The GTX 280M Overclocking and Benchmarking Results Thread

The latest is 6.06 : NVIDIA System Tools 6.06 out for grabs

 

Thanks guys! hope this will do it. Dough i need to know the part of flashing in SLi: Should i flash both cards?

 

ok so i got the hang of things with the 6.06 NV system Tools managed to save the settings..did saw them in the GPU-Z ran a benchmark and saw an improvement! BUT there is a BUT after restarting everithing downclocks to the stock clocks! how did you guys managed to get this saved and "pin it"!

 

We use nvflash, nbitior and a set of other things in order to edit the vBIOS and then permanently flash it in DOS mode. Search it up.

 

I keep my clocks at stock and just fire up nst when I need 3d performance. That being said, you can save your BIOS using gpu-z (little vid card icon), then edit it in Nibitor. Once edited and saved with a different name so you can keep track of the BIOS versions, you can flash the edited BIOS back to your card using NVflash.

 

i finally managed to get the clocks saved after restart,it was actually dum and you guys might laugh,i had to make a rule so the profile loads on windows start-up or whenever! i got some decent clocks for now that are stable in 3dmark(12248) and a few games 600/1000/1600!
@Blacky why did you use 900 as memory clock wich is lower than the stock 950 is it better? Rep-up to Blacky,Q56_Monster,Eivind and ReDuNZL!
Thanks Q56_Monster i saved my bios for the two GTX 280M but i just didn't know what to use to flash them or if i have to flash both,but using the programs that you mentioned i will figure it out! Thanks!

 

Because I have an older laptop model, the M570TU in which the 280M has its stock memories set at 800 Mhz not 950Mhz. You have a newer model, in which the 280M has its memories set at 950Mhz and which can be safely OC up to 1000 Mhz.

 

Better yet; Make rules so that the oc clocks only kicks in when you are playing specific games/programs. No need for the higher clocks when you are just surfing the net or using Word.

I'm doing 630/1000/1575 oc, but only in games where I feel the fps rates are a bit on the low side. I have aslo checked running my machine at the stock GTX 28 5M clocks; 600/1000/1500, and it runs completely stable, with every benchmark, programs and games I have available (including OCCT), with only a slight temperature increase. Still, I'm on stock clocks whenever oc clocks are not necessary. I think that's healthy. Also because I think letting the oc clocks kick in at startup, screws up the downclocking that should normally take place when your card is idle.

 

This is what i thought too,it's healthier for the life of the boards to keep the high clocks only when needed,i tryed the windows start-up one because i was new to the nvtools,but looking around a bit i managed to do so! Thanks ReDuNZL and everybody for the concern,it's much apreciated!
PS: what temps are you getting with those clocks after playing,thanks? i got 73 celsius after Assassins Creed but i think i need to change the thermal paste wich i've been planning to do for a while!

L.E.:tried the rule so the profile with the high clocks run when a game starts and another rule for the normal clocks profile to activate when the game stops but as soon as i click to start a game everything freezes,no matter what game i start,that's pretty sad,anybody is getting this too? i'm using windows 7 64bit,197.16 nv drivers!

 

Temperatures in the 70's playing a game are perfectly fine - I have never seen mine reach 80 while playing, but even that would not be much of a concern.

I have never had the problem you are describing, but I'm on the 186.81 drivers and 6.03 System Tools. There's always been some little problems with newer drivers, for me.

 

thanks for your reply,ReDuNZL,i had a hunch it might be that!

 

i recorded every step i took while overclocking my GTX280M including temps and scores in 3DM Vantage and 06. plus i tried some recent official drivers and a little FSB oc'ing.
i thought my results might be source of information or inspiration to somebody else so i wanted to share them

see attachment (excel file)
View attachment clockLOG.zip

 

Wow, great job, Fennek!
+1 rep!

 

Can anyone with an MXM2 GTX280m upload their BIOS file here? Preferably a pristine one (not modded, stock). I want to compare it to mine because I have odd settings in my voltage table editor. I kept an original image of my BIOS but I got it from niBitor at the time when it didn't officially supported the GTX280m and maybe something wasn't properly scanned.

 

This is the official GTX280M BIOS from the M980NU, the one for the M570TU is not on their ftp site.

GTX 280M M980NU

 

Yeah but that is an MXM3, I don't think it will work on my card. Indeed my voltage section is messed up, the BIOS you linked has everything showing up properly, no missing voltage. I just need someone with an M570TU GTX280m to give me a BIOS file.
PS: the one over at mvktech.net is corrupted, archive won't open.

 

Here's a copy of my 280M BIOS, it's overvolted to 1.05V and the core clock has been changed from 583MHz to 585MHz though.

