Overclocking the GT 540M

Is there anyway you can verify the voltage is actually changed? I mean I would love to over volt my gt 540m. I'll download EVGA precision and try to over volt... Have you tried it? Does increasing the voltage beyond 0.980V actually improve stability and increase heat? I think 1.025mv would render 825-850Mhz core clock stable, Maybe even more....

 

Just curious, what is your max temperature with that overclocking? I don't know why I keep getting near 90c when overclocked to 800/1000, anyone else getting high temps?

 

My max temperature with furmark is 80-81C. Max 64-65C with bf3 and il2 sturmovik cliffs of dover games.

 

Love my K53SV so far, just ordered it and have read this thread throughout, running very latest nvidia official driver, my 3dmark06 score is 11241. Runs stable so far, have played saints row third for the past hour fine, with EVGA precision tool for on screen GPU temp. It never went above 65c.

 

I have not tried useing it as I'm concerned with damaging the card, I did read people overvolting thier 525m to 1.0volts but thats the only info I found I am tempted to try overvolting, to see If I can get more stable clocks, as right my im stable at about 840 core and 940 mem, otherwise it crashes....when I get back home and have my second monitor I will play with it and see what I find.

 

Okay guys, this is LOL-worthy.

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor,Dell Inc. 0K4H3G score: P1800 3DMarks

However, it's a 550M, so there may be considerably more power to tap into. Still, I can't imagine it being much better off than the 540M.

I've also found that 3DMark11 is quite a bit more "realistic" in score than '06, in that the results scale a bit better to the actual games I play...

 

Any one got 6.8 @ Windows Experience Index..?!

Even @840/1680/1010 I get 6.7.

 

I get 6.7 at 800/1000.

 

I get 6.7 at 672/1344/900.

I have GT 525M.

 

WEI @ 6.8 for 885/1770/1075

Can't run that overclock on any games though lol.

My stable is generally 825/1650/1000 - varies depending on what I am playing.

 

, I'm sure I can't get that on my GT 525M.

 

Mi 540m reaches 95 while intense gaming, the laptop is new, is it normal?

 

That is a bit hot - repaste should help.

What model laptop do you have?

 

On default, and even with Turbomode on with the intel CPU the GPU usually dont gets so hot. Which game was it, and do you have a 6cell or 9 cell battery?

MFG Jubeltrubel

 

My GPU has yet to get above the low 80s while benchmarking on stock

 

Hello guys!
I'm new to overclocking, never did it before. So, I have Asus K53SV (i7 2670QM, GT 540M, 290.53 beta drivers), just bought it a week ago. I'm satisfied with the performance, I think it is perfect for 650 euros. For example, Skyrim runs with 23-27 FPS on ultra, expect shadows, they are on high. In some areas, like Winterhold FPS drops to 16-19. Therefore I decided to overclock the GPU a bit to achieve 20-25 in those areas on same graphics options. As I mentioned, I'm a newbie in overclocking. Do you think is that possible? Does anyone tried already?

And what programm do you suggest to use?
I already tried to overclock with nvidia Inspector. When I set clocks to GPU 800/Memory 1000/Shader 1600 and started Skyrim to test it, after 30 seconds I got a driver error. After this clocks were changed to default. I noticed that that error appeared when GPU load reached 100%. Temperature was about 65 celsius. On default clocks when I'm playing it is 75 celsius. Any idea what was it? Could it damage the GPU?


I hope to get some help here Thanks in advance!

 

Hi Xm709, and welcome to Notebook Review Forums!

Nvida Inspector will work fine for overclocking, there are other programs available but the choice is a matter of preference. (ie MSI Afterburner, Nvidia System Tools, etc)

It seems that the problem you are experiencing is that you are OCing a little too high for your card (all graphics cards have different levels of tolerance and hence have varied OCing thresholds). Try a lower setting (ie 750/970) and see if that works and increase in small amounts (~5) to find the upper limit that you can overclock to. In addition, some games cannot tolerate being overclocked for odd reasons (don't ask me why but it happens! )

Remember to keep an eye on the temperatures - this is normally what causes the death of the GPU and any other components. As a quick reference, 85C is getting hot, but acceptable. Over 90C is a bit of worry, you probably will only reach these temperatures if the vents are obstructed by dust or something. The temps you reported are fine

Hope this helps!

