Question about Cuda cores and overclocking my notebook GTX 485m

Since the weather is getting colder, i decided to try a little crazier overclock of my Sager NP8170's GTX 485m gpu.

Here's my overclock...

675/1350/1700

It ran stable and didn't breach the 80 degrees Celsius safe limit i was advised here.

These clocks are basically the same as the desktop GTX 460 SE's.

GeForce GTX 460

However, here's where the cuda core question comes in, since the desktop gtx 460 SE has 288 cuda cores and the gtx 485m has 384. Does this mean i'm theoretically exceeding a desktop GTX 460 SE in performance?

How much does cuda cores affect performance when running at the same clockspeed? Also can a notebook gpu running the same clocks as a desktop gpu be directly compared or are there more factors i dont know about?

Also, how does the extra gb of vram in the 485m help compared to the desktop 460 SE's 1 gb vram?

I tested Crysis Warhead for about 15 minutes all maxed with 4x AA at 720p and got a constant 40-45 fps. Was really quite awesome for me. No artifacts or extreme heating up compared to normal clocks.

 

Hi,
first of all, dont compare the 485m to a 460se. Simply because the 485/580m are based on the same core of the 560ti, althought with lower clocks.
Since the architecture is different as well compared to the 460se, the perfomance will and is exceeding the desktop 460se with a good margin.
However, your clocks can be considered as low, you can push your card up to 700/1700 with a slightly increased temps, under 85c, which is still around 140mhz below the desktop 560ti.
485m and 580m are the same card, same power consumption, and same generated heat/temps. What nvidia changed was moving to GF114 core, which is more power efficent, but under load temps are still the same.
The newer core allowed them to OC a bit the stock clocks, from 575 to 620 (eh, a mere overclock afterall, almost insignificant).
I hope this clears it up. You can get around 35-40fps with Crysis 1 at very high DX10 without AA, you will not notice aliasing at all, at 1080p
Mine is currently running at 720/1720 daily, i can do 750/1800 for benchmarks, or with overvolt for stable gaming. But temps reaches 90c, althought they dont go higher.

 

The 485m is/was already pretty on par with a desktop GTX 460 even with it's lower clocks because the extra cores made up for it and closed the gap, with your overclock it's exceeding the GTX 460.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise, it's the same architecture as the GTX 460 (GF104) but with extra cores that give it an edge over it.

I've exceeded the performance of the desktop GTS 450 (GF106) overclocking my 460m of the same architecture and core count.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2720QM Processor,CLEVO P150HMx score: P2657 3DMarks

 

I tried your 720/1720 overclock and received a full system lock up. Then again i'm not overvolting, so i'll probably stick to the overclock in my OP. Unless i can find a slightly higher stable medium, but honestly at my current overclock i'm perfectly happy with the performance.

 

Well not all the cards can get those clocks, i think im one of the few that have a 485m that oc that far without even overvolting, too bad this card lost interest around, but it would be cool to further analyze it.
Based on my findings, there are only a few cards that reach 700/1700 stable with stock voltage in the whole world. With overvolt im able to go up to 800/1800 without even artifacting, but temps are crazy.
I think you can try 680/1700, assuming your bottleneck isnt the vram.
That oc is pretty nice, however to push games to their max such skyrim with ultra/mods, is still not sufficent to get 50fps of average.
Dirt 3 and f1 2011 bring down to knees the performance (in the 30-40s) when reflections and shadows are on ultra, which still doesnt make sense if a gtx560 ti at stock clocks (840mhz) keep 60fps stable.
That means basically that there is quite a difference somewhere in the architecture which doesnt quite make it on par with desktop 560ti.

 

I'll try 680/1700 in a bit. Skyrim has problem being maxed most liekly due to the shadows and object details being offloaded to the CPU, while at the same time not even supporting more than 2 cpu cores. quite a stupid bit of programming on bethesda's part and i hope they patch it.

 

I was wondering what kind of overclocking performance the 460m would get considering that was gonna be my first choice of gpus before i decided to save a little more for the 485m, thanks for the link!

 

I tried 680/1700 and received another full system lock up at about the 15 minute mark. Whats weird is only a few months back the highest overclock i could do stable was 660/1600.

Now i can do 675/1700? Is this due to the weather getting colder? (It's about 12 Degrees F right now) Although i don't think that's it since it was never overheating months back , just locking up due to instability.

I do have the newest beta drivers, maybe the driver updates have made it slightly more stable?

Gonna try 675/1700 one more time to make sure it's stable.

 

Yep, still locked up at 675/1700, it wasnt doing that a few hours ago. Though i remember my memory clock speed was more sensitive than the shader clock. So maybe i'll go back to 675/1600 and see if it still crashes.

Is there some reason why the memory clock would be more sensitive to instability?

EDIT: Yep, it was the memory clock speed being at 1700 causing the instability, makes sense since i remember even 1650 caused instability as well. I wonder if this means i can continue to increase the shader clocks while leaving the memory clock alone at 1600.

What does memory clock speed affect performance wise compared to shader clocks? I heard VRAM affects AA and AF performance. True?

EDIT AGAIN: Tried 680/1600 and still had a lock up. I think 675/1600 is just my limit. Strange how a 5 mhz difference can cause a crash.

 

It different from every 485m there is, one of my closest friend clocked it up to a outstanding 720/1720 (+/- 20 cant remember exactly), with 87 degrees as max temp! I guess cards variate from user to user