Is laptop overclocking worth it (short answer: no)

max underclock CPU, GPU, VRAM: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6050751?
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15.34% score increase
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standard: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6051398?
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0.18% score increase
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max overclock CPU, GPU, VRAM: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6051036?

Specs:

Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7-4700MQ @ 2.40GHz
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
TOSHIBA Portable PC (U3E1)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (Toshiba)
2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M (Toshiba)
Storage
931GB TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 (SATA)
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SU-208FB
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

 

Where is the overclock exactly?
Both GPU and CPU runs at the same clocks between stock and "overclocked"

 

Most people are able to squeeze at least more than 15% or more performance conservatively. My old 780m's gave me at least an extra 25% performance. What's not to like about more performance?

Is it worth leaving them stock..? No

 

What is the point of this. No offense but this is as trivial as it gets...

 

^ This

Stating something is "worth it" or "no" is completely subjective. Kind of a pointless thread since most people posting have just been working round the clock getting Nvidia to not block it.

 

The answer would be 'yes' if the gains are 'tangible' and do not overheat the laptop (or the temps stay in the 'acceptable zone').

Personally, I would try to undervolt the CPU and GPU as low as they could go and then overclock them a bit... or undervolt by a medium amount and then overclock.

Most gains would probably be 'felt' in games and similar due to the GPU overclock (that is if the game was lagging to begin with), but from the CPU... the overclock would mostly be felt in situations where its used for rendering, etc. ... and even then, the most tangible results would be felt in projects where say 1 hour of rendering an animation would be shortened by say 15% (or 9 minutes).

So its situation dependent... and also needs proper cooling (not to mention the power supply if you raise the voltages high enough).

 

I can't even read that OP. I mean.. what is that..

 

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, because my crappy Toshiba 740M laptop fails at overclocking.

 

Change thread title to:

As for me, 650M SLI 790/1000 overclocked to 1150/1125 is +40% performance across the board for little heat increase. Worth it? YES

 

LOL... using a toshiba laptop with a "below mid range" gpu, then saying overclocking is not worth it. It may not be worth for you, but i can assure you people with "better higher end gpus" can definitely see a difference when overclocked.
Sorry to burst your 740m's bubble.

 

OP, I came across a 780M SLI benchmark from someone using the stock vBIOS. Here it is: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2535613
Then I compared my 780M SLI overclocked benchmark from my own notebook using the modded vBIOS. Here it is: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3489139

 

hahahahaha just because you have a bad notebook that cant overclock properly it doesnt mean that every notebook is like yours

 

Doesn't matter to me. If I can squeeze a 15% boost at no thermal cost then I will do it. Why wouldn't I? That's like driving 55 mph when the speed limit is 65mph, its safe to do so why wouldn't you drive 65? Recent machines I've overclocked have been within tdp limits and have thermal sensors so would throttle if there was an issue. Its free fps, why wouldn't I take it?

 

the stock has shifting CPU and GPU clocks, the overclocked has all clocks locked to their max (non-crash) values at all times even when idle and ignores throttling

it's only in my testing, nothing said about other setups/specs, why do you think my specs were listed?

maybe it's cause i didn't overvolt anything and there was a lack of power at those clocks

 

In this case the overclocking isn't worth it on your laptop.

Otherwise yeah, I can easily not just worth it but actually recommended, I mean the sheer bonus of power one can get is crazy.

 

Thats not overclocked. Increasing top frequency on cores and/or VRAM is.
And the shifting clocks doesnt seem worse than the last thingy you did (whatever that is)

 

In OP's case there is no indication of clock speeds. Nothing else to go by other than some 3DMark scores. Let us know CPU speed, GPU core speed, vRAM speed and maybe a GPU-z graph to go along with it.

"Locking clocks" does nothing. You need to increase CPU core speed to a speed that doesn't throttle, increase GPU core speed before it doesn't lock up, and vRAM speed where it doesn't speckle the image. GDDR5 is pretty much crash tolerant too, but it will throttle the vRAM so that it doesn't get damaged and will result in significantly lower performance.

There is no reason an overclocked system shouldn't see measurable gains even in 3DMark

Here's a good example of overclock done right. 970m overclocked... to desktop 780 performance.