 

I am getting my coolermaster cooling pad soon ( coolermaster ergo stand ) , and i am going to push this new toy a litle bit , if i get the gt550 stock clocks ( 740,900,1480 ) that will make me happy enough , it seems that some people are lucky and some not so much , i hope that my GPU is one of the good ones ( not tested it for temps yet ).
Wil update soon .

 

I have just achieved those speeds on my 540m on stock cooling, runs pretty nice

 

Hey guys,
I have an Alienware M11x with a 2GB GT540m in it. Do you guys think its worth it to overclock it and can you give me instructions on how to?

Thanks,
At3

 

Thank you very much for usefull information!

I have found my stable clocks which are 780/980/1560. Even on 790/990 I got artefacts (glitches).This time I used Nvidia System tools. In Skyrim temperature never raised above 72 celsius, in 3dmark06 it was stable 66 degrees. But in GTA 4 it is 80 degrees. I think this caused by heavy load on CPU. So, this was my first and successfull expierience in overclocking Good luck to others!

Btw, I have a question about 3dmark06. I got 10700 points with OC on all defaults, but resolution was 1280x768, which isn't standard. Which number of points, do you think, may correspond my result on the 1280x1024? I just wonder how much less points I got than HD 6770M

Here are screens:

 

Any news on writing new bios with an over volt? I'm pulling my hair out on Batman Arkham City. I'm running completely stable for hours at 820Mhz core 1640Mhz shader and 1060Mhz memory. I need to put some 3mm tall heatsinks on the memory chips since they aren't cooled at all. You can get the 3mm tall heatsinks on ebay for cheap. Anyway my cpu lost it's life to an adhesive thermal pad! RIP 2630QM so now I'm trying to get a 2720qm or a 2760qm. Will I see a difference between them? Any benchmarks? I'd like to see how the 2760QM and the gt 540m perform together locked in turbo mode at like 3Ghz with all 4 cores. Anyway does anyone know how to pull and write to the bios on the GT 540M to get a tiny over volt so i can gain 2-5fps?!? I could really use more voltage since all I need really is like 5 more fps to make it more playable. I'm sitting at like 17fps minimum and 24fps avg and I wanna pull up that minimum!

THANKS

 

What are peoples idle temps for the gpu here?

 

Around 44C.

 

Hey guys I Have a experimenting with OC my GT540m on my Acer Aspire 5750g and I managed to get stable temps with no shuttering and no artefacts i get temps between 85-95 °C without any cooler i put this margin of temps because in depends on witch surface i put my notebook, i get 95 when i put on my desk and 85 when it stays in the air/no surface (i have no cooler and my desk is made out of wood and apparently in stores heat) I have been playing Battlefield 3 on 1366X768 (my native resolution ) and I have seen significant increase in fps (i played the game somewhere between medium and high) anyways these are my clocks and I will post shortly some 3D mark scores

 

Wow! man those are some good clocks! 825Mhz for how long? My ASUS laptop has the best cooling out of any other manufacturer. Asus is on top of their bios and keep these things cool. How like 4 hours of Batman Arkham City in DX11 high tessellation I don't see above 72C with my Core clock at 820Mhz, 1640Mhz Shader, And 1060Mhz memory. The memory clock helps about 1-2 fps so I'd push it up to 1050Mhz at the minimum. I was able to run stable in Battlefield 3 with the memory clock at 1075Mhz. Anyway go to the acer website and upgrade to the latest bios revision. They revise these sandy bridge laptops every couple months to keep them cool. They boost the fan speed in the bios. I can't get 825Mhz stable and I'm running way cooler than you. You definitely need to repaste or back down your cpu max in windows power options to like 99% or 85% to stay below 90C. Running 90C for long will surely kill your hardware.

Later

****By the way***** ANY NEWS ON WRITING NEW BIOS VIA NV FLASH FOR MY CORE VOLTAGE ANYONE?!? with my cool temps I could push to 900Mhz Core clock.

