Does overclocking make THAT big of a difference for little risk?

Wondering if I should OC on my next laptop or not...

 

I would say it's very worth it. Improved framerates= better gameplay

Heck, I would even overclock a toaster if it's possible.

 

heck yes it is worth it. There is no risk unless you increase voltage. on my gtx 680m my overclock increases my temps by only 4C (caps at 77C) and I see a framerate increase of 12 FPS in the witcher 2, 17 FPS in the secret world, 14 FPS in Skyrim, and about 14 in both batman games. it smooths out gameplay by allowing me to vsync all of these titles at 60fps.

 

I usually only overclock if I don't get the performance I want in a game or games, so that usually means after I've owned the laptop for a while. Some people just do it just because. If anything I like to undervolt to extend battery life and have it running cooler. I prefer to have "on demand" overclocking so I can run it when needed, but clock down when I don't.

 

My sentiments exactly.

 

imo, it's not a particularly useful venture for most laptop users.

 

Its a very good way to stabilize the minimum fps in game...

overclock if needed...

theres not a big difference between 45 and 60fps... but theres a massive difference between 25 and 30fps

 

I would agree with masterchef. It depends on what you are doing. Are you gaming? I'm assuming you are because otherwise, asking about OC'ing is a moot point. If you want to see how good your GPU can perform then by all means, OC as much as possible and run a few benchmarks and note down numbers. However, when gaming, imo, the largest overclock that should be given should be the lowest clock speed above stock that let's you play games comfortably. If you can play a certain game at 49 fps at stock, there is no reason to overclock.

On the other side, overvolting by itself won't damage your GPU (again, to a certain extent). Why OV'ing is bad is because it opens up a whole new spectrum of clocks that can heat your GPU enough to damage it. Obviously, going above a certain voltage will also fry your chips but first tier OV'ing won't damage your card if your temps are still in the low 80s.

 

I don't like overclocking. To me it feels like 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'.

Sure, after modding the bejesus out of Skyrim, my FPS dropped to around 37-40, but since everything moved smoothly for me I actually never noticed that after playing for days until I checked it out just for kicks.

I'll probably risk overclocking and overvolting my card a year or two down the line, when nVIDIA will market the all 'new and improved' 780M/880M/980M GTX, which of course will be an overclocked/overvolted 680M, just because I'll be annoyed by that marketing scheme, but as it is I'll probably prefer to lower the graphics settings rather than mess with high overclocking.

 

Why would you lower graphics settings instead of overclocking. As has been noted many times there is no risk until you overvolt. As long as you have a reasonable cooling solution it will not hurt the longevity of your card whatsoever. Overclocking is a free 15-30% improvement. Who doesn't like free? With a decent thermal paste, and any other cooling mods you may like to perform you can OC with very small temperature increases. After I did all the mods to my p170em my temps are lower overclocked than they were when the system came out of the box at stock speeds.

 

Reality check incoming...

The concept that all non-overvolting overclocking is risk-free is false.

Every degree warmer brings more risk for a laptop. Truthfully it isn't the GPU and CPU most at risk. It's the rest of the laptop including the minor components and battery that suffer the most. A reminder that unlike a desktop where most components have plenty of space for heat to expand and air between to insulate and cool, things are very squished together in laptops.

I will agree that moderate overclocking is acceptable-risk in the case of gaming and when it brings you to stable gaming at the details you want. However, this risk is only acceptable if you understand there IS risk. Those that don't might crank the clock rates without measuring heat increases and thus risk a great deal more.

I want to point out that I am not discouraging overclocking... I do it myself. However, anyone overclocking a laptop must understand there IS risk. Anything else is doing the readers of this forum and ourselves a disservice.

 

That assumption isn't true at all. Overclocking could certainly damage your hardware without overvolting.

I generally overclock my desktop parts by 10-20%, with third party cooling systems. I generally leave my laptops at stock clock. That doesn't mean you cant overclock laptops, but again, I don't feel like it's particularly useful for most users.

