Overclocking Stock Integrated Graphics - Please Help!

Hello, my name is Josh and I am new to these forums! I signed up just a few minutes ago because I am a huge tech geek who fixes, modifies, and rebuilds (physically) desktops and laptops for his friends all the time. I have also taken a few college computer tech courses myself. Now I am trying to modify my own laptop and I am actually having a few issues.

I don't want to buy a dedicated graphics card A.) because I got this laptop for free and so it isn't worth it, and B.) I don't really have the money for modification at the moment.

So let me start by giving you the story and specifications in this Laptop.

I work for a local community college on the side, ironically the same college I attended just a year ago until I was forced to drop out due to financial issues. Earlier last summer one of their laptops went COMPLETELY down (OS would not even start up) and so they gave it to me in hopes I could get some use out of it. It's a very nice laptop as they had just replaced all of their laptops in December of 2010 (specs will be given below later). I just wiped the hard drive completely and re-installed the same stock Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit as what was originally on it. At the time I got Windows 7 Pro free through a school related software alliance program, but I didn't know they only gave one free serial key, so then when my brother put viruses on my computer just 3 months ago, I wiped the hard drive again, and re-installed (quickest, easiest, painless way by FAR). Unfortunately my old serial was not saved and my trial has been over for nearly 60 days. It doesn't matter to me (I'm still getting updates and only loose my Desktop Wallpaper to a screen that says "this copy of Windows is not genuine" witch I don't care about) but if this could affect my overclocking abilities, please let me know.

I like to play basically a free version of World of Warcraft and it's a very graphically demanding game. Even on the lowest graphics settings I lag pretty intensely at times. I would like to overclock my GPU. My goal is to have smooth 30 FPS game play on lower than fair but higher than poor graphics settings (very reasonable goal if you ask me) and this overclocking is where I am having problems, and I will explain why:

With any Desktop or Laptop I have tweaked (overclocking), it has had a dedicated graphics card. This time I don't (and you'll see that in the specs below), but I do have an Core i7 Dual Core/ Quad Thread processor at a fairly high speed and I think this laptop could easily handle a bit of GPU overclocking. Nothing else has to be overclocked on this laptop what so ever as the CPU and RAM are plenty fast enough, and are purely optional.

So with that, here are the specs of my laptop, below them you will find a list of overclocking software I have tried and had no luck with:

Dell Latitude E6410 Business Edition 14.1 Inch Laptop (Manufactured September 2010) Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i7 620M @ 2.666 GHz (2 Core/ 4 Thread)
Mainboard/Chipset: Dell 0667CC/Intel Arrendale QM57
RAM: 4096MB (2 x 2048 DDR3 1066 SDRAM)
Video Card: Intel HD Graphics (No model number or spec info found anywhere, I looked for hours on the web and using ID software)
Hard Disc Drive: Western Digital 7200 RPM 160GB HDD
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional Media Center Edition 64-Bit
Highest DirectX Graphics Update Installed: Version 11.00
Network Card (Just in case): Intel WiFi Link 6000 Series
Windows Performance Index (Computer kept fairly clean after OS re-install): 4.3 out of 7.9

ID Software Used: PC-Wizard 2012 by CPUID.com
Overclocking Software Attempted: MSI Afterburner (Incorrect System); MemSet/CPU Tweaker combination (Says incorrect system after installed); SetFSB (Seems to change values without error, and GPU-Z seems to say its overclocked, but claims stock clock is 0 MHz? Plus I cannot find the Clock Generator ID PLL info anywhere what so ever); and GMA booster (supposed to be specifically for Intel Integrated graphics, but when I click it it opens a tiny white box on my desktop and will not open all the way, even after running in compatibility mode).

I hope this info could hive you guys some ideas as to where I should go next.

Thank you very much!

- Josh

 

What clocks does it seem to be running at according to GPU-z? Run GPU-z on the sensors page and let it "continue refreshing...in the background" and play a bit of WOW.

It should idle at about 375MHz but be able to turbo boost at up to about 766Mhz.

 

On GPU-Z it's reading 355MHz at idle and the highest I was able to get it to go was 750 MHz.

CPU-Z was kind of weird. For some reason even in the game and doing nothing else on my laptop it kept jumping all the way from 1.2 GHz to it's top of 2.66 GHz . I have it on high-performance mode and went into advanced settings and set it up to run at full speed always (Min Power: 90%; Max Power: 100%). Why is it dropping to 50%?

 

It's linked internally to the base clock, so unless you have bios control on the multiplier or base clock you SOOL I'm afraid.

 

No it doesn't have base clock control as standard but isn't that what tweaking software is for?

 

I must have mis-read your specs, you have a 1st gen I7 which makes everything I said not applicable.

A hardware mod would be possible, if you open up your notebook and find the PLL you can maybe get the datasheet and start figuring out what you can do from there.

 

I had a E4310 which uses the same SLG8SP585 PLL as the E6410. Dell in their infinite wisdom wired the PLL's smbus to the SMS MEC5045 EC controller instead of the PCH. No datasheet exists on the web. Meaning you can't use setfsb, r-w everything to read PLL registers. In addition, the PLL only has 100 and 133Mhz pin settings available and it's already set at the faster 133Mhz speed.

kizwan confirmed his 1st gen i7-quad Studio 1557 had the same PLL and same connection to the EC controller. Same config is in a Dell E4300 but that one can be 266->333Mhz PLL pinmodded.

So looks like Dell have from quite a while back been preventing software overclocking. No cookie with this one unfortunately.

All is not lost. Consider adding a $200 GTX460-768MB DIY eGPU via the expresscard to get much faster gaming graphics than the iGPU could ever offer. Better yet is if you get a pci-e 2.0 specced Sandy/Ivy Bridge notebook instead with double the expresscard slot bandwidth.