 

Aparently some of my scores are kind of low for these clocks maybe it's because i have the 1GB version of the card or maybe the clocks aren't as stable as i originaly thought

btw i hocked my laptop to my FullHD monitor so i can bench on 1280X1024

I don't think I need a repaste a got the lappy in November 2011 that's not even 3 months ago. Maybe when i will clean it (in May i think) i am going to repaste the CPU&GPU also

And do you know any modded bios for my 5750g ? that improves the vent as you say. (I have the 1.16 version from acers webside)

 

If there's nothing newer than what you have then they haven't released an update yet. ASUS is on top of it and have released like 5 bios release in only 3 months that have made huge impacts on the cooling fan. Try rerunning 3dmark06 again with your windows 7 power options Processor management settings min and max on power to 100% and active profile. That will lock the cpu in Turbo Mode. I'm upgrading to a 2720QM from a 2630QM and what to see if there's an fps increase. Your 2670QM is being hugely outperformed by 2630QM's in this thread. Set your min max to 100% turbo mode which will the lock the cpu at like 2.7-2.9Ghz and should blow a 2630QM away. I'm very interested to see your new results. Those results above are very very poor for that cpu.

Thanks brother!

 

Mine is idling on 46 #Celsius ( heating on because my girlfriend is always cold ) air temperature in the house about 25 #C .

 

Has anyone done the Alien vs predator benchmark ? I am getting 20 FPS before oc 23 FPS after mild oc (740 mhz ) resolution 720p .Can anyone share his numbers that ican compare and see if there is a space for any improovement , thanks .

 

800 core 1600 shader should be the minimum stable overclock on the gt 540m and it can do up to 825 if the game likes it. Some games don't like above 815 core. So push to 800,1600,1000 on the gpu. Go to nvidia control panel and choose aliens vs predator in the 3d settings section and max sure the power management is on preferred max performance rather than adaptive. Then set the quality to high performance and max sure all optimizations are enabled. Sometimes setting the frame pre buffer to 8 rather than 3 helps smooth it out. Then go to Windows power options, then go to the advanced portion. Then go to cpu power management and set the min to 100 and max to 100. Setting the shadows to low on the game is recommended. Then post the results again.
later

 

All my settings are the original factory ( or OS settings ) , the PC switches between the intel 3000 integrated GPU and the GT540M automaticaly ( optimus ) and it seems to work fine , the cpu runs between 2.8 and 3 GHZ while playing games . Only thing that i have changed was the Graphics card clocks , i have tryed the 802MHZ on the GPU , 1004 MHz on the memory and 1604MHz for the shaders , that is as far as i want to go , the temps have gone up from 44C in idle to 50 in idle , in the game temps have reached ( after about 30 minutes of gameplay ) 65-66 #Celsius , i guess that if i use furmark test the temps will rise well over 80C but i dont like it because it is too harsh on the hardware in my opinion , i am very happy with under 70C in real life scenario - Game .
BTW the AvP runs smoothly , Skyrim too .( skyrim on medium quality settings ) .

 

The reason why I told you to do what I said in my previous post is my laptop which is identical to yours except I run a slower crappier CPU and my laptop is killing yours on scores. I'm running the 1gb model too I believe. Im running an Asus k53sv. I know your laptop is faster than mine i just want proof. By the way do benchmarks the 1366x768 LCD can handle for a fair comparison.

Cya

 

Whats the max fps an overclocked gt540m is getting in bf3 and skyrim ? And on which settings?

 

With a 2630QM I think I got like 32fps avg @ 1280x720. However since there was a bios update for my asus k53sv, it can stay cooler and run faster. I suppose it could be like 35fps. All high dx11 except low shadows. Ambient occlusion off boosts fps a lot too. It's up to you what you can deal with. Honestly when it's all maxed out at 1280x720 it's like 25fps and it's very playable.

