Overclocking the 6990m Clevo build

I recently purchased a Clevo P150hm and I was curious to know if there was a good boost in benchmarking scores or gaming fps with my 6990m if I were to OC it. I know what people are already thinknig "notebook GPUs run hot, so why OC to make it run hotter?" or "you have the best notebook card you can buy, why push it?". Well I heard the 6990m performs like the desktop 6770? That's acceptable but If I push the clocks higher I can get even better comparison performance?

Well my Idle temps are around 40-45c and my gaming temps are 73c-75c for about an hour of Battlefield 3.

Here are the default clocks:

Core/Shaders: 715mhz

Memory: 900mhz

I've gotten the memory stable up to 1000mhz for an hour without any temp changes, would there be any noticeable gains from OC'ing the shader engine from 715mhz to 850mhz (if I am lucky enough to get my clocks that high like some others have)?

 

Depends on the application. Most of the time overclocking makes a difference in benchmarking and in some games you see a rise in FPS. I'd definitely OC your card to it's limit. What I do is I run a graphics intensive game (like Assassin's Creed: Revelations on all High with x4 AA) and monitor fps and temps (I use EVGA OSD). First check out the stock fps and the OC'd FPS, I personally had quite a big gain, from 35-38FPS to 45-50FPS on average. I was only able to get to 780 though, GPU crashes and resets to 590 when I try to go to 790 or 800 on my GT555. With your GPU you'd probably see more of a difference in benchmarks since you already probably run most games at 60fps meaning you won't notice any increase in FPS unlike in my case.

 

True. And as long as I am not increasing my temps I will not hurt the card by slowly upping my clocks to see what max I can hit and play games. My only gripe is Battlefield 3 at 1080p with all max quality settings I notice some slowness in mayhem and would hope that an OC would help the fps stay around 60. Besides that if I lowered AF to 4x it stays at 60fps.

Plus, an OC would help my fps for any future games coming out.

 

That's good temps you so you have space to OC. A thump-rule says that 10-15% OC (both gpu and ram) is okey without worrying to much about it.

Keep in mind that OC migh shorten the life of the gpu.

 

I can manage a full run of 3DMarkVantage @ 865/1090 and 3DMark11 @850/1090 using Trixx to overclock my Clevo 6990M

But I have seen people with higher clocks

 

Can the AC support such OC and is worth the oc? AMD nor clevo will support if the card is broken by oc

 

What's the AC?

 

I mean Power supply unit

 

It's a 240w that came with the laptop

Got the card from eBay - it has taken a lot of beatings but still works like it's new

I game at 820/1050 and temps are never higher than 70, the stock M17x cooling system is amazing, here is a furmark run http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z92/chaotic_george/Furmark.png 67C after 10 mins

 

Typically, with the Clevo 6990's, you can overclock the core higher than the Dell cards, but the dell cards have better memory

a comfortable place for my 6990 during benching is 825/1225. I've gone much higher but the core in my dell 6990 doesn't like anything above 840mhz. The memory goes past 1250, but because there is already a lot of bandwidth, you won't see a huge difference.

I've seen clevo 6990's go up to 870mhz on stock voltage

and to the OP, there is a significant difference when you overclock...its very noticeable...your Vantage and 3dmark11 #'s go way up and your games run that much smoother (if it was borderline before)

 

and how many more watts does it take? Just curious

 

well...a stock 6990m uses about 100w on load. So my guess is that overclocked, you'll be using ~120-130w

 

that's 20-30% increase. Do you get 20-30% boost as well?

You must keep in mind that PSU is limited compare to desktop PSU.

@OP: I am skeptic to the oc for such high-end gpu, if it's worth oc that might shorten the life of the card and what do I know what it might cause.

 

I got 45% out of my 570M That and it's still running a 10% lower voltage than the desktop version.

 

You can't compare notebook gpu compared to desktop gpu. You could try to flash your 570m to 580M.

 

You can in terms of lifetime though. (be aware I am comparing desktop GTX560 and GTX570M here as they are identical chips)

Chip life are affected by three things:

1)Voltage
2)Temperature
3) Frequency

If you raise one (temperature) but lower another (voltage) you mitigate the lifetime impact.

As for flashing, Nvidia will be laser cutting their cores so there would be no point and would risk bricking the card.

 

I though 570M was a downgrade version of 580m, with locked CUDA cores but not cuted cores

 

Nvidia lock all their chips, so when they turn off cores they laser cut them so those units are physically disabled and can't be re-activated.

So yes it's the same core with shaders disabled, but there is no way a bios can re-active those shaders.

 

So I've managed to get my 6990m up to 840/1100 stable under 76c gaming for a while. I don't think I will keep it that high as I'm thinking 800/1000 will work just fine. Someone else said since we're dealing with a good amount of memory bandwidth that a big OC on memory won't make that big of a difference. I did notice in BF that I gained around 10fps in heavy action areas going from around 45fps to closer to 60fps which is nice.

I noticed the gains from 800-840 but not that much to be worth the extra wattage draw and heat. I would like this system to last and going from 715core-800 stable without much extra heat is alright.

My only question is as I know the A/C adapter has a low ceiling on max wattage draw, I may have the 240watt brick but I am unsure, but I don't want to OC and shorten the life of the adapter.

So all in all is the OC worth it if I hope this laptop to last more than 2-3 years?

I could leave it at stock clocks and undervolt it...

 

My entire machine uses around 150w so i think you have headroom.

 

i assume that you have an alienware based on your 240w brick...

2-3 years? You have nothing to worry about. You aren't coming anywhere near 240w yet. I wouldn't go 840mhz 24/7 though because you don't need it...maybe high 700's everyday? Bump it more if the need arises?

 

yes...very noticeable increase in fps when you overclock. Your 3dmarks also go up 20-30% as well. Its a very real noticeable difference

 

okey Thanks for the enlightenment