Upgrading Processor on a Gateway P-7805u FX

I'm interested in upgrading the processor on my P-7805u FX and have a few questions. Please forgive me if anything I ask sounds stupid but, even though I've replaced HDD's and RAM in many of the notebooks I've owned over the years, I've never replaced/upgraded a processor before! Although the actual processsor replacement procedure seems very straightforward/easy, I want to ask some things that I'm sure some of you on these forums could easily answer for me:

1. I don't play any games on my P-7805u FX, but I'm obsessed with upgrading certain components to hopefully give me some better performance (I already installed TWO 500GB 7200rpm HDD's in my laptop!). Based on the fact that I don't game and don't want to significantly affect battery life, I think that a T9900 processor would be my best bet - would anyone disagree? I realize that without gaming, I may not notice any difference in the performance of the laptop but I like having a processor with a higher than 3.0 GHz clock-speed!

2. Where is the best place to buy a T9900 - eBay? Would you recommend NOT buying a used T9900? I have a link saved to a listing on HP's website for a T9900 that used to sell, I think, for around $350, but now it's $879!!!

3. What kind of "fine-tuning" should I do to the processor after installing it and what programs will I need? What are CPUGenie and ThrottleStop? Do they do different things?

4. It seems, from everything I've read on these forums, that I should apply some IDC7 - where can I buy some of it?

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions!

Dennis

 

I understand you wanting to get the T9900 over anything else like the about equal T9800. 3GHz just sounds amazing. The T9900 is especially amazing sounding if you can overclock it to 3.2GHz, because even though its just a slight jump up from 3.06, 3.06 sounds like 3 and with 3.19 you can say 3.2.

Now I must warn you that you personally will probably notice ABSOLUTELY NO PERFORMANCE INCREASE. Load times will virtually not be faster. If you want actual performance that you will notice go with an SSD. Besides gaming, really the only time your CPU will make an impact is like audio (not video) encoding, since for $20 or something you can get a CUDA video encoder that uses your GPU instead of CPU and would work faster than a T9999999900 clocked at 30GHz. (edit: yeah the CPU does a few more things than audio encoding, keep reading)

Also realize that the T9900 is only like a 35% improvement over the P8400. In CPU intensive games this can be huge, but with stuff like encoding or decrypting or file compressing or w/e, up to a 35% reduction in waiting time when you should probably be doing something else any way isn't worth $300-$400.

One thing I forgot to mention is CPU intensive programs that would greatly benefit from a T9900. But these are like $1000 softwares that it doesn't sound like you have.

Go with a SSD. Maybe one day overclocking will be figured out and you can bring your P8400 up to a better sounding clock speed for free.

Edit: Another thing you can sink your money into: If you have the 1440x900 resolution screen, you could upgrade to the 1920x1200 one and benefit from 78% more viewing space and you could brag to all your friends with 22" 1920x1080 monitors that yours is superior (of course size does matter, but don't say that to an itty bitty laptop person.)

 

Yeah, I'd definitely buy an SSD, but prices for the kind of capacity I want are still WAY too high!!

Dennis

 

I have a brilliant idea. You buy the T9900, but since you won't be benefiting from it, lend it to me. You can say you have a T9900, since you do own it and if you ever need the extra power, we can switch back. )))))

 

Well, THAT'S a helpful reply! Sounds like a GREAT idea!! Just give me your address and I'll have it sent directly to you!!

Dennis

 

How about an X9100 Dennis? It's rated at the same speed as the T9900 but they usually sell for under $300 on Ebay.

The advantage of an Extreme CPU is that they have an unlocked multiplier. You don't need bios support for this feature. Once you are in Windows you can unlock the X9100 by using ThrottleStop which lets you increase the multiplier and the MHz. Many users are getting up to around 3500 MHz to 3600 MHz reliably with these. You can't do that with the T9900.

I tried CPU Genie but I can't recommend it. I might not have had it set up right or something like that. I think it has a free 30 day trial period if you want to give it a try but it can't unlock Extreme CPUs like ThrottleStop can.

If you ever need help with ThrottleStop just send me a PM message.

 

1. Isn't the X9100 a 45 watt chip vs 35 watts for the T9900? How would that affect battery life?

2. Since, using ThrottleStop, you're increasing the multiplier and the MHz in Windows, do you have to change those settings every time Windows reboots or are the settings somehow saved?

Thanks,

Dennis

 

Just as everyone else said, the fastest gains your computer will make at this point is switching to an SSD. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how much faster your system will get. Prices are a little steep in terms of the amount of space you will get but you can find very fast SSDs for the price.
Buy.com - 2.5" Solid State Drives / SATA II / MLC / Performance Series / 60GB
That Vertex 2 is faster than the previous king of SSDs, the 2nd gen Intel X25, in real-world use and is $179. It's 60 GB though, so just install your primary OS on the SSD and try to keep your other stuff on a secondary hard drive. A change in processor would be fun but that's really the last thing on your To-Do list since it is the least likely change to impact your system's performance since you don't really play games.

