**OFFICIAL W860CU/NP8690 Owners Lounge**

Disabling ht doesnt really help in temps or power usage, but i can overclock further with HT turned off.

HT on max stable multiplier is 26
HT off max stable multiplier is 27

But with ht on you get more peformance on multithreaded applications so i prefer it on.

Picture: http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7271/w860cubiosmod.jpg

 

Moin,

this modified BIOS is indeed tempting. So are the screenshots of yours. Would be some kind of reassurance to have pics showing the modified BIOS screens and the W860CU body alltogether. I might be ignorant, but I don´t know 'kizwan' and can not tell whether he´s trustworthy or not. No offense meant. Besides I wonder why he´s able to produce a reworked BIOS while CLEVO and or the resellers can not or are not willing to. Can you give some background info on this 'kizwan' guy or enlighten me otherwise?

Altering the temperature thresholds for the VBIOS (using RBE 1.27) didn´t change anything. I´ve reworked the VBIOS so as to keep the GPU fan at 0% until hitting 80°C. Unfortunately to no avail. The GPU fan still spins at high speed from the very beginning. So, I reckon the KBC/EC firmware overrules those settings.

I´ve reworked the DSDT settings, at least the settings I thought was the fan entries and set them all to x00 but the last two. I might be seeing ghosts, but it seems as if the GPU fan is a tad more silent than before, nothing gaugeable though.

In addition I´ve downclocked my ATI5870 to 200/300MHz. As a result the idle temp´s are 39-41°C (GPU) and 40-43°C (CPU). Ambient temps range from 20-22°C. Using my CoolerMaster U2 doesn´t have any obvious affect on the temps. But the noise level is still higher than my wife will endure. ;(

Regards,
DD

 

1: Kizwan does alot of bios editing for varios laptop models "http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480992-acer-laptop-phoenix-bios-bios-mod-request.html"
He also modded my old laptop bios wich worked also (got more options etc)

2: My gpu fan is silent the only thing i can hear is my cpu (I think)
I have set my gpu voltage to 0.90v running at 600mhz core and mem at 1100mhz

3: If you dont want to have any risk leave your laptop as it is

 

Me again,

no offense meant. I´m always ready to take a chance. LOL. And against all reason I´ve flashed the BIOS already, without waiting for any reply. The good news, it apparently worked out.

Now I´m going to check out the new BIOS features, since the fans are still working audibly.

Regards,
DD

 

If you manage to silence the fans at low temps, tell the settings pls

 

How about idleing?

 

Would this bios work in a 8760?

 

Hi guys,

The modified BIOS is not a reworked BIOS. It still the same BIOS which is version 1.00.18. I only unlocked the hidden options. As for the FAN settings, it only work to some extent. Meaning the FAN might still kicked in early. This depend on the thermal sensor(s) in this notebook. Usually thermal sensor(s) in notebook computer have it own logic/control over FAN. The FAN trip point settings in BIOS correspond to thermal/FAN control in DSDT (ACPI). If someone already modified DSDT on this notebook & it does change the FAN behavior, the settings in BIOS should do the same thing.

 

I'm anxious to hear others' experience with kizwan's BIOS.

 

Hi guys,

I have a Clevo W860CU, with an i7-820QM and a GTX260M.

I was wondering about two things, the first one is about the GTX260M, sometimes the screen just freezes and turns grey,red or green and it just stoods there. I think windows is still running in background but i can't get off it.
I found some people with the same issues and no one have a solution. I tried with different drivers, and from what i've seen the newest ones are the ones where the issue is showed more often. Any idea? I really would like to use the newest drivers, they seem smother on the games i play.

The other thing is about the kizwan bios
I'm currently in bios 1.00.11 with .10 EC, should i flash 1.00.18 first before flashing kizwan's? And should i upgrade the EC to .11?

Thanks

 

Yes, upgrade the EC first and then flash the BIOS.

Did you try doing a clean install of windows to see if the same symptoms appear?

 

@ EditioN

I suggest the first thing you do, if you haven't already done so is to run HWMonitor freeware to check all of your GPU temperatures. If you can rule out temperature problems then you can try different Drivers.

 

Moin,

I´ll certainly do. Btw, I´ve ruined my VBIOS and was forced to do a blind flash. Was kind of annoying because it took me several hours to remember that the system start will be halted when starting with no graphics adapter "installed". After blindly acknowledging the failure message it did as requested.

In an earlier post you´ve said to have the GPU fan running at low speeds beeing almost inaudible. Can you send me a copy of your VBIOS rom file, please?

Many thanks for your efforts.
I was very excited reading about correspondence between BIOS thermal and DSDT fan control. Unfortunately no change could be recognized until now. So, I´ve extracted the DSDT once more to check the values. Although the asl compiler acknowleged the overwriting of the DSDT table successfully, the values have not changed the way I had altered them. I tried again several times. But the values remain all the same. I´ll check whether I can identify the hex values in question directly in the regedit´s sub key.

So far the modded BIOS runs flawlessly and very stable. Haven´t figured out all the newly unlocked features yet, though.

