Overclocking 880m in AW17, turbo boost stops after overvolting.

Hey everyone,

This isnt the first time im posting regarding this, but instead of reviving an old thread i thought i'd make a new one instead.

Thing is, im trying to overclock my Alienware 17's 880m, and im having a weird issue with it.

I can turn up my clock frequency by around 60mhz without getting any issues. Slight increase to temps and and performance, all good.

If i go any higher it starts crashing, which leads me to believe i need to overvolt it.. That's also fine, i can turn the voltage up enough to make it stable, however, when I do this the card wont run at my overclocked boost settings. It sits at its core clock of 954, occasionally throttling down below that. This is without getting even close to the thermal limits. It doesnt do this stock, it never goes below 954

The result is a hotter card that gets lower FPS and scores..

At a mild overclock of like +70mhz, and -31.3mV (up from -56.3mV stock) im getting a score of 740ish in Heaven, with the temps topping out at a cool 72 degrees celcius.

All the way at +135mhz and +156.3 mV (again, up from -56.3), im getting 710 with temps reaching almost 80, with the card dropping below even the stock clocks of 954. This is worse than stock.

My previous 880m was horrible, and i got thermal throttling at 93 degrees with or without overclocking it. This does not seem to be the issue here, something else is slowing it down.

What can the problem be?

I might mention that i do believe i have the 240w power supply, which *should* be sufficient for my 4710mq and a single 880m. I cant actually test out how much it draws from the wall, but could that be it? or am i looking for something completely different?

 

Well, I think the 880M got a lot of issues with the stock vbios, throtteling and all, try to use svl7 vbios for it..

 

Im gonna try that I think, but I've never done it before and the thought of bricking my laptop is kinda scary.

 

Update:

So i flashed svl7 and John's vbios onto my 880m.

That changed everything. This card OC's beautifully. Currently running +150mhz on the core, +400mhz on the vram at 1.050v. Temps did go up quite alot (topping out at around 85c with this OC), and if i overvolt it anymore the power supply gives up and shuts down. Looks like i reached the limit of the 240w after all, next step will be getting a 330w PSU and giving it another go.

 

Don't overvolt the card.. It already runs bloody hot.. Also why are you ocing it? It should be more then enough for games..

 

I agree with Tom. Overclocking the 880M is completely unnecessary. You may end up with a dead card sooner than you would like.

The 880M is the "black sheep" of NVIDIA GPU's. It randomly replaced the 780M and had a bunch of issues, lol.

 

If I have to run anything on my single 780M I at least try for 1006/6000 (1110/1500 in BF4) so I understand his desire for a bit of an OC.

 

That's not the problem... The 880M chips already have high enough voltages.. The main thing is to find stable clocks when Ocing them.. which is easier said than done..