Overclocking the GT 540M

Thanks!!!
Problem solved! I have tested for two hours with max graph. There seems to be no problem!

 

how is nvidia 540m 2gb running on crysis2 and bff2?
will that be faster than ati 5870m?
what is the highest 3dmark vantage are you guys getting?

 

I still have the same problem.I thought that I solved but (for example) when I play Rust after 10min, its freeze. If I see at the same time the CPU "Usage History" the graphic rise the max value. For that reason I think is a CPU problem....any other idea?
I have 4GB DDR3. Would be better with 8GB? Could be the solution?
ThankS!!

 

I thought I would add my adventures with my GT 540M, but from a different direction: I have a Sony VAIO--a relatively new all in one VLPC2190X model (i7-2720QM) which is essentially a big tablet PC on a stand. Obviously, not a Dell, but this is the best discussion on OCing the 540M I have come across so I hope I'm not out of line.

Out of the box, at 672/900, it scored 8404 3D Marks, with GT1: 28FPS, GT2: 28FPS, CPU1: 1FPS, CPU2: 2FPS, HDR1: 28FPS, and HDR2: 30FPS. High temperature measured via GPU-Z was 62 degrees C. Given that, I figured I had some room to play, and ratcheted it up prudently.

I managed to get up to 909/1050, and a 3DMark 06 score of 10616, but it locked up on me while I was setting up my victory dance screenshot. Temperatures were well under control as GPU-Z attested.

As far as a stable setup goes, 855/1050 is about as far as it goes. I managed 10209 and ran two hours of Left4Dead 2 at 1920x1080, highest settings with film grain (postprocessing effects?), at 30-50FPS. FPS gains are about 20% higher than factory settings--definitely worth the effort, because it brings games that normally run in 1920x1080 at 23-25 FPS range to above 30.

Setting to 900/900 results in 10042 3D Marks. No time to game test but I expect it to work. Temperatures are about 66 degrees max, due to the desktop-like active cooling fan on the VAIO that kicks in during the more CPU-strenuous parts of the test. Fiddling with the numbers will let me find the sweet spot and long term stress testing will tell the tale.

Bottom line, the GT 540M has some overhead, depending on the luck of the draw and, I think, whether you can supply voltage and ventilation to the chip. Right now voltage is not an option for me. I'm pulling a little RegEdit stunt to even enable nVidia System Tools to overclock the chip.

Best,

John

 

Hi, found this thread really useful so I thought I'd join up and share my results. I've benchmarked my L502X using 3Dmark06 and on standard clock settings I achieved 9172. My specs are i72360QM CPU and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. With a mild overclock using the Nvidia control panel to 750/950 I hit 9935. Standard settings in 3DMark11 hit 1087. I ran my overclocked settings on furmark at 1366x768 and temp never got above 85c, this was withh AA at 2x. I'm pretty pleased with these numbers. I've tested theses settings in game and not noticed any issues so far. Gotta love overclocking!

 

Hi Folks.

I haven't got a Dell either (or have I?) I have an Alienware M11X R3 and have found this thread to be very useful, as soon as I overclock mine ill post up some results. Im new to overclocking so please be patient.

Cheers!

 

Dont flatter yourself lol a alienware is still a dell, but take a look at msi afterburner, it easily allows you to oc any card

 

Okay I've read this entire thread and via testing for several hours I have the following details for Samsung RF711 owners. Sorry I know it's meant for studio XPS but it's really just a general OCing thread for the GT 540m.

First off get MSI afterburner to do this if you're a noob.

Second of all the settings I used were:

Core clock: 830
Memory Clock: 1076
Shader: 1660

It hasn't passed 86 degrees after hours of Dead Island on full settings (looked good for dead island) and sc2 on ultra (it's only supposed to be able to handle ultra at like 20fps but this OC setting makes ultra more than playable and it looks beautiful compared to the lower settings)

Specs for my machine: i7-2630QM, 8gb 1333mhz, Nividia GT 540m 2gb, regular hdd not ssd. The score I'm getting from 3dMark06 is 9484

Do you guys think 86 degrees is pushing it? To me it seems like the sweet spot. Wouldn't want to break 90 but a bit above 80 sounds okay to me. My processor regularly gets up to 87 and it isn't OC'd. (during full load)

The card and processor seem to cool down right quick too. Do you guys think I should push it more or push it less? Is 9500ish a good score?

