Lenovo Y500 SLI Overclocking BIOS Mods

This will cover the SLI BIOS MODs for Lenovo Y500

To overclock the SLI card, we need to flash that BIOS separately!

How to extract Ultrabay SLI Card:
1. nvflash --save original.bin
2. Select second adapter

to be continued. Those who have experience modding join me

 

Whoa whoa whoa. Does this really work?!?

Svl7, me, and some others have been racking our brains trying to figure this out. So far it's been a dead end.

Were you the one who replied in the thread on Tech Inferno as "hendrickxjonaspvt"?

If this works I will freaking kiss you.

 

Please see this link here for more information on the current state of bios and vbios modding on the Y500.

Lenovo Y400 / Y500 - unlocked BIOS / wlan whitelist mod

Progress is good, but stalled.

 

Yeah but he said he figured out a way to flash the vBIOS on the Ultrabay GPU. That's the last hurdle we have to cross; everything else is dandy.

I think it's him who wrote this reply.

 

That would be quite awesome!

I was posting it in case OP wasn't him or didn't know, as there is some nice info to be had! The Techinferno forums aren't exactly the biggest hub of activity on the Y500.

 

Pretty sure it is the same person since the two posts were made within 2 minutes of each other.

I spend more time in the Tech Inferno Forum than here now lol.

Getting the second GPU vBIOS modded would be the best thing because you can't overclock with drivers newer than 310.90 using the Nvidia Inspector method, otherwise the core is locked at +135 MHz. 310.90 doesn't have SLI profiles for a bunch of the newer games such as BioShock Infinite and there's no indication when the OC limit will ever be fixed in a future driver update.

 

Yeah, I'm waiting until it all gets sorted before I even bother trying. I'm still thrilled with the power it provides already coming from my 8600m GS on my Acer 5920G.

It's not unprecedented though that drivers lock the overclock then unlock at a future date. For the longest time the 8600m GS could only be OC'd sucessfully on the 169.04, then it was locked for several versions, and subsequently unlocked again. I can now OC it on whatever current drivers I put on late last year without issues. There's still hope!

 

Yeah the power on this thing is amazing for the price. I'm coming from a better system than you (ASUS G73Jh w/1st-gen i7 & Mobility 5870) and this thing is already twice as fast at stock!

A BIOS unlock would be the best solution because you can always use the newest drivers and not worry about things changing and such.

 

Fun numbers on the 8600m, could take it from 2414points stock to 3759points OC on 3DMark 06. Can still play Skyrim, Syndicate, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Metro 2033 on it. Thankful to have this machine now though. Blowing my mind. lol

It seems strange to me that all I see about this machine is people whinging about niggling things. For the price, this is amazing in almost every way. It even *looks* better than those $16-2500 laptops. Oh well. People are strange. Don't forget to wait for Haswell or the 750M or both together, otherwise you're stupid for spending the money. (/facetious)

 

LOL yeah some people are never satisfied. You can't expect every little thing to be perfect on a machine with these kinds of specs 'cause you're paying mostly for the components, not the build quality, which is actually not bad. Even MBP's aren't perfect. And ROFL at people waiting for Haswell and 750M; by the time you get that machine something even newer will be on the horizon. You never win.

Man I haven't used 3DMark06 in ages and only tested it once on my G73Jh. I think I got like 14000-15000 with an OC on the GPU.

But your numbers for the Acer seem pretty low. I've got a similar systen, an older HP with a C2D T7300 (2.0 GHz) and Quadro FX 1600M (AKA Geforce 8700M GT), and I get around 4500 everything stock. And yes it can still play the newer games fine with everything at low.

 

I think the fact that the Y500 is actually fairly easily expandable also makes this thing a killer. I know I want to toss a 3940xm in it when they get a bit cheaper. With 16Gb Ram it won't need to be touched really. Tossing in a Samsung Pro SSD this weekend and then overclocking is all thats left!

 

Yeah, the thread for this machine over at RedFlagDeals is shameful with the trolls. ( [Comp] 14" IdeaPad Y400 Intel Core i7, Nvidia GT650m 2GB, 8GB DDR3, 1TB HDD + 16GB SSD $740 - RedFlagDeals.com Forums)

The built quality on this machine is stunningly awesome compared to my 5920G, and really quite solid it seems. I'm seriously impressed with it, so very impressed. The trade-offs of no Optimus or low battery are really just niggling issues.


