It probably isn't dangerous, but it might be something to either live with, or if it happens frequently enough to be a nuisence, try downclocking until the problem disappears.

It's also possible that certain games are much more sensitive to overclocking errors than other. In that case, you could set a specific variation of the clock speeds for that game using the profile policies.

 

I play Civ V, Cod: BO, Shogun II. Mostly Civ V at the moment.

I haven't had any graphical glitches, but I have had system lock ups. But that happens to me on a normal setting with no OC sometimes. Not sure why. It happens at least one time a day that I have to hard power off.

 

I benchmarked my 540m with 3DMark06 (DX 9), 3DMark Vantage (DX 10) and 3DMark11 (DX 11).

Intel HD3000: 4379, 1648, --(not a DX11 GPU)

Stock 540m: 7992, 4132, 984

Overclocked to 872/1037: 9795, 5134, 1241

That's a 20% improvment over stock. The memory overclock only represents a 3.5% increase independent of the core clock. These numbers are comparable to the 555M, according to the one benchmark posted at Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech.

I'm going to try playing some games and see if these numbers, and system stability, hold.

 

When i play black ops online even with a mild 760/980 OC it freezes after about 10-15 mins of gameplay. Is that black ops playing up or my computer?

 

jaisah: Hard to say. As I said, some games are more sensitive than others.

Update to my OCing: I had to downlock a bit to 864/1012 after observing some artifacting in Mass Effect 2's load screen. There're some other oddities in ME2 that may or may not be due to my clocks that I'm looking into.

OCing also does weird things to IE9's page rendering, particularly if you switch away from a tab for a while and back to it (MSN.com particularly shows this off). I wouldn't bother optimizing on IE9 behavior though, just switch IE to use Intel graphics all the time--its unlikely you'd need the speed of the nvidia for IE anyway.

 

Ok thanks for the help ill try those settings with black ops (its quite a lot higher than ive tried so far ). Also do you know how to turn off optimus? I only get 4.8 for my windows aero performance which is dissapointing. Ive tried setting the 540m as the preferred graphics card in the nvidia control panel but didnt change anything when i reran the WEI.

 

Ok i just tried your OC of 864/1012 and it froze after a few minutes in black ops multiplayer.

 

Overclocking is highly individual due to variations between chips. Since you were having problems at a lower speed, it would have been very surprising if a higher one worked.

One thing you might try is to put your game into windowed mode, allowing you to change clocks on the fly. Put yourself in a 3d area where visual stuff is happening, then watch what happens as you increase the clocks, remembering to do small steps.

I didn't fully turn off Optimus, I just set the Preferred card to Integrated (which means for more games I'll need to manually specify using NVIDIA, which isn't a huge deal for me). But I also explicitly told IE to use integrated. It's in the NVIDIA Control Panel under "Manage 3D Settings."

 

It depends on a lot of thins. I played Crysis 2 at 800/1000 for a couple of hours no problem. Then yesterday, I played it again and withing 20 minutes or so, I had major artifacts and the computer was basically so screwed up I had to reboot. So, even though 800/1000 was stable at one time, it wasn't stable the 2nd time around.

 

yea my computer is freezing a decent amount of times now. The cpu i suppose is putting out too much heat.

 

Guys i reccomand a repaste because when i had to open up my l502x, it barely had any paste on the gpu die and the cpu die was covered with their cheap paste. The paste on the cpu went over the dye.

 

What do you mean by "barely any"? "Barely any" is usually the right amount of paste--just enough to fill any molecular-size gaps in the surfaces to make sure there's no poorly-conductive air between the processor die and heatsink.

 

What i meant was that the left side of the gpu dye had paste as the right side had nothing.
There is pics in my other thread of me disassembling it.
POINT OF THE MATTER IS that Dell does a terrible job thermal pasting these computers.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I agree.

 

Oh damn, i looked at your photos, are you sure all l502x's will be like that? If i contact dell do you think they would send someone around to fix it?

 

The air coming out of the exhaust fan in my L502X gets VERY hot (blowdryer hot) when I play games. That's indicative of good heat transfer between the chips and the heatsink.

 

Than they might of did a good job on yours.....
Also repasting to a better brand will intall better temperatures.

 

I think you may have misunderstood him. When the CPU and GPU are hot, you *want* the exhaust to be hot--hotter exhaust means less hot inside your computer.

 

I think you may have misunderstood him. He said "Than they might of did a good job on yours....." which when translated into proper english means "Then they must have done a good job on yours". Meaning he understood that hot air = good. Then he went on to say that repasting with a better brand will still be better than the standard paste job reguardless of how well they did it.

Anyway back to the matter at hand. Is it likely that dell would send someone around to repaste my computer if i tell them about what i've heard about the paste in these L502x's? Also if I uninstall the nvidia system tools will they still be able to tell that i've been overclocking?

 

I apologize, you're right. I'm operating on too little sleep today, I think...

 

What I am trying to say is that if the exhaust air is HOT it means that the heat transfer is working well so no need to disassemble the laptop and repaste.

 

Does anyone else experience crashes with black ops even if you're playing on stadard clock? I was playing modern warfare 2 for a few hours on 550m clock speeds and then played black ops for like 30mins before it crashed so i tried again on standard clock speeds and it crashed again. what the heck? Anyone know what to do?

 

Hey guys i just bought new Dell Xps 15 ( L502X) with 2Gb Nvdia 540 M GT.
I am having problem with scaling , there is no such option coming in Nvdia Control panel , when i launch NFS Most wanted or prince of persia , game just scale to half of screen , it do not fill the screen.
Any idea how to fix this in Xps 15 L502X ?