 

Yup, I will do that, & NVIDIA'S control panel thingy.

 

Another one you can try is a oc program by EVGA, cant remember its exact name off the top of my head. But yeah any of them will work fine.

 

I wouldnt get it going any higher than 86c, for a cpu or the i7 thats normal, mines got up to 89c but for a gpu thats getting near its max i would say, i havent seen my 555 go over 76c maxed out with max overclock. So be weary, i would definately not let it go into the 90's even if it can handle it.

 

Thanks for the advice. I had remembered hearing from some people who did a lot of OCing that for videocards the sweet spot is 86-87 degrees. If you can manage to keep it max at that area apparently it's good. Obviously less is always preferable but I'm trying to tweak maximum performance out of it without pushing it too far.

Thus far it's made the card capable of playing Sc2 fluidly on ultra when really it should only be able to play it on high, so for my needs it seems to work. I'll continue testing and give feedback. I'm actually quite impressed with how much it can OC without taking a drastic bump in temperature. Played for hours last night and never broke 87. For CPU I really wasn't sure though, thanks for the info.

Also just curious how hard are you pushing your 555? Which settings? I believe that's the card that can be OC'd to insane levels and still retain good temps right?

 

Thats no problem. I havent done much overclocking with the 555m as quite honestly i dont need to, all my games play on highest settings at 1600x900 res with atleast 30fps. I only tried a bit of overclocking to see what the difference was and managed to get another 10fps on Brink with only a few degree c increase. It can be overclocked well getting close to a gtx 560m level, which is a gaming level mobile gpu.

But for example on assasins creed 2 today, i was on max settings with 8x AA getting between 35-60 fps (vsync on) average was probably about 45fps. And my gpu temp was between 74-77c after about 4 hours straight and cpu didnt go higher than 80-84c. But tbh all the 500 series overclock pretty well.

 

That's really awesome. Yeah I'm extremely happy with how far mine can go without overheating. One thing I'd like to add (like you mentioned) is that people should enable vsync or get a third party app like D3doverrider. This will improve certain games by a lot. For example Dead Island ran like crap prior to OCing and I enabled Vsync and it ran perfectly. The OCing I did just to get Sc2 into the ultra level instead of high so it suits my needs perfectly.

Vsync is awesome though, as a general statement to people following this thread if you have a game that has tearing or just looks when your card should be able to handle it enable vsync. Often times OCing isn't even necessary as vsync will make the game run a lot better. Dead Island was basically unplayable for me on medium without vsync, it looked like complete crap.

Reason I say use D3doverrider is just because some games run better with vsync and others run more poorly (if I recall GTA is one of those games and dead space 1 + 2)

The control panel does allow you to set it for each game anyways but D3doverrider is a solid app.

 

Thanks for sharing that app name. Yeah with vsync i think its quite dependant on the game like you say, some run a lot better and some run a lot worse. But in general i like it on to stop tearing etc and as most screens including mine are 60hz, theres not much point going over 60fps as you probably wont notice the difference.

 

Is there any advantage to vSync on a 60Hz screen when you're only getting like 30-40 FPS?

Didn't seem to make any difference for me in Deus Ex HR

 

How to know a game or application is using the 540M ? when i try to come out of a game and check the tray icon and see if its using 540M , it shows nothing.

Or is anyone having the same issue with COD MW2 MP ? game is pathetically slow. I even tried to set it to highend in NVCPL .any suggestion ?

this Optimus technology is making me go mad

 

Make a quick test launching the exe with right click (context menu) and selecting "run with nVidia Graphical Processor". Once launched check the tray icon and you should see the game's icon in the Optimus Status Icon

 

i changed global setting to nvidia.

now its working.