 

Thanks a lot, however your BIOS shows up exactly as mine in the voltage settings, is it based off your stock BIOS that you modded yourself or off one that was posted in this thread somewhere, perhaps by me lol?
And if you want to compare what I'm actually talking about, compare your voltage section with the one from the M980NU, especially the advanced voltage editor and the VID modes. The MXM3 has 4 VID modes displayed, the MXM2.1 has only 1, the voltage table is incomplete etc.

 

This is one I did myself, based off of the stock BIOS. To properly edit it, I remember having to change the device ID to "0608".

I have a few more copies (one untouched and another without the overvolt), I'll post them once I find them.

 

Yeah please do, this is what I had done too for nibitor to recognize the card as a 8800m GTX and I'm pretty sure not everything was analyzed properly.

 

You're right, sorry. For some reason I thought the M980NU was MXM2.1 and they changed for the X8100...

 

Here's a stock 280M BIOS that was posted last year by anothergeek:

 

what driver are you guys on right now?

 

275.21, it seems to make my card run hotter, or at least it made my 2 hour stable overclock in Bad Company 2 crash within a few minutes.

 

Hey all, first time poster,

Ive been reading these posts and forums for awhile now, and they have given me some brilliant advice to do with overclocking.

But Ive come up with a problem, this is why Ive registered and posting.

My system is a Sager NP8120/Clevo X8100, bought it about a year ago, so tech wise is still great but not jaw dropping hot, ha

Stats: GTX 285m SLI, i7 920xm and so on and so on

I have managed to overclock my GPU's thanks to the advice on these forums, and all is stable, stock score 600/1000/1500 and ive got it to 665/1115/1680 in SLI, Ive benchmarked through windows index and played a few games and no driver failure.

But my problem is that Ive noticed that my FPS and dropped, so it got me thinking that my GPU has a power problem, i.e. voltage.

Ive seen the pic's that people have posted, and notice my BIOS version is different, so i started googling i cant find how or where to update my BIOS.

My BIOS version is 62.92.AE.00.OC, now is that the latest version?

My Driver version is 260.99

And how do i increase the voltage? Ive tried a few programs like Nvidia Inspector and Niptor (i think its called that), but the voltage is blanked out.

I used Nvidia Tools to overclock.

I hope somebody can help me out, and i hope this thread is not dead.

 

Did you try modding the vbios with nibitor and flashing it?

 

lordjubei, you definitely wanna lower that memory clock, 1115MHz is way too much, chances are the vram already got damaged. Those cards have enough bandwith as it is, 1000MHz is just fine. 665/1680 also seems quite high from what I've read here, you sure this clocks are at 1.0V? That shouldnt be stable.

 

what dh said

 

Wow, thank guys for your quick replies.

I don't think i have done any damage too the GPU's cards, i have at this present time put them back to stock values and are working fine.

But if i read other post in this forum a slight 10% increase across the board is nothing compared to what others have done.

To using that software nibitor and flashing it, ive got to questions:

What to i flash it with?

How do i do it?

And all the fan speeds and voltage readings are blocked/grayed out

@Daniel Hahn

How do i flash my GPU's and where do i get the BIOS update from
How do i find out if my clocks are 1.0 volts


And about 10 mins ago i flashed my main BIOS from sager, but if i got to bios mode before system start, i don't see any changes, so god know what that's done


And again, im very grateful for the quick replies,

all you guy's rock

 

Hey, dudes

Just opened up gpu-z, had a look at sensors and yes im on 1.0 v

before i flashed my main bios it said .95

 

You can get nvflash, put it on a bootable USB stick. Then boot from the stick. Retrieve the VBIOS for master and slave. Boot to windows. Copy the dumped VBIOS and edit the copy with NiBiTor, where you will be able to choose 1.03V as an option which should allow for higher clock rates.

But still, leave the mem clock at 1000MHz or 1020MHz, vram cooling is still not that great on most laptops and you have no way of finding out how hot they will run. In any case you will not notice the difference in bandwith, since you will not be able to play at any resolution above 1920x1080 anyway.

If you finished your work put the edited bios on the USB stick (leave the original one there as well, in case something goes wrong and you need to blind-flash). Boot from USB and flash the new bios on master and slave card using Nvflash.

Also, can you do me a favor and run HWiNFO32 and post a screen of what it says? Reason is that HWiNFO tells me by GTX 285M is based of a G92 -ES chip. I just want to know if this is normal or if ES stands for what I hope it does not stand for.

Edit: Just on a side note - I did not overclock my GTX 285M due to difficulties I had with my laptop, I cannot afford to lose warranty because of this and have to be sure that the problem is not related to any o/c. Performance gains will be marginal in any case.

 

i actually suggest to keep the vram below 1000mhz. i have them at 985. i also overvolt mine to 1.03
we also have more conservative overclocks as me and dh have 8690's and you have an 8120 which i presume will give better cooling. but i think its wiser to stay on the more conservative side.