 

That is the resolution i am using mate , i dont have the 1080p display , i am happy with the 720p , but that is just me , ( my desktop is my proper gaming rig , this mobile solution is just for when i travel etc ). I will try the tweaks that you and others in this thread have recomended when i recieve my coolermaster cooling pad ( it supouse to be up to 5 days delivery but it is 8 days tomorow and i still dont have it (useless PLAYCOM ) funny that they have delivered the headphones that i have ordered at the same time )
That should knock the temps down a little bit ( for the peace of mind )

One more thing i have noticed when i used the gt550m clocks ( 740,900,1480) i get 3-4 FPS increase in AvP game but if i push it higher (802 ,1604,1004 ) i only get about 1fps increase , my point is that the gt550 clocks seem to be the sweetspot for this GPU , - it gives you nice performance boost , but stays nice and cool .

 

That's interesting. Yeah, the reason why it peaks at a low frequency like you stated is because the clock has reached it's voltage "max". Like with a computer that has too high of an overclock with too little voltage the cpu can only put out x amount of performance for the voltage. So when you up the voltage and leave the clock alone, performance goes up. So with the GT 540M, it's the voltage that's the bottleneck. At 0.980V it can pull off 825Mhz at times. However with more voltage it can push the clocks higher and produce more performance. Then you will reach the physical hardware limit. I can see the GT 540M pulling off 900Mhz core clock with increased voltages. My laptop runs very cool at 825Mhz. I can't wait until some kind of bios voltage flashing becomes available for this chip. Or atleast my ASUS k53sv. Oh yeah I like 1280x720 as well. It looks just fine. Same here my desktop blows my laptop away. However the laptop is for the same purposes as you. By the way set the core clock and memory to 815Mhz, and memory at 1060Mhz. Then benchmark. I'm upgrading to the 2720QM from the 2630QM and want to see if there is a difference. There has to be. It may be dependent on my laptop, since it exceeds 99% of manufacturers in terms of engineering. Most core i7 laptops don't run nearly as cool as what ASUS can pull off.

Later bro

 

I like ASUS , that was what i wanted to buy originaly but after seing the new year offers from dell i cold not resist , they give me better hardware for less money and that is what matters to me ( intel cpu is intel cpu in any make ASUS , ACER ,Dell or Apple )
I think that your 2630QM its a fantastic CPU and you only get very small improovement in performance going to 2720QM ( some will disagree but i have both CPU's in family and there is literaly no difference in real world apps what so ever ) the only thing holding it back is the GPU , the CPU can go lot higher with better GPU . I have seen some 560m on ebay and i think that that will be a better upgrade for you ( just my oppinion )
My 2670QM performs nearly on the same level as 2630QM ( only slightly faster) the only difference i have noticed is that it runs cooler , it hits the 3.1GHz spot sometimes ( if only 1-2 cores are used i think ).

The 8 gigs of RAM is overkill i never use more than 2,6GB i wish that i went for 4 GB instead and save some coins .

The GPU is fine (mine is the 2Gig version ) , for the money and yes the GTX580M will be nicer but the pricing is just mad . If you think about it we have the gt550M performance for free ( or little bit better than 550 ) and that just makes me happy .

 

Both playable on medium settings , ( skyrim runs on 32FPS before the oc 37 FPS with oc , BF3 23FPS on stock gt540m , 26-27 FPS with oc ) numbers will differ depends on your system and settings .

 

ASUS is number 1 in terms of mass produced computers compared to all other mass produced manufacturers. MSI comes close but just can't quite meet ASUS from an engineering aspect. My ASUS K53SV is really a piece of art. It doesn't overheat when laying on a bed since there is no vent on the bottom. It's engineered so well it pulls all the air from under the keyboard keys. It's really amazing. It also never gets hot. Even if I'm gaming for 6 hours at 2.6Ghz turbo mode and 820Mhz core clock the whole laptop is cool. The only spot that is hot is the exhaust vent. Let me tell you the heat coming out could give a nice burn. Anyway, the only other manufacturer I'd go with as for the moment and in regards to saving money for the performance is Eurocom. They're based out of Canada, and their stuff is unbelievable! They're priced crazy good as well. You could go with a fox 2.0 on there with a 2630QM and a GT 555M for like $800 and that's with a 15.6" 1920x1080 lcd! Or you could go with the Eurocom Racer 15.6" 1920x1080 non-glare lcd, i7 2630QM, and a GTX 460M for like $1,100. If your a college grad you can send them your transcript and get like $150 off! You could also send you old laptop in and get like $200! They're reduce it off the laptop of your choice. So, in the near future I may upgrade to the Eurocom Racer and call it a day. Seriously the internal hardware is awesome and there cooling solutions blow even asus away. However I don't like vents on the bottom of the laptop. I'll look into the eurocom racer to see if there are vents on the bottom. Otherwise they can be repasted really easy without taking the whole thing apart. There's 1 big cover underneath that covers the entire motherboard. I'd check them out if you wanna upgrade. They offer a million different configurations so you can dial it in exactly as you want.