Those Quadros are more powerful than the 8600m GS (not even the GT)... And I've upgraded my machine from 2gb to 4gb ram and from the C2D T5550 to the T7300 you have, but I haven't 3D Marked since those. Really, I pushed my machine to the brink to get that score, I can't really run stable on it and the T7300 throws of tonnes of heat, so that doesn't help. It's still a huge OC point difference, they were very reasonable cards at the time. I can still even upgrade to another MXM card if I like, such at the Quadro, and it would help a bit... But the DC jack went (been having problems with it since 6 months in), and the harness replacement got lost in the mail a couple times and took way too long to get here (luckily it is just a harness upgrade, rather than resolder), so I just gave up and bought this lovely machine.

Exactly, there's some nice upgrades to be had on this over time. I'm already getting sick of 5400rpm drive bottlenecking me, but I'd hope for at least 512gb to replace it. There should be some nice SSD sales hopefully near the end of the year, they just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. It's a waiting game. I won't bother to upgrade RAM until I have an SSD.

 

Didn't know that. I have the HP Compaq 8710w and it looks like the FX 1600M is a standard MXM board so I also have the option of putting in another GPU. But I think the issue with your Acer and my HP is that they use an older MXM generation slot which are incompatible with the newest MXM 3.0 type B boards so even if we upgraded we wouldn't be able to fit in anything much faster. I didn't go that route and just got the G73Jh and now the Y500 SLI.

 

Looks like we officially have SLI overclocking thanks to svl7 and octiceps.

 

Info?link?

 

Link provided by me on first page of this post by me.

 

Svl7 and octiceps?!?

I didn't do diddly-squat. All credit goes to svl7 and the contributors in the thread. If his BIOS mods have helped any of you out I suggest you make a donation in the link on the first page of the thread.

And please don't freely share the files on here without svl7's permission. It's not that hard to get 5 posts on the Tech Inferno Forum. The mods on here and T|I have already had to take some remedial actions today including banning a user for stealing svl7's work and soliciting donations for it.

 

I think its amazing what you guys accomplish. Unfortunately I dont even know how to OC or have a use for it as I dont game. None the less I love reading about these things (why?) its fascinating to me

 

Hm, I thought in his post he was requesting to get donations FOR svl7 using his Paypal? Unless I mis-read something? svl7 also said something about stealing his work and posting it here? Are you able to clear it up for me as I think I missed something??

As for getting 5 posts, there's not a whole lot of activity there and I hate trying to just bolster my post count. I'm a conservative poster and only try to do so when I feel I can actually contribute... So it may take me a while to get up to 5!

Edit: Maybe not, I'm sticking my nose in further. I guess there's a trick to posting pointless things while making it look relevant.

 

Trust me it's not that hard. With a little contribution you can easily get 5 posts. The whole point of the requirement is minimize leechers who just want free stuff without contributing anything. They run an independent site and pay all the servers costs themselves. It gives them freedom from the control and censorship of a corporate-run site but it's not cheap.

 

Yeah, I got it, I helpded.

 

Sorry for the simple question.

But what is the purpose of BIOS mods in relation to overclocking the 2x GT650M GPUs?

Do I need a BIOS mod to overclock the GPUs at all (even with eVGA Precision or MSI Afternburner)? Or is the BIOS mod there to allow me to "lock in" the clock and memory speeds I wish the two GPUs to use by default?

Thank you.

 

The purpose is to remove the artificial overclocking limit on the core that is present in all mobile Kepler GPU's. If you don't have the mod and use overclocking software such as MSI Afterburner, you'll find that you can only increase the core clock by 135 MHz and no higher. This mod removes that limit. The memory clock is not capped. However, there is another way to bypass this limit without a BIOS mod and that involves using Nvidia Inspector to force P-states using .bat files. The instructions for that method are here, but it does not work on drivers newer than 310.90:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...guide-workaround-max-clocks-oc-stability.html

This thread is outdated. If you are interested in the BIOS mod, refer to the thread on Tech Inferno where all of this information originated from:

Lenovo Y400 / Y500 - unlocked BIOS / wlan whitelist mod