 

Thats good. You can always use the tray icon and alt tab out to make sure its working.

 

So I was trying to get my XPS 15 (540m, i7-2630QM, 8Gb RAM) to play The Witcher 2 and I guess the game is quite demanding. It was really only playable at low settings, with resolution set to 1366x768.

I decided to give my GPU an OC and see if I can at least play at 1600x900 because it makes a big difference. I used the Nvidia System Tools and set it to 800/1000. I waited for 3dMark11 Basic Edition to download but I got impatient and just decided to use the Witcher 2 as a benchmark.

I set settings to medium, and resolution to 1600x900. I got a whopping 15 fps stock. With my OC I got like 19 fps. So still not playable at those settings. The OC was, however, stable as far as I could tell.

I also used Throttlestop to set the CPU multiplier to Turbo. I was getting a consistent average of about 2.7 GHz with that set. Didn’t seem to change my fps, but it at least felt like it was more fluid… maybe that’s just a placebo effect… haha.

CPU temp got up to 80C, GPU only 65C. Granted this was after only a brief 15 minute session.

Anyone else with the 540m trying to play The Witcher 2? I heard there’s a hotfix that boost fps quite a bit… truth?

 

It is a very demanding game. I just hope skyrim wont be as demanding...

 

Hi guys!i'm kinda stumped here.tried to OC my gpu to 830/1076 and it ran fine when i tested with 3dmark6...but when i ran starcraft 2 i would get kind of a "hiccup" on my screen and find that my GPU reverted to its stock settings..is there something i missed?noob here...

 

What oc program are you using?

 

I'm using Nvidia system tools but i also have msi afterburner installed...might that be a problem?

 

if you use msi afterburner you can make overclock profiles and set it to overclock on startup etc, im not sure what settings the system tools program has.

 

I have used MSI Afterburner to create profiles and applied the settings but same thing happened.As soon as i run Starcraft 2 or Dragon Age 2 the settings would go back to stock...is it necessary to reboot after applying the OC settings?I already checked that when I apply the settings in MSI Afterburner it affects the settings in Nvidia System Tools as well...

 

thats strange, try creating a overclock profile in msi, check the box apply oc on startup then do a reboot and try the game then. But when your doing this only have msi open or just 1 oc program to rule out any possible conflicts.

 

Hi guys im new to the overclock and i own a Acer aspire 5742g system: Intel i3-380m, Nvidia gt540m 1gb, 4gb ram. and i was thinking about overclocking the gt540m with nvidia tool. so what Clock . Memory . SHader shuld i overclock it to ? the default it is 672/800/1344. please help ^^ i whant to run bf3 smother

 

There's no hard and fast numbers you should set it to.

Just slowly increase them until you run into graphics artifacts or crashes, etc, and dial it back a bit. Some people's cards handle OC better than others, from what I understand.

You shouldn't have any problems with values at or below 800/1000. Just judging from what others have posted, that seems to be a moderate OC that won't cause issues in the majority of 540m cards.

 

i was think about OC the GPU clock and Memory to 745/860..do you think that's a good idea? but what about shader should i tuch that or leav it at 1344mhz ?
i just want to get 8-10fps improvement in bf3

 

do you think that coolpad wil help with OC ? i was wondering about to buy a coolpad to be on the safe side before i OC ?

 

Isn't the shader grayed out? I don't think you can manually change it. Anyway 745/860 is a kind of a mild OC. You'll barely notice the difference.

Honestly, squeezing out an extra 10 FPS in BF3 probably isn't going to happen with an OC alone. I'm going to assume you're currently getting 20-30.

A cooling pad never hurts, but not entirely necessary. I guess I should have mentioned that you MUST monitor temps when performing an OC. If everything stays below 90, you're gold. Shut off temp is like 100 or 105.

 

lol yeah i can't chang the shader, but il try 745/860 and i wil monitor the temps maybe il get 5-fps improvement.. i hope but thanks for the help! you helped me alot!