Regards,
DD

 

I upgraded the bios first then the ec.

Does it matter?

Well I just had the core running at 100mhz and the memory at 250 and the voltage to 0.90 (with a voltage that low the max speed you can get will be 550mhz on the gpu core..) Ive now overclocked it to 830 and the fan is always buzzing but i can play at higher frame rates..

 

Double post.. sorry

 

I had the same/similiar errors. I guess there is something wrong with the motherboard, you should RMA. In any case, it must be a hardware malfunction, newer drivers/bios will not help. Going back to older drivers will only delay the time until the problem resurfaces again.

 

Anyone manage to control/lower the fans using the unlocked bios yet?

Any more interesting features tested?

 

Im afraid not, the only thing that was usefull for me was to set off throttling at 80c

 

Help! Searched but couldn't find a good answer.
I have my NP8690 hooked up (DVI to HDMI) to a Vizio 37" LCD 1080/120hz and notice that there is a delay when I move the mouse or type, therefore making gaming frustratingly impossible. Is there something I might be doing wrong that would cause this or is there no way around it. Any help would be huge.
Thanks! (Mobility HD5870 running Catalyst 11.1)

 

Nevermind, found the answer. My TV has a game mode...my problems are solved

 

Moin,

I have the clocks running reduced too. But I can not change the voltage without a flash and a reset. No matter what I do, the Powerplay states, using RBE for an editor, do all refer to one and one clock info only. That´s why I´m using the AMD GPU clock tool to set the core and RAM frequencies. But I can´t easily alter the voltage, which is pretty annoying.

Sorry, not yet.



Regards,
DD

 

I flashed my video bios to change it
But I have it back at 1.15v @ 830 / 1070 mhz, i prefer speed over noise ^^

 

If your paste is good, you should be able to get that speed with much less voltage.

 

What would you suggest? At 1.05v it should be able to handle 700mhz right?
I dont want to end up with a laptop without a gpu.

(oh nvm i saw your sig where you have 1.07v at 835)
Did your laptop die at 19 jan?

 

Moin,

in the archive that contained the latest VBIOS was a second file that pretty much looked like an older version. I guess it´s the basic/original one that came with the first public release of the card.
It could not be flashed using RBE. Didn´t try to force a flash. So, I used WinFlash, successfully. Afterwards I had it extracted it with WinFlash and altered it via RBE. Different Powerplay status clock info is available now and can be altered, although I haven´t figured the correct assignment. At least I´ve two different different voltage stati to work with. Besides that the Powerplay option in CCC is available now. But IIRC only the voltage was modifiable. Anyway, I´ve a second set of clock info now that will be called whenever I switch to energy saving mode. I´ve set it to 100MHz/250MHz/0.9V. Idle temp, according to GPU Observer ranges from 31° to 34°C (ambient temp 21°-23°C). The bad news, the GPU fan does not response in any way to the settings in RBE. No matter what I do, it spins at high speed and noise. I´ve set all values to 100% to see whether the noise level can increase or not. And it didn´t. The fan control settings I apply in RBE have absolutely no affect.

Regards,
DD

 

It should be able to do stock at 1.05v, but powerplay doesn't work on these cards anyways, so might as well boot at 250/300. That way it's never unstable. Use AMD Clock Tool shortcuts to change your clocks up and down.

Yes it died, I pushed the CPU too hard.

 

Yeah i use the amd clock tool, and i use riva tuner to boot with 200/300 mhz and im now on 1.10v it also boots with 1.07.

But it gets stuck when i play a flash or silverlight movie at 200mhz on the core ..

 

In the past that early bios would not work with the standard driver releases. Does it work now? Also if you come up with a set of settings that work well in the bios post it up so others can try it.

 

Moin,

so far the system is pretty stable.

Here are my driver info:

driver-version: 8.812-110104a-111990C-ATI
2D driver version: 8.01.01.1114
D3D version: 7.14.10.0806
OpenGL version: 6.14.10.10428
CCC version: 2011.0104.2155.39304


VBIOS date/time: 01/05/10, 05:07
BIOS version string: BR35951.007
AtomBIOS version: ATOMBIOSBK-ATI VER012.017.000.004.035951



According to RBE there are 8 Powerplay states available, 0-7.

0-Boot
1-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance
2-UVD
3-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode
4-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance
5-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode
6-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, Enable vari bright
7-Power saving for notebooks in battery mode


0+1+4 refer to 'Clock info 00'
2 refers to 'Clock info 01'
3+5+6 refer to 'Clock info 02'
7 refers to 'Clock info 03'



'Clock info 00' was not touched and should show the following:

GPU: 700MHz
RAM: 1000MHz
Voltage: 1.15V



I´ve set 'Clock info 02' as follows:

GPU: 100MHz
RAM: 250MHz
Voltage: 0.90V



After flashing and rebooting check the computer´s power saving options. Browse to advanced power saving setting, and you´ll see an entry like 'ATI-graphics - voltages' at the very end of the list.
For my energy saving profile I´ve set both sub-menu entries to: 'optimized for battery'. This will force the gc to clock down.
My balanced profile is set to 'maximum performance'.