Later

 

Seems the performance is fair enough.Isnt skyrim playable on high?

 

Seems the performance is fair enough.I have a i5 2410 and 4gb , will that cause a difference from the performance ZXRaziel and chris89 posted? I tend to try them at 1360x768

 

The faster the processor speed is and more threads available (8 for the core i7 and 4 on the i5) will always render more fps. Usually the difference is only 5fps but typically it may be closer to 10. I know ZXRazial's 2720QM will definitely out perform the 2630QM with it's 2.2Ghz Quad and when it goes into turbo mode with all 4 cores active and 4 hyper threads active as well should be around 2.8Ghz typically with turbo mode. My 2630QM maintains like 2.5-2.6Ghz max. I think the 2720QM is more efficient on battery but I'm not sure about that. It's probably worse on the 2720QM. ZXRazial, how many hours do you get on battery in battery save mode?

I'd say your core i5 is roughly 5-10fps lower depending on the game. I'm sure it would be about that much in grand theft auto 4 since it's very cpu intensive. You core i5 has 2.3Ghz on 2 cores with hyper threading enabled it can run stable at 2.9Ghz I believe. There's also a scenario where the core i5 may out perform the core i7 with it's higher frequency. I think the i7 will always win though. Anyway good luck playing Skyrim. I haven't played it yet. Try out Batman - Arkham City. It's awesome and it has heavy DirectX 11 Tessellation and it stresses the GT 540M really good. It makes me want a better laptop. I'm thinking of the Eurocom Racer with it's GeForce GTX 460M since it's a 65-75W TDP MXM card so you can upgrade if you want however it's typically better just buy the laptop with the better GPU. I could also go with the GeForce GTX 470M with I believe 288 cuda cores comparing to the GT 540M's 192 cuda cores. My desktop has 488 cuda cores and strikes batman arkham city a 60fps solid with vsync enabled and maxed out. I want to buy another GeForce GTX 4 My laptop gets like 17fps when maxed out. It runs smoothly with a ton of read ahead frames in the nvidia control up to 8 frames. Actually now that I think about it you can get the ASUS G53 on sale sometimes and it has a 2630QM, and a GTX 460M graphic card and a 1920x1080 for like $799. Maybe less if you catch it on sale. The Eurocom is solid for $1,100 however the G53 would be more ideal since it's beatiful and it's made by ASUS so it stays really cool.

 

Where i live , its usually double the price of anything sold in U.S.I knew the i7 is better i just want to see how much the difference.Thanks i know i'll enjoy it and i'll definitley try batman ac if it runs well Good luck upgrading . Btw a overclocked gt540m will be able to play upcoming games like hitman,diablo 3... since it is able to play bf3 on medium and its the most demanding gpu game on the market?

 

The GT 540M is actually a mini fermi and has some really good devastating power for the amount of power it uses so you can play pretty much everything you throw at it.

 

Yes it is but it does not run very smoothly , you get some lagging in some situations , medium runs lot nicer and the detail quality is still very good .

 

Your CPU is fast enough for most of games , it can feed the graphics card with data efectively , in some modern games like the BF3 the i7 should be little bit faster , not much because the GPU is the bottleneck for us with gt540m

 

the batery life depend on how you use the laptop , it can be less than 2 hours if you game or all day if you just leave it in idle .

 

Thanks for the tips and information.Overclocking will increase in battery consumption?

 

Yes it uses more power if you overclock .