 

Why? Because most of these graphic settings is fluff designed for high egos. What's the main difference between 16X AA, 16XQ AA, 8X and 8X CSAA? Or texture filtering on High Quality rather than Quality? Or all those mini settings here and there you hardly notice once you start playing?

Since most gamers will be hard pressed to spot any difference between these settings unless they're being compared as side by side screenshots, the main premise of them is the ability to do so, and like I said, this is mainly for ego's sake than for actual gaming. If that's what floats your boat, by all mean, I have no right to judge. It's just that I would prefer to first get rid of the unneeded fat rather than force my system to cope with all this blubber.

I'm not ruling out overclocking, mind you. I'm just pointing out why I would prefer to try other means before resorting to that method.

 

Im not endorsing overclocking if it puts your temps up to outrageous numbers but if you have a gtx 680m and are sitting at 73C at stock clocks then why not get an additional 20-25% performance when it only increases your temps to 77C?

 

What if I'm already sitting at 77C with all those mods in Skyrim? Still worth it?

I'm genuinely asking.

 

77C is perfectly fine. Don't listen to anyone telling you OCing is no use, as long you got the temperature controlled you are good (under 90C). Also the default clock are just a reference clock set by your manufacturer, when they release the product it's not even been through long term testing (I'm talking about 3 years here).

 

Heat is not something that will kill your computer in an instant... It does so over time. By the same token every time you play a game you will generate heat and decrease the lifespan of your notebook. Heck, every time you turn your computer on you will decrease the lifespan of your computer. Yes there is a risk, but it is extremely, extremely small. Modern computers are good enough at throttling themselves that there shouldn't be a problem with OC-related heat, assuming you don't deliberately put the laptop in an oven or something.

The worst case would be that the OC is not stable and your computer crashes, really. Maybe if you're extremely unlucky your computer will give out from the extra power load but that's like not going outside because you might be struck by lightning.

 

Yikes. 854/2300 and I just gained 15-20 FPS.. OK, this is indeed something to consider.

I'll have to check the long term stability and heat of these settings.

 

Yep on the GTX680M every little increasement is a huge gain compared to GPUs like 9800 GS .

 

im running 854/2400 at 77c and i have never had a single artifact, tear, crash, or random anything. 100% stable for me after 3 weeks of constant use

 

OK, just tested it and it reaches 86C with that OC. From my experience with monitoring on this rig, my temps usually reach a one or two degrees above that peak after prolong gaming, so we're talking about 87-88C at most. Hopefully that is safe enough.

 

i have pretty much the same setup as you do amir. I repasted with Gelid Extreme and added copper heatsinks. i also re-positioned the fans on my U3 so that the fan BLADES line up over the VRM vents and the GPU intake vents. All this + the foil mod lowered my temps over 10C.

Its crucial you line the blades up over vents. the center of each fan is a deadspot which will actually hurt cooling performance. the area above the blades has the most umph to it

 

Sounds liked quite a drastic measure there

I think I'll first start using the U3 fans and see where it goes from there.

 

When designing a laptop, the designers deal with certain conditions and expected issues. Turning the laptop off and on are part of that calculation. When they design the cooling system, they design it for the CPU and GPU it shipped with at stock voltages and clocks with a little tolerance. However, that tolerance has been stretched lately with this whole crazy race to be as thin and light as possible. Let's not confuse something the laptop is designed to withstand and something it is not.

Is your laptop going to explode with a reasonable overclock? Not likely. However, continued heat issues will indeed erode the reliability of a laptop. If you know there is a risk and continue to monitor the heat, maintain the cooling systems at peak efficiency, and know the risks and consequences of what you are doing you can reduce that risk.

A person who believes themselves perfectly safe will push boundaries and end up in a mess with a very expensive paperweight.

Again, it is not overclocking that I argue as much as the misguided concept that there is no risk. Even if you admit the risk is small, it is still risk our readers should know about.

Arguing that every time you use your computer is reducing its lifespan is the same argument that smoking isn't a health risk because every day you live brings you closer to death anyway. They kind of leave out the horrible lingering painful death from lung cancer part...

