Dell Inspiron 1520 CPU upgrade

Hello folks,

I am running a Dell Inspiron 1520 with the following specs:

C2D T5250 @1.5Ghz 667MT/s
Mobo is the PM965 ICH8-ME (Bios A09)
Graphics card 8600M GT GDDR2 (yea its crap)
2GB of DDR2 RAM.

Here's a pic of my CPU-Z



I was a bit hard pressed for cash when I bought this notebook, so I didn't have enough to spend on the CPU. Now I need to run some rather intensive mathematical algorithms and the like and the T5250 just isn't up to it. Moreover, I think the crappy cpu is kinda bottlenecking my gpu (plz correct me if I am wrong). Thus need to get a new CPU asap. The plan is to get an aftermarket CPU from ebay and install it myself (I'm comfortable with that as I opened it once previously to apply some AS5 to deal wid the heat).

I was wondering whether it is possible for me to upgrade to a processor where the FSB is 800Mhz w/o upgrading anything else? Sorry, its a bit of a noobie question. I saw some pretty affordable deals @ ebay and am a bit hardpressed for time.

Thanks a lot!

 

You can use any 35W socket P processor with an FSB of 800MHz or less. You do not have to change any other parts when upgrading the processor. You may need to update your BIOS if you're not using the latest one.

On the other hand, the 8600M GT isn't a terribly powerful GPU, and I doubt that the T5250 is bottlenecking it.

 

Thanks a lot Commander Wolf, the response is much appreciated!

I guess my gaming woes shall continue!

Just a quick question,

Given the following options, which one gives the best bang for the buck? I'd really appreciate the input of a grizzled veteran

1) T7250 SLA49 2.0Ghz/2MB/800Mhz for US$90

2) T7300 SLA45 2Ghz/4MB/800 for US$95

3) T7500 SLAF8/SLA44 2.2/4MB/800 for US$147

4) T8100 SLAYP 2.1Ghz/3M/800 for US$135

5) T8300 SLAPA 2.4Ghz/6M/800 for US$174

I intend to stick to this laptop (poor mathematics student that I am ) for another year or so.

I do a fair bit of number crunching (being into cryptography and the like) as well as running several VMs at a time. I also play games... the ones that run decently on my system.

Thanks a lot for the help!

Cheers!

 

From a pure processing power perspective, I'll give it to the T7300. If you care some about power consumption, I'll give it to the T8100. Also, the T8300 should only have 3MB of L2 as well.

 

Thanks a lot Commander Wolf. Sorry about the typo regarding the L2 cache on the T8300.

Since my 9-cell is buggered majorly (can barely hold an hour's worth of backup) so pure processing power is my concern.

I think I'll get the T7300 and slap on a 2GB RAM stick to go with my normal RAM.(awww crap, 800Mhz or 667Mhz?)

Wouldn't the RAM stick bottleneck the Cpu?

 

The memory won't bottleneck the CPU. It doesn't matter if it's 800MHz or 667MHz; the 965 chipsets won't run memory faster than 667MHz. Even then, you wouldn't notice any practical difference between 800MHz and 667MHz memory.

 

Thanks again for all the help! Will let you know how the upgrade goes. Cheers!

 

As a fellow 1520 user I feel your pain for using the 8600M GT, I don't plan *want* to upgrade until the i7/i5 processors become a bit more affordable.

Best of luck with the upgrade and hopefully it gets the system performing somewhere around where you want it

 

Thanks a lot Demonhotrod! Considering that I paid almost almost $1500 for this almost a couple of years ago.. makes me wanna cry

My friend just got a brilliant ASUS G50R (i think) and the 9800M GS kicks !

I just started doing a bit of heavy cryptography related stuff this semester, thus the upgrade. I'm also very keen on getting an i7 later on. I just hope in the future they make laptop design more modular!

 

One note: The T8xxx series supports SSE4 instructions, as opposed to the others, which do not. If you do any video encoding or transcoding, this may prove useful.

I'd say it's a tossup between the T7300 and the T8100 --it depends on what you wish to do. Generally, a T8 series CPU is roughly 5-15% faster clock-for-clock than a T7 series, in addition to the lower power consumption (and better thermals).

 

Ahh bollocks! I took the plunge for the T7300 already. There may be a humongous amount of video transcoding that I'll be doing in the next couple of months (gotta downconvert ~85GB-150GB of HD content from my handycam)

Ah well, thanks for your input Lonewolf15!

 

Good choice with the T7300.
Myne overclocked to 2.6ghz no problem (goes further if you have good memory + increase voltage).

Is the 1520 simmilar to the 1525?
Because here is how to overclock the 1525:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=421279

 

Woo hoo! Superb! Thanks a lot mate. The 1525 has a very similar chasis.
I mainly use my notebook on AC, and have a coolermaster cooling pad. A lil AS5 and then i'll OC away.

