Need advice overclocking 680m

Currently, I'm running stock bios and managed to overclock my vid card with MSI Afterburner, +135 for Core (max with afterburner) and +700 for memory.

I've been doing some reading and find people managed to get more overclock by using third party Vbios. Well, I'm not familiar with flashing vbios on video cards. Can someone point me to a thread explaining this stuff so I can do a little research myself? Also, is it worth the risk to get more overclock? This is a $700 standalone card. I don't want to end up with a $700 brick. Please advise.

 

NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks and Using your 4GB GTX 680m to its safest and full potential were very useful for me.

you can flash the clevo vbioses with more or less 0 risk. you can also use the msi vbios, but if you're on a stock 180w brick you might want to be careful, as not only will you need to put a little work into monitoring temps and cooling but put yourself at risk of overloading your psu. if you're looking for help actually flashing the bios htwingnut's post on page 2 of http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ards/683803-nvflash-version-use-gtx-680m.html is vgood. as far as the risk, its all up to you, imo its a fairly low risk, and the relative performance increase can be quite large depending on your card. keep in mind that those 8-9k gpu 3dm11 scores take a bit of extra tinkering though, so if the games you like to play aren't below your personal required fps i wouldnt worry about it too much

 

Thanks for the link. Will do some more research. I'm using the stock PSU, but it's a 220W. I guss the 180W is probably for the 9150.

Exactly like you said, I could care less about benchmarking. It's more about squeezing FPS for the games I play.

 

Find the max stable overclock on the stock voltage bios and you should be good to go for all games.

 

Yes, I think I think I found mine, which 850 for core, and 2500 for memory. That is +135 for core and +700 for memory. Stock bios and can't push it further. Being that that is the max allowable in MSI afterburner, and anything higher on the memory will cause artifacting.

I'm not sure how much further I can push with a Vbios flash, and wondering if it is worth it to do it with the current overlock I can reach with the stock bios.


I had been doing some reading. Apparently, the Vbios from SVL7 is quite popular and doesn't seem to get any complains or issues with anyone. I have a couple of questions here.

To do a flash, I understand I have to do it from DOS. Do I do it by booting via a DOS boot flash disk, or can I just do it from the DOS command windown in Windows? I'm confused since it seems like people are able to do it from DOS commmand window.

How do I use NVFLASH? I'm not a computer programmer, so I'm not familiar with command lines. I understand the first thing to do is always to back up the original stock bios. But to flash with the alternate third party Vbios, what is the command line to do it?

 

Typical stock voltage unlocked clocks range between 950mhz and 1006mhz.

Going into dos mode and typing "NVflash" will list all available commands.

A flash can be as simple as "Nvflash BIOS.rom".

 

I finally get my butt to go get a usb flash drive so as to prepare for the flash. My first step right now is go check if NVFLASH can run, and then back out the original ROM. I tried using nvflash just to see what commands are there. So, I'm in Windows, opened the DOS windows and type the command NVFLASH. I got the meassge on DOS, saying this version is not compatible with the version of Windows I'm using. Telling to go check if I need a 32bit or 64bit version of the program. I've downloaded NVFLASH from the link above. Are there 2 different versions of NVFLASH?

These are the files that are currently in my USB flash drive.
nvflash
CWSDPMI
80.04.33.00.10_'OCedition'_revised_01.ROM

I'm really sorry for the noob questions. Just need someone to check if I got the process correct. Go to BIOS and set priority to boot from DOS. I will go automatically to DOS mode with the files above, right?

 

Alrighty, finally, I flashed my card. I used Saltius BIOS - 1.037V.
Managed to push my GPU core to 1000 Mhz. Video memory stays the same at 2500 Mhz. Was kind of surprise that I was not able to push it any further with the video ram. Now, the temperature... oh boy... it went high... really high. I always have FPS limiter on due to jittering from the monitor I used. Temperature was always around low 70s, and sometimes pushed to around 75, 76. After the mod and running at 99% utilization with BF3, temperature shot to 86 degree C. Hopefully, this is still acceptable temperature limit.

Well, I did send an email to Sager asking to purchase the backplate. Looks like I will be putting some holes to allow better airflow. The previously useless heatsink mod is still there and I have yet to remove them. Hopefully, with the combinations of the holes I will be drilling will help with the temperature.

 

I didn't go above 90C with the Saltius vBIOS as the fans kicked in on high and prevented the temperatures rising further. I was at 1037MHz core and 2400MHz for memory.

 

That's good to hear, so my temp limits are where it should be. Next step, start drilling