 

GTX 970M are nice cards. Can overclock them pretty heavy and temps are still low too

 

i overclocked my g51 and got nearly a 50% higher benchmark across the board.

 

How the heck did you add over 250 extra mv without it melting? I have crazy cooking mods and max fans on my 880m and 75 extra mv makes the temps go up to 94 degrees under full load. I mean I knew the 880m ran hot, but there's gotta be some catch

 

He added 168mV not 250mV.

Let's just say if 880M is a volcano, 970M is iced tea.

 

OP has math issues. 15% of little is who cares. 15% of a lot is a lot. 50% OC of 1000 score is still not going to have good results in real gaming, 740m is just not suitable for ggaming.

OP doesn't take account 15% OC of 780m SLI is going to have noticable and worthwhile results.

 

880M is a piece of bloated excrement that was dropped from the rectal cavities of nVidia. Your 880M is disgustingly terrible and should never have been created.

ALSO, Maxwell is just that cool.

 

D2 Ultima really wished he had Maxwell SLI in his machine. I can sense the vibrations of his jealousy all the way to Norway

 

Cloud you have no idea. NO IDEA SIR. *vibrations*

 

First, the slider is not an indicator of actual voltage, look at the GPU-z screenshot. It is 168mV over stock of 1.000V. I wouldn't run this all day every day like that, but in a year, maybe so because it results in a 25-30% performance boost, with a +600MHz vRAM as well (effective 6200MHz GDDR5). Also the 880m is Kepler, this is Maxwell 2.0. These chips run cool. Typically my GPU runs 60C peak at stock with gaming and the fan is barely moving, maybe 50%.

Maxwell is efficient. Which is why a lot of uproar about locking out overclocking. Also why it would be nice to see it in 20nm or better yet 16 or 14nm. It would run that much more efficient and have that much more potential.

 

I don't see how I haven't given those info, since i listed the specs, you can just used intel ark to check the default and turbo clocks for the CPU and since it's MQ CPU and not a K CPU you know it's not overclockable in the traditional sense so all I could do is use intel XTU to set/lock all the core to their max turbo frequency in this case base clock is 100MHz and the multiplyers max values are x36, x34, x32 and x32 which would equal 3600MHz, 3400NHz, 3200MHz and 3200MHz, seeing (over at intel ark) the default turbo is 3400MHz this a overclock of 200MHz on first core. the gpu also is not overclockable (which you can default/base clocks for at GPUboss or NVIDIA) as it's a class 2 GPU, so I'd only be able to offset the GPU clocks by 150MHz and VRAM clocks by 900MHz (which are the defaults allowed) in MSI afterburner in hopes they will be reached which will probably not be the case due to thermals, my other specs and no overvolting.

 

OP what is the point of this thread?

Perhaps you haven't had luck OCing your machine but that isn't a good enough reason to make a broad sweeping statement such as your title suggests!

I would suggest the mods close this as I can't see any good coming out of this thread. One might even say this could be called trolling...

 

Just to add onto how much Ocing can do for you.. here is my

Stock Firestrike Score: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4108223 (6709)
OCed Firestrike Score: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4108447 (8511)

To put it bluntly, Ocing gives so much more performance.. My power brick doesn't like though.. 240W isn't enough for a 970M Oced so much + 3940XM @ 4.3GHz on 4 cores...

BTW HT, I'm coming for you! Only 100 points away in FS GPU score damm it!

 

This 330W PSU is massive. It dwarfs a Dell 240 Slim. Wish Clevo had a 330W slim.

Also will be breaking 10K tomorrow on stable gaming settings, as I predict 2133 DDR3 will push beyond 9950.

 

I don't even have proper RAM (mixing sticks).... I'm thinking it's time I got some Kingston Hyper X RAM however I have got too many spending priorities...

 

I don't think the 2133 will provide a much larger score.

But I'd love to be proved wrong

 

I didn't think so either, but I'm seeing scores saying otherwise. Seems Haswell systems respond to ram speeds differently than previous, could be the Z97 chipset too.

 

The funniest thing to me about this whole thread is OCing the 970m/980m brings a bigger performance boost than the entirety of the graphics performance an OC'd 740m can offer.

 

Ha Ha! Don't make me have to break 1.2V.