The pin mod looks a bit scary though. But I always have my old t5250 to fall back on if i screw the pooch.

 

Doing the pin mod could kill the motherboard if you make a mistake.

I can try to help you out with that (not the killing motherboard part, the pin mod part ).

You can ask me any questions on this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=393027


First you should just try using some software called setfsb.
download it from here:
http://www13.plala.or.jp/setfsb/

Play around with it before you try a pin mod.
Setfsb can work without having to do any hardware modifications.

If you could give me the results, I will try to help you troubleshoot it if it doesn't work.

Try using the ICS 9LPRS365 PLL (clock generator) in setfsb.

 

Thanks for all the help man!

I'll definitely try this out after I'm done wid my exams. End semester, pre-exam time is not really the ideal time to try out this "Extreme sport"!

Quick question, does setfsb work under windows 7 x64 Ultimate RTM?

 

Yeah I know what you mean, yesterday I thought I killed my CPU while trying to repair another notebook. Long story short it works now.
I was happy to see it work because I have exams soon too.

It ran on my 64-bit vista, win7 is simmilar so I would guess yes.

 

Good choice with the T7300 out of those. Definitely the best value out of those. And it'll be a nice upgrade, too. One of my friends with a Vostro 1500 was very satisfied with his T5270 (1.4 GHz) to T7100 (1.8 GHz, 2 MB L2) upgrade, and this is more of an upgrade than that.

I also have a 1520, and was unable to find any way to overclock it in the summer of 2008, although I did not disassemble it in hopes of gaining more information that way (reports on NBR were that there was no useful information to be gained with regards to CPU overclocking by doing so on the 1520). If you do manage to overclock with SetFSB, though, shoot me a PM. I'd love to be able to squeeze a bit more out of my T7500, but can't justify spending $220+ on a T9500/X7900 to get more performance that way.

For RAM, get whatever the cheapest DDR2 667 or 800 is. It'll run at 667 MHz speeds regardless. Don't worry about timings, either - they don't make enough difference in performance to be worth the cost. If you put 4 GB in the 1520, you ought to have 3.5 GB usable (this is certainly true on XP, I haven't tested it with Vista but would expect the same). So 4 GB wouldn't be a total waste, but 3 GB would probably be slightly better value. And while I won't say RAM won't be a bottleneck at times - I'm sure there are applications where it would be - it won't be all the time. I can notice a difference in benchmarking CPU-bounded single-threaded real-world apps between when my CPU is running at 2.2 GHz and 2.4 GHz (Dynamic Acceleration mode), even with standard-issue 667 MHz DDR2.

BIOS-wise, you're on the latest version. You probably will want to get some CPU thermal compound to use when changing the CPU, and some compressed air to clean the laptop would be a good idea since you'll have it disassembled anyways. Dusting the vents can make a major difference on the 1520, of 15-20 degrees celsius. If you do that, you shouldn't need to worry about higher temperatures with the more powerful CPU, but it couldn't hurt to check anyways. If the temperatues are much above 80 Celsius, check out the Undervolting Guide.

If they're significantly below (especially the GPU), you can fairly safely overclock the GPU a bit, as you seem slightly less than amazed by its performance. The highest I've overclocked mine is 600 Mhz core/400 MHz memory (with 475/400 stock), with no ill effects. I haven't overclocked it in nearly a year, however, as the performance impact wasn't great - perhaps 10% - and I'm fairly satisfied with the 8600M GT DDR2. But I also have 1280x800 resolution, and had not had a performance-class GPU prior to it. Be aware, however, that the GeForce 8 and 9 series are on the whole significantly more sensitive to changes in temperature than the average GPU, thanks to a bit of an engineering flaw.

edit: What's up with "Undervolting Guide" not hotlinking anymore? At any rate, it should show up first on a search for it of this site.

 

Thanks man! From T5250 (1.5Ghz) to T7300.

I'd definitely drop you a PM. Worst case scenario, if I'm feeling particularly ballsy, I'll try the PLL mod.

I'm presently running Windows 7 x64 Ultimate RTM (via our MSDNAA) and so no problems in tht regard. But would the performance suffer (noticeably?) if I had 1x1GB and 1x2GB in single channel mode?

Yea true that. A few months ago my CPU was heating up to almost 85 degrees (stress testing using Prime 95 on both cores, resulted in a stable "nuke reactor" temp of almost bloody 87). So I got myself a tube of arctic silver 5 which I applied on the cpu after cleaned the intakes and the heatsinks and finally got a notebook cooling pad (Coolermaster notepal W2) as well. The end result, my idle was in the lower 40s and even after stress testing the max temp attained was 65! Hell Yeah! Infact, I had even OC'd my gpu to a stable (not so much for COD4) 620/450. No heating issues at 650/450 but there was a bit of artifacting, probably becoz of voltage. So I'm hoping that I have a bit of a headroom with regards to temperature, as my max was 65. I don't really care much abt battery life as my 9 cell is pretty buggered. Its at the end of its life and can run my notebook for only about an hour.