 

Also is it just me or, when you put the graphic settings in BF3 to Low and high the difference is not much? do you feel that to or is it just me lol

 

what do i start with when i OC ? to get 745/860

 

the shader automatically changes when you apply the other settings, just did a 840/1050 overclock and my shader changed to 1680 when i applied the setting. 3Dmark06 score went from 83xx to 10065, but I'm back to stock now.

 

what was the temp ? /stable ?

 

I wonder when i OC with nvidia tool does the OC stay overclock'd or do i have to overclock it evry time i start pc. if it does how do i turn the OC perma? so it stay that for ever

 

After. You apply the setting it will ask if you want to keep the setting next time windows starts.... so no you don't need to redo the overclocks.

I forgot to monitor temps but seemed stable.

 

You can set up profiles that will load upon launching certain programs set by the user.

I have it set up so that certain games will launch my OC profile. When I exit those games, the stock profile loads.

 

i run'd furmark about 10min and avg temp was 75'c is that good ? with stock clock

 

It's fine.

Anything under 90 is fine. 90-100 isn't dangerous, but getting close to shutdown temps.

 

but how much Mhz do you guys increase when OC? 15 or 20 ?

 

15-20 is reasonably conservative. Go for it.

 

it is important that i start with overclock the clock speed before memory ?

 

v.280.26 540m, i5-2410, 8Gb, Win7x64, Nvidia System tools v. 6.06
def.
core 672
mem 900

custom
core 830
mem 1080
3DMark 2006 v. 1.2 all def 1280x1024 scores 9373
3DMark 2011 v. 1.0.2 720p performance does 1301
And that is tough mid score for stock 555m!

Core 830 is 100% stable, at 835 get minor visual glitches, at 838 driver crashes.
Memory's max is locked at 1080, so I can't get higher.
Temperature hardly reaches 75C! I love my ASUS N53SV cooling system so much!

Is there a way to unlock mem clock above 1080? Coz temp. seems to let it get a way higher clock. I wanna score 10k in 2006.

 

in my case got it simultaneously. I run for it step by step 10Mhz. Core got stuck first at 840. Then backwards 1Mhz-step. Tested out a 2-hours Crysis v.1.2.1 game session at 830, it was flawless. Then proceeded with memory and reached the top 1080Mhz.

 

Regarding the GT540m (remember Samsung RF711 user not a Dell user) I managed to get it to 779/1000 at the most down from the numbers I previously posted where after about 4 hours of Sc2 the comp crashed. It's been a while now that I've been using the rig with the 779/1000 settings and it's perfect. (830/1076 previously)

I'm thinking maybe 800 would be okay but the temps I'm getting now max out at 86 degrees so I'm going to leave it. Good luck all.

For me 830 was fine until 4-5 hours of continued play.

 

Hello. I have a Dell XPS with an i7 and the 2 GB GT 540M. I have a couple of questions:

a) I tried a little overclocking yesterday and downloaded the basic versions of OCCT and 3D Mark 11 for benchmarking\testing. Increased the speeds in steps of 10MHz: the stock speeds were 672\900 and I'm now running at 750\960. On 3DMark 11 my score was only 1010 with the factory settings, it's around 1110 currently.

Did a few tests and everything looked fine, no artifacts, no errors detected, etc. Then tried out Mafia II and Crysis 2 and immediately hit problems, the game would freeze up and I had to restart the system twice. I think the problem is overheating as the GPU touched 96 on OCCT and hit 95 with only ten mins of Mafia 2. The annoying thing is that I got a decent (for me) 5-6 FPS boost with the OC, finally managed to play without any hiccups, and then this happens. Would I have to go back to stock? Or would getting a good laptop cooler help in any way? I'm using the NVIDIA 280 Verde driver, BTW.

b) This has nothing to do with the overclocking, but even prior to this two games in particular would freeze after about an hour of gameplay: Age of Empires 3 and rFactor. I really have no clue what the reason could be as it's definitely not overheating, but I wanted to ask before contacting Dell Support. This happens every single time, while I was able play more graphically intensive games without any lockups these two always freeze no matter what.

Thanks for the help and advice in advance!