 

@Daniel Hahn

Thanks, ill check and do this tomorrow, its getting late, and i just wanna play fallout NV

Ill follow your instructions to the letter

and thanks again

 

Don't worry, G92-ES doesn't stand for "Engineering Sample" ;-)

 

@Daniel Hahn

OK, i downloaded that nvflash, came in a rar file, i extracted, two files, now Ive got a flash/thumb drive, but how do i make it bootable, i checked online (maybe not that well), and the a lot of programs talk about a old floppy disk, well i don't have one, and to be quite honest i don't know anyone who has anymore.

So what do i do, and what program do i use?

Thanks again, i feel i owe you one after the help you given me!

Cheers, dude

 

@Daniel Hahn

Ok, got i little program called bootflashdos, got my bro-inlaw for advice, ill see if it works

 

@Daniel Hahn or anyone who can help

i made a bootable flash/thumb drive, put those two files on it from nvflash, got windows to boot off it and i got the C: prompt, how what?

you said something about, Retrieve the VBIOS for master and slave, how do i do that dude, cheers

OK, UPDATE

I was reading on some forum that GPU-Z can get the bios, i opened it up pressed that little green button and saved a .bin file of my 280m, opened it up NiBiTor, and all the settings are there to edit, so im i on the right track?

 

yes you are

 

cheers dude, just about to flash my cards, if it blows up, well e, what more can i say, ha

 

i don't know what in doing wrong, its really .ing me off now, maybe i have made a proper bootable flash, i don't know?

aaaggghhh (lost all my hair today!)

rant, rant, f this, f that, rant, rant, and rant some more, kill the cat for jumping on computer

Ive calmed, cats ok

ok this is what Ive done, made a bootable flash drive (i think)
put those two files from nvflash on it, which are nvflash and CWSDPMI
put the new bios that i want on the gpx card's, same as stock but increased voltage to 1.3

assigned windows to boot of flash
get a c: prompt

now ive been trying to follow this dudes walkthrough - Using NVFLASH - NVIDIA Forums

about half way down, i put in cd c: and cd nvflash_gui and all that (even some other combo's), but im getting invalid dir, or just something to that degree, i even got invalid drive specification once (or something like that)

im completely lost, its bloody frustrating, i just want to shoot the thing, but can somebody out there tell me what the fu.ck.ing doing wrong!!

cheers guys, its given me a headache

 

You dont need the GUI.

See the readme file that comes with nvflash.

After you get your c: prompt, you need to type something like:
Nvflash -i1 -4 -5 -6 name.rom
Nvflash -i2 -4 -5 -6 name.rom

Maybe you should flash one card at a time. Just in case you make a mistake.

 

@MORAL HAZARD

It bloody worked, thank you thank you, it was bloody easy, the thing was i didn't get a read-me file, and i thought i was following the right path on the other forum, my mistake, and again thank you.

Just one question, i did read on increasing voltages, to only increase the 3d setting and leave the others alone, is that right, cause that's what Ive done.

and again bloody marvelous

 

Yes that's the right thing to do.

 

I'm back, just to report that's everything worked out fine, got there in the end.

Thanks again for everyone who helped me, without use's guy's i would be completely lost.

My overclock worked great, voltage at 1.03 and the 285m's are both working great at 672/1120/1680, that's 12% increase across the board.

I'm very happy, and i use RealTemp for obvious the temps and have not seen any real problems to report.

So all in all worked out great, cheers again

 

i know your lappy has great cooling but id lower those memory clocks a bit, to below 1000 as most suggested.
vram in the gpu doesnt have its own temp sensor and heatsink so i wouldnt push too far.

 

Ok, but my stock value for both cards in memory is 1000, and Ive increased by 12% to 1120, so should i only increase by 5 or 10%, but increase the others by slightly more.

Advice needed, thanks

NOTE: Ive only flashed my GPU's with the altered voltage, im editing the overclocking in Nvidia Tools

 

Don't increase vram clock as it will not yield you any benefit. 680/1700 is also hihg enough for clock and shader, higher will not work in the long run and you can already consider yourself lucky if you can reach those clocks.

 

Alright, ive put the memory back to stock value on both

You can see what the clocks are:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=60691&stc=1&d=1295902654
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=60692&stc=1&d=1295902654

And i haven't got 680/1700

 

BTW, Did you run some benchmarks (3DMark 2006, Vantage) to check what you got out of the oc? I'd also download ATITool and check for articfacts. If those clocks are really rock solid at 1.03 and temps are below 80°C, you might be able to push the clocks further by flashing the card to 1.05V, but somebody would need to edit the vbios for you.

 

Why would it be at 1.03v, is that the default for the 285m?

If so, something makes me think that 1.05v is not an option. 1.06v or even higher is more likely.