 

UPDATE: I got it!

After a really cautious (and well documented) disassembly I managed to
1) Replace the processor
2) Apply some AS5 on the cpu
3) Clean out the heatsinks
4) Tighten the LCD screws (had a massive play to it before).

Succeeded on all counts!

3dmark 06 scores (all defaults, no tinkering)

Old processor:
Pre-OC : 3622
OC'd card : 4191 (605/450)

New CPU:
Pre-OC: 3789
OC'd Card: 4377 (620/450)

Temps are good... performance is bloody brilliant! Time to OC the thing a little bit.

 

can you do me a favor and follow this guide:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

I would like to see how your CPU compares to mine.
My minimum stable voltage for 10x is 0.9750V.

 

Bloody hell, that's an amazing underclock!
I've started underclock... I'll post the results (wid screenies) here.

After that, will try OC'ing using setfsb. Got any guides on overclocking w/o the PLL mod coz the Underclocking one was the dog's bollocks!

Quick question, is there a correlation between the capability to undervolt and the overclocking potential? Like if a processor can be undervolted to a very decent amount at stock speeds, does it mean that if the volts are kept at stock, it could be oc'd a fair bit?

 

Yes, I would expect that to be true.

 

I have reached 1.1v w/o any problems. I just wanted to check whether Rmclock was reading the VID accurately and launched CPU-Z (1.52.2).

I tried with CPU-Z 1.41 (as mentioned in the undervolt guide) and I still seem to be getting the same value. Which VID is correct? RMclock or CPU-Z?

Here's a screenie

 

CPU-Z (1.52.2) should show the correct voltage.

Did you select "mobile" in the advanced CPU options in RMclock?

 

Also here is the good way to undervolt:

1. Keep ORTHOS running in the background.
2. Lower the voltage every 10 secs.
3. When you see an error in ORTHOS, stop lowering the voltage.
Same goes if you get the BSOD.

4. set the voltage to the lowest value that was stable before the error or BSOD.

Do the same for the rest of the multipliers.


Here are some voltages to start from, this will save you some time:
superLFM = 0.8500V
6x = 0.8500V
7x = 0.8500V
8x = 0.8875V
9x = 0.9625V
10x = 1.0500V

 

Thanks man! That was the problem. Talk about being a complete muppet. Set it to mobile and now its at 0.9875v.

Will do it like you said. Waiting for 30-45mins before an undervolt is a pain.

At present am at 0.9875, will lower by intervals of 0.025

 

10 secs will do.

Don't fear the BSOD or an error in ORTHOS.
But save your work.

 

when you find your perfect voltage for each multi, raise each one to the next step. Test with ORTHOS for 10mins. Also download intelburntest and run that for 10mins.

That will be it.
Please tell me what your final 10x voltage is.

 

Finally done with all the tests for 10x

Without further ado, here are the results.

Before undervolting (ie stock 1.25v) i took a few screenies :

1) Running Orthos (I kinda messed up and forgot to change the setting to Mobile)






2) Running IntelBurnTest for 5 runs






3) After undervolting to 0.9750v (yep, same as yours , any lower I get BSODs)

ORTHOS Testing:






Intel Burn Test running for 10 runs (~14 mins):








I'm quite amazed by the difference in temps. A 20 degree difference in temps is nothing to scoff at! Should I leave it at 0.9750v for 10x or should I push it up a notch (i.e. at 0.9875) ? I always run my notebook on AC (my battery is screwed).

Thanks a lot for asking me to try this. I had no clue that the results for undervolting would be so dramatic.

 

nice temp, my max is 62C. I even changed my thermal paste and I keep the dust out, I take it apart every few months. So congrats for having good cooling.

I run myne like this:
0.8500V
0.8500V
0.8500V
0.8625V
0.9250V
0.9875V

And I have IDA disabled, but I found 1.0625 to be a good value for IDA.

I suggest you do run at 0.9875 to be safe.

 

Thanks a lot Mortal Hazard

My temp management :

1) AS5 every few months
2) Coolermaster notepal W2 (one fan blowing directly into the laptop intake)
3) Force cpu fan to high using i8kfangui. This is a rather dubious trick as it pretty much increases the wear and tear of the fan.


I'll try the other multipliers. What about SuperLFM? Are you using that? Any pointers for my OC adventures?

 

I use superLFM. Try this advanced undervolting guide:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3663425

About the OC, can you try this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5454421#post5454421

Tell me if you find your PLL.