 

Let me know the results. If you have questions send me a PM

 

Great, thanks!

Going to play some Diablo 3 with friends, so I'll probably do it tomorrow, but I'll keep you updated.

KernelPanic, I agree with what you basically say as I shortly dabbled with OC a few years ago and only saw 1-2 FPS increases back in the day, but I'm talking about a situation where the game will dip below 30 and reach ~42 on average, and now it never drops below 45 FPS and constantly stays on 57-60 with vsync on. This is like a whole different hardware. It's really too much to pass up, heat or no heat and you can now call me a believer, hallelujah!

Only shows I was talking out of my behind about that subject (note to self: try not to do that from now on).

 

OK, overclocked and with the U3 fans on full (and creaky) blast, I got it to 82C at most, which is 83-84C after prolong gaming sessions and overall is quite alright with me for the time being, especially if I'll only OC when I play Skyrim and disable the overclock immediately afterwards.

 

OC = free powaawrrh

^^

 

id really recommend the foil mod. involves only taking off the back plate, takes 5-10 mins, and sheds 3-4C for most ppl

 

OK, I'll bite

How do I do the foil mod? What type of foil do I need?

A standard aluminium oven foil will do or do I need something else?

Thanks!

 

For a CPU, I can see the benefits to OCing to remove CPU bottlenecks from games or other apps, since there's usually not much you can do settings-wise to eliminate them (for instance, Skyrim runs much better on a 1045t at 3.3ghz than at 2.7. As for GPU, I've never had much luck OCing them, as even the smallest clock boost tends to cause crashes and freezes (my personal experience, yours may vary). I had my 6950 OCed to +40 clock/+75 mem (CCC max) for over a year with no issues to speak of, but the moment I started playing Skyrim with settings cranked to max and HD texture mods installed (99% GPU usage most of the time and 1.5-2gb of VRAM usage), I got freezes and white screens seemingly unrelated to the typical crash-to-desktop behavior of Bethesda games. I turned the GPU clocks back to stock, and amazingly, no more issues.

Maybe I'm just lazy, but I find it easier these days to simply lower graphics settings than to mess with OCing the GPU.

 

that sounds like a desktop GPU, which is really a different beast entirely.

 

Actually it depends on the type of notebook GPU, for a notebook that offers GTX680M, they are also offered with other GPUs, and right now GTX680M is the coolest high end notebook GPU out there, doesn't even break 74C at stock clock during extensive GPU tasks in Clevo's P150EM(which is known to have a weaker heat dissipation than the AW). Which on the HD6990/GTX580M it can reach 78C on AW or even 86C easily in certain models (Clevo). It also means when the GTX680M is compared to the other GPU that the notebook models are offered to switched to, there's still a lot of headroom before reaching the temperature that the other GPU performs at stock clock.

Seeing that the GTX680M runs cooler, and offers twice the performance of a GTX580M, even at a 50MHz scale OC it can offer 5 FPS or more in certain games (Like Final Fantasy XIV) and only has an increase of 1~2C

 

Very well explained.

Basically the stronger the GPU, the bigger effect the OC has, thus giving a better reason for doing so.

 

Well, saying the gtx680m has overclock room is a little early to say, maybe in a few months al those ppl who run their card overclocked will have a bricked card, only time will tell

 

There is no risk in overclocking as long that you know what your doing. Laptops are a much diffront than desktops due to the limited cooling and limited power. A big thing is the power distribution circuit on laptops is usually the first to go because the oerclocked card is sucking so much power that its straining to keep up. If you know what you are doing it is 100% safe. I have been overclocking since the old Intel coppermine days and never had anything burn up or corrupt. And i even done some extreme overclocking using LN2 and pumping so many volts to a cpu and gpu it would make you cry. Never had any issues most of my old hardware is still being used by people who i sold it to.

Do your homework and don't guess and it is 100% safe. and could get you from a laggy 24 fps to a smooth 32fps or it might only get you 1 extra fps it all dapends but overclocking is deff. worth it if you need it. If your system runs your game at 240fps and you dont play any other games then you dont need to overclock. Hell i would consider a undervolt and underclock.