 

Actual power consumption of a CPU depends on the MHz you run it at and the voltage you feed it. If you run an X9100 and a T9900 at the same speed and voltage, they will consume exactly the same power so there will be no difference in battery life. The reason the X9100 has a higher TDP rating is because it can be overclocked. When on battery power, you don't have to overclock it.

With ThrottleStop you can set up a separate profile for AC and for Battery use and it will automatically switch between those two profiles. You can create whatever kind of profile you want and whatever speed you want. You can also under volt and under clock either CPU using ThrottleStop when on battery power. You're the boss. You can run your CPU however you like.

There's a feature built into Windows called the Performance Monitor that lets you monitor battery usage. Once you create a profile, you can use this program to compare your settings to another profile. At idle or when lightly loaded, there usually isn't a significant difference in power consumption because 45nm CPUs are designed to automatically go into a lower power sleep state regardless of your settings.

Whatever settings or profiles you create can be saved to ThrottleStop and if you want you can automatically start ThrottleStop with Windows and have it minimized in the System Tray when it starts up.

The X9100 is almost identical to the T9900 except it costs less and is more flexible because it has an unlocked multiplier.

 

I'm not so sure they are identical. The X9100 and the T9600 were both released Q3'08. I think the X9100 is an overclocked T9600. The T9900 wasn't released until Q2'09. You are probably right when you say that if you run an X9100 at the same clocks and voltage as a T9900 it would draw the same amount of power, but my guess is that the T9900 can run at lower voltages than the X9100 (it would have to be the E0 edition of course. Probably no comparison with the C0 X9100).

As for battery life they would probably undervolt the same at low clock speeds, right?

 

The X9100 came in both C0 and E0 stepping while the T9900 was only released as an E0 stepping. If you compare these two CPUs and both are E0 stepping then they are as close to identical as you can get.

If they are both E0 stepping, my guess would be the opposite. Intel tends to save their best CPUs for the Extreme line but practically speaking, there is not going to be any significant difference between the two. It's all luck of the draw. Some X9100 CPUs will run at 3.0 GHz with less voltage than a T9900 and others will require more voltage. This is the same when lightly loaded.

The advantage of the T9900 is that if you find one, it is guaranteed to be an E0 stepping. For the X9100, most of the ones on Ebay are C0 stepping so you will have to look harder for an E0. I'd still buy an X9100 C0 before spending more money for a T9900 E0. The Extreme's unlocked multiplier gives you more flexibility so you can run it at whatever speed you like.

I'd think about getting something like this.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Intel-CORE2...0647?cmd=ViewItem&pt=CPUs&hash=item3a5c60cbb7

This is an ES processor but is an E0 stepping and has the identical CPUID of 0x1067A as a retail processor does so functionally it is the same as retail. Some of the early ES processors had CPUID strings of 0x10671, 0x10672, etc. The first retail stepping was 0x10676 which is also know as a C0 stepping. This CPU listed here is way beyond these early ES processors so won't have any of the early bugs.

 

It sounds like the X9100 is the way to go then. The reason behind T9900s being more expensive must be because of the assumption that they are more energy efficient.

On a side note, I've been trying to use ThrottleStop to replace RMClock because of the half multiplier thing, but I can't get ThrottleStop to automatically throttle multipliers like Windows or RMClock will do. Can it do that?

 

ThrottleStop is more of a 2 multiplier solution. If you want a low multiplier at idle then try using the Power Saver feature. If you want a really low multiplier then combine that with the SLFM option if your CPU supports it.

I'm not a big believer in the intermediate multipliers with the newer 45nm CPUs so ThrottleStop doesn't use them. My theory is to use a high multiplier so the CPU can get done what it needs to do quickly and then re-enter the C3/C6 sleep state for maximum power savings.

Some people agree with this and some people don't. If you do some testing with the Windows Performance Monitor - Battery Usage utility you might agree. I did some testing with that and some testing with a Kill-a-Watt meter and I just wasn't seeing the big power savings that you would think you should see. It didn't matter at idle whether my CPU was using its maximum multiplier or its minimum or its maximum VID or the minimum VID.

After scratching my head for a while I finally discovered that at idle, a 45nm CPU might only use the RMClock/ThrottleStop FID/VID settings 1% or 2% of the time while it automatically switches in and out of deeper sleep states that have lower VID voltages that ThrottleStop and RMClock can't control.

For a T9500 in the C6 state, the VID voltage drops down to 0.35V to 0.70V and in C4 it is rated at 0.65V to 0.85V. Performance Monitor can also show you if your CPU is using sleep states that traditional VID settings do not control.