I love my Dell modded 240W power supply. I wish Clevo would start offering 230W-240W slim ones with their laptops that contain a top end GPU. Of course now it won't matter much because we won't be able to overclock anyhow.

 

Hi HTWingNut, so you're using the Dell 240W brick with your P650SE? What's the most you've drawn from the wall when overclocked?

 

I have a pair of 780m sli, I max out the overclock of 135 core and overclock the memory to around 350. I am coming from a pair of AMD cards that couldn't overclock at all.
90% of the time, I just leave them at stock, 780m is still a beast.

 

Hey OP, here's a little tip; you can overclock that GPU for extra performance. Try it out, you might be surprised by how much extra juice can be squeezed out of that 740M.

 

wish there was a buyback or upgrade program for people who got screwed over with the 880m purchase =(

 

It's called "all 880M owners put our heads together and sue Nvidia." But a little too late for that now.

 

im way too broke, been out of college for 3 years and still cant find a full time job that doesnt pay minimum wage. cant afford to sue. if i had money, id just get the 980m. still wont get the 980m till the overclocking scandal is worked out. i dont want a gimped card

 

Make a program with tons of algorithms powered by the amazing CUDA cores in the 880M to calculate and compute a possible solution where you could stick it to Nvidia.

Of course you would have to hide the fact that their GPUs made it happen, otherwise you are giving them more reasons to sell GPUs.
Or stop selling GPUs.

Not sure about that one. Hmmm

 

980M isn't gimped if you use the vBIOS from PREMA.

Also, stop applying or accepting jobs that don't pay minimum wage. Or work overtime, or find a job that allows you to work overtime. Medical field often has those opportunities, or fire, or police, pretty much any "essential" civil service that requires people working 24/7 have a lot of opportunities for overtime and some of them you can apply at 18 and don't require a lot of education. Hell you can be an RN with an Associate's Degree and you can get paid very well + insane overtime (and insane stress).

 

every college level job i apply for never calls back. everyone wants experience, but there are no places that give experience. i got my bachelors degree from the university of alabama on the dean's list at only 19 years old. i need to find something that's a livable wage. i can't afford to go back to college just to get a second degree


and what is there a diff between a prema mod and slv7 mod?

 

Good luck, keep applying. Go out of your comfort zone if you have to, try to find a job you enjoy rather than what pays most, that's my advice. Also get advice. Talk to people. Have people read your resume and cover letters before you press send. And tailor the resume to the job, resume you send for one job should not necessarily be the same for another. Talk to people. Post somewhere in NBR about it. You would be amazed at how many smart people are here and a variety of occupations.

I'm not sure what the differences are between slv7 and PREMA. I used both and I had better results with PREMA. Don't know why. I used slv7 modded on 675mx prior.

 

well i got my bachelors in telecommunications and film with a concentration in media production. i love filming and editing videos and so on. that would be my dream job, but it's all about who you know or experience. it's a catch 22. i've been applying for jobs out of my field, but when i interview, i go up against other college grads with degrees in that actual field.

i have the slv7 mod for my 880m and it's fine. so doing the prema mod for the 980m would still unlock everything, regardless of nvidia's drivers and vbios? obviously i'd love to up the voltage too

 

Find a way to get your foot in the door. I initially began working in non-profit, and I got my foot in the door doing AmeriCorps VISTA and used that experience to get other jobs until I discovered I needed to do something that made me happy to go to work, not just something altruistic.

I see on Craigslist for media/video jobs that are looking for unpaid interns with opportunities for full hire. I also get emails for temp agencies that are tying to fill tech positions.

Sorry for derailing your thread, I'm not in a good position to give advice on how to get a job in your field. I'm sure someone on NBR may or find a forum/community about it. When I got my current job, I found a forum with great advice about the hiring process, and what credentials I needed and how to get my foot in the door. And I am able to do what I wanted with no prior experience.

 

what about the 980m prema mod question i asked? does it bypass all the driver issues?

 

No. OC blocked drivers don't allow you to OC on any vBIOS. OC blocked vBIOS doesn't allow you to OC on any driver at all.

 

Have not exceeded 160W with stock voltage OC. With OV, it runs up to maybe 170W. 230W not really necessary for the P650SE, 180W is more than sufficient unless you really want to crank up voltage on the GPU, even then I doubt it would draw another 20-30W to push limits of the 180W PSU.