 

Before my M17x, ..my GTX 460M ran OC'ed on stock voltage from May 2011- Aug. 2012. Max GPU Temp. was 78-86*C. The card is still strong.

Now in the GTX 680M, mine so far reached this. Crysis 2 might reach 74*C. Playing v-sync on on all games is a big, big improvement, plus high/ultra shadows. In D3, High (soft shadows) looks so great. ..That's why we still need to OC

 

That's an awesome temp for 893MHz on core .

 

Is there a (software-based) way to monitor the power distribution circuit? All I really know how to check when messing around with my clocks are temperatures (HDD/CPU/GPU) which I focus on keeping low.

That many not be enough though, since someone mentioned that even though certain components like the GPU can handle higher temperatures, the same may not be true for some of the smaller components around them. My understanding is that even if your GPU can handle 90C and is only at 85C at a given overclock, the parts around it may not be able to take that kind of heat, so pushing it further might melt those parts and brick your system.

 

No. I have a degree as an Electronics engineer and i worked on a SMT line for over 3 years and i can tell you that the heat the cpu/gpu puts to the other parts of the board is not even close to what they are rated for or have been exposed to in a reflow oven.

A good way to get a ballpark idea is to use a kilawat meter and see how much your system pulls at load and then overclock your gpu and see how much higher it gets. Nvidia gives you the load power draw at stock and for desktops the info is out there for overclock power draq but for notbooks were in the dark untill we compile this data. But from what i been seeing most laptops that have 150w psu's can do that +/- about 10% and the power boards are pretty close to that. Now you might have a psu that can put out 165w and you might be sucking every one of them from the outlet and your power board might only handle 145w and run fine but sometimes they do go out because components are not allways the same and some will have cheaper parts.

 

I still don't get why people overclock their ( 680M - 7970M ), it already maxes out all games, right?
Anyway, I would overclock it but just for fun and high benchmark numbers but for games, I don't think so.

 

You answered your own questions.

But not all games though..

 

OC to bench, play games on stock, no need to put more stress (temperature) on a chip..

 

I OC my 680m to achieve 60fps vsync on several titles to avoid screen tearing because screen tearing is more annoying than a baby on an airplane

 

Does ~30 FPS sound maxed out to you?

I also tried activating an ENB series mod (graphics mod), and even when using the highest performance version of this mod I couldn't even get the game to load as it dropped to single digits up to 15 FPS at most and I was forced to remove it. Maxed out? I don't think so.

Which reminds me, maybe I'll try this graphics mod now with my new OC..

 

Fenryr, could you point me in the direction of some instructions for that foil mod you mentioned? I'm interested in applying it to the P150EM in my sig if it's not too invasive and easy to implement for a novice user.

As for overclocking, my plan is to test out my card's max stable overclock with a slight overvolt, at which level I'll benchmark the beast before putting those settings aside. If I can game to my satisfaction (max details etc @ 1080p, not necessarily maxed AA/AF) at stock settings or potentially with +135MHz, then all is well. If not, I have the OV/OC vbios waiting in the wings.

 

Foil mod is pretty simple. See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0em-7970m-gpu-cooling-performance-foiled.html

 

Heh, now I get that topic. I'd seen the thread and just chalked it up as yet another thread about issues with the 7970M.

 

Doesn't OC'ing void warranty?

 

Skyrim has issues with being CPU limited more than GPU limited. There are mods to relieve some of that CPU stress, but it's still very CPU limited. And also, Even with a high end system, if the game doesn't run at 60fps at Ultra settings, high settings look 99% like Ultra and are never noticed during gameplay, only when you stop to inspect with a microscope.

You're also using a mod designed for ultra high end GPU's so to expect optimal performance doesn't make sense.

Also note this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/15

" Skyrim presents us with an interesting scenario. At anything less than 2560x1600 we’re CPU limited well before we’re GPU limited..."

Within stock voltage, technically no, nvidia even offers tools to do so. Overvolting, likely yes. I'm sticking with stock voltage until I absolutely need the extra horsepower.