 

Posted this on the owners thread but that looks like it turned into the order process thread, any ways there are new Nvidia drivers up 270.60. I installed yesterday just wanted to know if any of you installed it and noticed any difference in performance or anything else. thanks guys

 

Noticed a slightly smoother gameplay at stock clocks playing Dirt 2. Haven't tried it oc'd or other games yet.

 

800/1000
I have tried AC:Brotherhood and Portal 2 and both run perfect

 

Are'nt you guys having problem with scaling on XPS L502X ? I'm having Nvdia 540 M GT and Windows 7 Home Premium. All games like NFS Most Wanted , POP scales to middle of screen leaving two black bars on sides . is there any fix for this ?

 

try different resolution setting in game setting (after game start mostely you need to use ese button to go to games menu then setting -> Display/grafic -> resolution)i found 1600X900 very nice and smooth to play

 

I got mine stable at 890/1020 with GPU temps never exceeding ~70.
GELID Solutions GC-Extreme Thermal Compound is amazing. Not great stuff to apply but wow it does the job once its one.
Just a shame the card itself can't hold out anymore.
Portal 2 full advanced settings and I average around 50 FPS.

 

Wow sounds great! I contacted Dell about my computer overheating and they are sending a technician around. Should i supply my own thermal compound or will they have some good stuff?

 

870/1020 stable (max temp 73 °C)
i tried 880/1020 but playing AC:Brotherhood i saw some artifacts

 

I doubt they will do anything.
If you supply your own paste the technician might apply it for you although I was told CPU temps in the high 90's are fine and GPU's in the 90s are too.This is after they replaced my first machine for the sae temperatures so who knows
The engineer won't have anything like that. The only thermal paste Dell use is the stuff they use when they make the machines in the factory. It is incredibly poor quality and it TERRIBLY applied.
You would not void your warranty applying the thermal paste yourself.I would recommend the GE-Lid mentioned, particularly as unlike Artic Silver MX-5 it is non electrically conductive; so if you did slip you wouldn't anything out and it is also more efficient at cooling plus doesn't need curing time where you have to wait 200 hours to see any effect.
Bear in mind the technicians work on a commission basis anything time consuming is a big ask. You would also need something this to remove the pre-existing paste as well as a good lint-free cloth (ideally microfibre) and also cotton bud sticks as Dell are sloppy enough to have the paste on the side of the chips and everywhere. Too much paste may not be as bad as none but it is comparable.

Spoiler

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arcticlean.htm

Since Dell use 3rd parties for this type of work it may be worth finding out which company it is and asking them prior to their arrival.

Btw if you do choose to do it yourself and anything goes wrong provided you haven't made a mess Dell has no way of knowing. The colour of that paste is very similar to that of the stock paste and if you don't mention anything and reassemble everything properly no one would be any the wiser.
It is also worth practising with the paste first to get a feel for its viscosity (read texture) as it is very sticky, even to itself and you only want a thin layer. A 3.5g tube would cover several machines so you might as well get a feel for the stuff before taking the plunge, although it is definitely worth it!

 

Just for clarity, you should know that the memory clocks aren't arbitrary... when you set it to 1020 MHz, it'll actually be at 1012 MHz.

 

My 525M was doing fine @ 766/1000 for a while but I got a couple of lockups in Crysis 2. So, I dropped it to 730/960 and I can play for hours. The exhaust air is extremely hot though. It feels like it could cook my hand. Nvidia Inspector says the card gets up in the high 70s, low 80s while playing crysis 2.

 

what app do u guys use for OCing ?

 

Read the first post.

 

I just now installed MSI afterburner , is it ok ? or is nvidia a better OCing tool ?

 

Dell are coming around on monday to replace my ram, heat sink and motherboard (hence GPU). Hopefully ill be able to OC a bit better. I asked the technician about heat paste but he said the heat sink will come with paste on it already, ill just try it and if its still too hot ill take it to a computer shop and get them to put some good stuff on there.

 

its better you insist the technician coming to your home to put a custom paste , better one like acrylic etc , when he takes off all the components , AFAIK , putting a new paste needs almost to take apart the whole laptop ...dell tech`s are better in taking apart and putting it together than an outsider

 

Ok the guy just came around and replaced all the stuff, so far its running smoother. Normally when i play black ops overclocked it freezes pretty quickly but i just played for 30-40 mins without any problems at 550M speeds. The heat sink had paste already on it and he put on some that he had with him but it was not labeled so probably not a good brand. So far the heat coming out of the exhaust feels a little hotter than before but its hard to tell.
Has anyone changed to a good brand or heat paste? Did you get a marked improvement?
Im gonna play some crysis at 550M (740/900) speeds and see how that goes. Crysis was very unstable for me before when i overclocked.

Edit: Ok played crysis at 550M speeds for around an hour and didnt crash. Did have the windows open tho so ill have to test in a warmer environment.

 

I tried to OC to 720/915 and ran furmark for sometime , and when the temps hit 86c , i stopped the benchmark .. Its weird the the temps dip and raise , could this be due to the fans running at different speed or is it normal ?

any good reference for maximum temp i can reach ?
also i read different values here .. any other better benches available to stress the GPU or fur is good ? , still fur detect the primary renderer as Intel Graphics card .. but once running , it runs on 540M , anyway to change it , or is it ok ?

 

I have one doubt , when using the desktop / non gaming time , why is MSI after burner reporting the 540M temperature or even the clock speed and memory speed ? should it be low or nil ?

 

Yeah, on my 525M OC'ed to 800/1020, it drop 4-5C then goes up. I'm very happy with this overclock, 81C in Furmark so I think it should be cooler in most games, I just ried TrackMania Nations Forever with everything maxed out, getting around 40fps and doesn't go above 71C.