If you're not sure about the above and you would prefer the control that RMClock offers then it is easy to do a simple adjustment to the RMClock part of the registry to support the newer 45nm CPUs and their half multipliers. Here's a post I did that explains that in the Under volting thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6135486-post4871.html

There are a few more posts of the power testing I did in that general area of that thread give or take a few pages.

The price of the T9900 is based on supply and demand. There are not as many to choose from on ebay so the price is higher. It's like the X9000 I'm looking for. The supply of these is next to nothing these days so the one ebay seller is asking $599 now. The X9100 is a steal compared to that.

 

I have a question about upgrading the processor. You know how there is a TIM thermal pad on the northbridge? I want to try to keep it so I plan on being careful not to rip it. In order for me to use it again, will I have to add thermal compound to it again or will it just work on its own? I won't have to clean it, will I?

 

leave as is. Not TIM application required. Just try keep it as clean as possible.

 

Thank you

 

I only use 2 multipliers also, since there are only really choices with the P8400 any way. However, ThrottleStop is too sensitive to stepping up the multiplier that it constantly goes up to 8.5 and back down to 6.0. With RMClock you can choose the target CPU usage and it will jump multipliers to match that. You can also set the delays for changing the multiplier. One thing I love about your program is the quick refreshing when you have "more data" checked. Using that, I know for sure that RMClock doesn't oscillate between multipliers.

Now it sounds like you have posted a fix for my RMClock that I will have to try out. Right now I have a registry edit that sets my multi to 9, but the problem is that it constantly fluctuates between 8.5 and 9 and this requires much more voltage to be stable and fluctuating seems like a bad thing. So right now I am using ThrottleStop to turn off Turbo Boost but RMClock+ThrottleStop uses 3-5% of the CPU even while running a CPU stress test.

Edit: Would it be easy enough for you to help me mod my reg file for my P8400?
or http://www.mediafire.com/i/?j88ehirrqwv1150
I believe the "09" was previously "08" for 8.0x multiplier.

 

On a P8400, the default multiplier is 8.5 and the Intel Dynamic Acceleration (IDA) multiplier is 9.0. The CPU can only use the 9.0 multiplier when a single core is in the active state and the second core is in the sleep state. During normal activity, the second core is constantly entering and exiting the C3/C6 sleep state so the maximum multiplier will be constantly switching back and forth between 8.5 and 9.0 when you are using the IDA feature.

Depending on how RMClock and ThrottleStop are set up, the two programs can fight against each other and use up more CPU resources.

Your RMClock registry entries are missing the entry for the IDA multiplier. Here's how my T8100 looks. It has an entry for SLFM mode and a separate entry for IDA mode.



If you don't want to use the 9.0 IDA multiplier then instead of 90 in that registry location just use 48. The 4 stands for the half multiplier so the result is 8.0 + 0.5 = 8.5

For my settings above I'm using 4A for the 10.5 HFM multiplier and 4B for the 11.5 IDA multiplier. This is the correct way to request for the half multiplier from a 45nm Core 2 CPU.

When ThrottleStop is minimized to the system tray, it puts very little load on your CPU so the multiplier won't be jumping around as much. Maybe try monitoring with CPU-Z when ThrottleStop is minimized. If ThrottleStop is still too sensitive then I might be able to come up with an option to change this to something that is better suited to your system.

As shown in the other thread, the VID and FID when lightly loaded really don't matter that much to power consumption. It's difficult to measure any difference no matter what they are set to. Everyone sees a low VID and FID combination and automatically thinks that their CPU is using a lot less power and will be running a lot cooler but this isn't always the case.

This test I did last night in the under volting thread proved that slowing down your CPU to save power may backfire and end up consuming more power.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6476026-post5133.html

A little off topic so send me a PM if you need help with setting up whatever program works best for you but do some testing like I did and make sure the reduced settings are actually saving you some power. It can be deceiving.

Edit: Here's my T8100 at high FID/VID and the second picture is the same CPU at low FID/VID.





The difference in average power consumption is less than 0.1 watts DC which is well within the margin of error. The reported MHz from CPU-Z would make most people think that there would be a lot bigger difference than that. With any computer there is always going to be a slight random change in power consumption depending on background activity.

After seeing this test and the one I did last night, I don't see any reason to get too technical about the perfect low FID/VID settings because at idle and when lightly loaded, the CPU mostly ignores these settings anyhow. Getting the CPU up to full speed quickly and then back into the C3/C6 power saving state quickly works best.

 

Thanks a lot for the tailored guide unclewebb. Haha funny how undervolting could sometimes use more power, however I mainly need this registry mod so I can run at the lowest voltage possible with the highest multiplier while gaming.