Thus I can switch between the two states by selecting the needed 'energy profile' in the taskbar.





Regards,
DD


All settings do work with my setup. But I do not take responsibility for damages to anyone´s system. So, apply all changes at own risk and keep a bootable USB key with a working VBIOS at hand. Just in case. It saved my neck more than once already.

 

So since Eurocom sent Notebookcheck a 860CU with a 6970M, do you think we'll be able to put a 6970 officially into the 8690? I haven't been here in the 8690 forums for a while, so if there has been a discussion on this already, sorry I haven't seen it, if so which pages could I look on?

The review unit NBC had ran pretty hot I remember them saying there were some issues....but there were issues with the 7280 they reviewed also with heat, so I'm hoping we can upgrade to the 6970. Otherwise the 470M for $540 to upgrade over my 280M is almost not worth the money, but at least we have the option.

I would have thought the 470M having 288 cores, new architecture, and smaller process could run around 10k in Vantage. Although I have not seen an overclocked result of the 470M in vantage single card. The SLI gets around 21K overclocked, so I'm guessing the 470M could run 10k OC'd. But the 6970 runs around 11500 stock vantage, so OC'd it could possibly hit 13k! Imagine that in the 8690, then the laptop wouldn't be bottle-necked anymore by the GPU, and would be just as good as the 8150.

 

Where can i find that vbios?

 

I posted this in another link in the main forum, but here is a link to eurocom's upgrade service offering the 6970 for $575. Not sure if any other resellers will offer this though. The NBC review states:

Here is the link: http://web.eurocom.com/EC/ecu_model_config1(1,210,0)

Regarding the 470m Tech17 achieved a GPU score of 10864 in Vantage with a 25% overclock:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...70m-benchmarks-sager-np8690-clevo-w860cu.html

I would prefer the power of the 6970, but without official support + high temperatures (if not fixed) makes the 470m seem like a safer choice. Still, I have the first version of the w860cu, and I am still not completely convinced that the 470m would run trouble free.

 

I'm having trouble removing my gpu heatsink. Can anyone help?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/555870-help-removing-gpu-heatsink-w860cu.html

 

Moin,

it was part of the 'TS35951.018' BIOS download. Unlike Sager my NB vendor provides the BIOS file(s) in *.zip format to use them with a bootable USB key.

'BR35951.007' is what you "need". If you can´t find it anywhere or are unable to extract it from the Sager iso file, just pm me.

Regards,
DD

 

It works really well, thanks a ton.

My high clocks are now 830/1050 at 1.15v.

And my low clocks are at 100/250 at 0.45v. (playing starcraft 2 does give texture bugs but the pc doesnt crash with msi kombustor) max temp is 44C at 98% gpu load.

My battery time went up with 30 minutes or something like that .

 

ordering those odd bay caddy for clevo w860cu (^_^)

right now i'll just plug-in 80 gb, still waiting for my b'day present next month, ( i'll ask for 750 gb toshiba 2.5" 12.7mm profile hdd (^_^)

 

Nice, I have a seagate momentus xt 500gb and in the caddy a 1TB samsung hm100ui its really great to have some space on the go

 

i'm an anime downloader, so probably 1 tb only hold-up for about 6 months.. after that i'll have to do cleaning operation again....

looking at my stat, my download stat per month about 60-140 gb 0_0

 

Can anyone tell me how much idle temps will drop when disabling hyper threading?

 

Not enough to make it worth while ..

Mabye a degree? Disabling doesnt help, just keep it on.

 

anyone knows if 6970m working properly in our w860cu??

 

Check out this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/556994-amd-radeon-6970m-eta-resellers.html

 

Does an ati card have a different heatsink then an nvidia, im just wondering if I could ever change to a quadro card without the need of an special heatsink.

 

I did a full suite of benchmarks with the assumption that disabling hyperthreading was going to improve performance and reduce heat. I didn't post it, because I was really wrong. Leave it on.

 

ATI and nvidia use different heatsinks. I am not sure if this applies to quadro cards but the hd 5870 uses a different heatsink than nvidia cards.

 

Are you saying there is no difference in idle temperatures? I know it reduces load temperatures atleast...

 

It only reduced a couple of degrees, -2C to -5C max on idle. On performance, disabling hyper threading only make it worse. Basically, on 720QM, single core on 2.8GHz performed very poor compared to 4 core with hyper threading on ~1.7GHz - ~2.6GHz (based on geekbench score).

 

Is it possible to get video AND audio over the HDMI output?

I can see the video just fine on my TV, but no audio.

And when I go to Control Panel > Audio, there is no HDMI device listed.

 

Thats strange, I got 3 outputs, AMD HDMI output, speakers, and realtek digital output.

 

Right click on the speaker icon in the taskbar and go to playback settings / devices. On the playback settings menu, select digital output and save the settings and now the audio should output to your external display / speakers.