 

You're the second person to call me that

Here is the definition of Moral hazard:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=...&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title&ved=0CAoQkAE

I signed up to this forum a few hours before an econ exam, so that is why I chose the name.

But since people call me Mortal Hazard, I will talk to a mod and see if they will change it to Mortal Hazard for me

 

Thanks for the links, Moral Hazard

The advanced method is a trifle bit complicated to understand. Will read it carefully.

There's a chap who said that the Cypress CY28547 is the PLL for Inspi 1520 over here.

Am trying out the SiSoft Sandra method first, just to confirm. I should've taken a look-see when I had opened the notebook yesterday. Ahh well..


Moral Hazard = organization attitude as a possibly negative consequence of risk transference? (I'm studying info security and assurance )

 

Can you select any of these in setfsb:
CY28341OC-3
CY28346ZI-2
CY28349BOC
CY28551LFXC
CY28551LFXC

And try to overclock.

If it doesn't work, can you select PLL diagnosis as the clock generator.
Then click on the diagnosis tab.
then click getfsb and upload a screenshot here?

 

Nope. When I select any of those, and select getfsb.. I get PLL ID Error.

Here's a screenie of what you asked for:

 

looks like you didn't press getfsb in the screenshot

 

Also try selecting ICS 9LPRS365.

 

I ran the application... Clicked getfsb several times but the PLL register data field isn't filling in. Just to check whether I was indeed doing the correct thing, I tried it on my friend's notebook, it instantly gave the hex contents of the PLL.

Moreover, when I ran SiSoft Sandra, there was no mention of the System Clock Generator in the mainboard section (weird eh?).

 

Did you try it with every available PLL in setfsb?

 

I tried it with the ICS PLPRS365BGLF. Still get the PLL Id error. I went through the entire list (ouch!) and most gave me either PLL ID errors or SMBus Error or PLL Byte errors. There were a few right at the beginning that didn't give any error and then a couple others which looked promising. Take a look at the screen caps and lemme know what you think:














EDITED: Now whenever I select W83195BR-25 (which looked promising earlier) setfsb crashes with a rather illegible message (Error 19). GRRRRRR!!

 

looks bad,

But can you select one of them (from the working ones), then click getfsb and click on the diagnosis tab, then upload a screenshot.

 

The ICS ones that did not give an error, have blank stuff in the PLL Control area. Given in the first pic.
And the error that I get for the other promising PLL is the second image (I kinda hoped the W83195BR-25 would work.. but i get the same error). Is setfsb broken or something for me? I tried redownloading it and stuff. I'm running Windows 7 x86 Ultimate RTM.

 

I have no idea.

The only thing I can say is next time you open it up, write down the PLL.

Then we will find the datasheet, email abo (creator of setfsb) and hopefully it will work.

 

Lol. Roger that! Thanks a lot for helping, Moral Hazard. I'll let you know when I find the PLL.


Cheers!

 

Hiya folks!
Now that my CPU is sufficiently broken in (and I'm sufficiently disenchanted with the thing), I shall continue my notebook tweaking/buggery adventures.

I just opened my laptop for its "quarterly maintenance". So after the normal rigmarole of CPU/GPU housekeeping, I decided to try and find my PLL. After almost 2 hours of hunting around coz I couldn't locate the bloody crystal. I decided to write down the "info" of each of the chips that looked even vaguely like FieroGT's PLL.

So here goes:

Chip 1:
MAXIM
MAX 8786
GTL 744

Chip 2:
TPA
6040A4
T1 7AW
Z200

Chip 3:
IDT
STAC9205 x5
NLG
820740L
U00369

Now the following chip (#4) appears to be a clock generator or something from what I gathered from a google search. Is this the elusive PLL chip? This is strategically located under teh GPU.

Chip 4
SLG8LP550V
K747602UXA
0738 MALAY


Chip 5
SMSC
EMC4001+ICH

Chip 6
Maxim
8778E
TJ743
+NTFX

Can any1 tell me which one is the darned thing? I can upload pics of the basic spatial arrangements of the chips on the mobo if required.

Thanks a lot folks!

Cheers!


EDIT: It appears that the Chip#4 is indeed the PLL. After checking around on these forums, it appears that this does not allow software OC. Talk abt BS luck! No hope of OC?

 

same PLL like Vostro 1400..
no chance to OC with software...
but you can still try to do the hardware mod , like explained here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=393027&page=17

 

Yep, the pin mod should work.

You can get the datasheet here:
http://www.silego.com/ftg.shtml

direct link:
http://www.silego.com/resources/pdf/xSLG8LP550r10_05152007.pdf

 

Hey guys,

Thanks for responding. I'm a bit puzzled... which pin mod mentioned in the thread exactly? There appear to be many methods listed.

 

Probably method 2:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=393027

Can you take a photo of the PLL so we can see the tracks coming from the pins?