X205 SLi1 Penryn T9300 Upgrade results

Hey guys, just wanted to pass along how it turned out, but I picked up a Penryn T9300 2.5ghz CPU to put in my X205, replacing the T7250. Was hoping that the bump from 2.0 to 2.5 would be noticeable, along with going from 2mb to 6mb L2 cache. Got it done last night, thanks COMPLETELY to Jesse's GREAT guide for taking this thing apart, can't thank him enough for making that, as I don't even want to imagine how much time it saved me....

And I will say, as he warns, this is NOT something that is simple or a good idea if you aren't fairly competent with working on computers... you DO have to completely disassemble the entire laptop, and was even more involved than I anticipated, all of it not really that hard, but just has to be done right. My biggest issue was removing the motherboard from the bottom case and not cracking or breaking something, as there's a lot going on in that step because of all the connectors on the left side and bottom edge... I had to take a short break and come back, as it's tricky with the connectors on two sides, power board at the top, and the GPU's and their two copper pipes and coolers hanging off the right side... but anyway, got it done and put back together, and it actually booted and so far all seems to work properly ha!

You do have to upgrade the bios to the newest version, as it adds support for the Penryns. And results? Very happy, haven't done any in game testing, had to work a bit more last night and this morning, but, did run some 3DMark06 test, all results were with 1280x800.

Stock T7250, stock gpu clocks - 7200
New T9300, stock gpu clocks - 8050
Stock T7250, overclocked GPU - 8000
New T9300, overclocked GPU - 9702!

Overclock was using Nvidia Control panel, haven't installed Rivatuner yet, running XP, 171.16 drivers, and 620/890 overclock.... will play with it some more, but bottom line, a nice little CPU! Especially with the overclock, it scaled up significantly better than I thought it would. And was pleasantly suprised that my now stock gpu clocks score better than my previous overclocked score with the new CPU. Anyway, gotta sneak back to work for a bit, but wanted to post my early results.

 

Hey congrats on getting it done!!!!, and excellent scores almost 2000 points higher than my T7700. But did you put the Arctic Silver paste to get better cooling or did you leave it alone?.

 

I put it on the CPU and northbridge, and had planned on putting it on the GPU's, but honestly, once I had it all apart and the motherboard sitting on the table with the new CPU installed, I just wasn't up for taking apart the whole SLI assembly ha! Had a weak moment of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!", so left that part as Toshiba built it, for better or worse lol!

Actual CPU temps running at 2.5ghz are good though, running no hotter, maybe even a bit cooler... so maybe the .45 architecture does run a bit cooler. And the Arctic silver sure can't hurt!

 

It should run cooler as you have a much smaller die, but hey it's great to see you did it without any problems, now you just need to play the games as they should run smoother.

Just for fun I wanted to compare my Desktop score to our laptops this waith XP SP2 and Q6000 cpu, 4Gigs od DDR2 800Mhz Patriot Memory, 2 8800GTX SLi Setup, 200Gig WD 7200RPM HDD, Creative XFi Fatality. The result pic is attached and I also ran it at 1920x1200 with 2AA and got 12273 score which I forgot to take a pic of, but here is the test result.

I just ran my sli1 at 1152x864 and could only get it to 7941 with a little bit of overclocking of the gpu's but I don't want to push them too hard, anyway attached is the pic of the score.

 

be77solo - Your new cpu scales much better than the T7700 attached are my scores one at stock gpu speed got 7844 and the second at 625/900 and it got 7870 that to me seems like terrible scaling.

Update - be77solo you were correct I disabled rivatuner and used ntune and got over 9251, I replaced the pic of the updated score this was at 625/850.

 

Hey, somethings not right with your overclocked run Jesse, you should be well into the 8000 range... try running with with an overclock about half that, maybe 575-600 and memeory 825-850, and see what happens.... I have noticed if I overclock a bit too much, my scores show about what you show (meaing they aren't much faster if at all versus stock clocks), so maybe your core or memory won't quite support those speeds.... you should definately see a better result overclocked, as even with my stock T7250, I was gaining about 600 points with the overclock.

Your stock speed is good, so something either isn't overclocking right or is just not performing properly.... try it again slower and lets see

 

Here was my run using 1280x800, and overclocking using the nvidia control panel to 620/890 and T9300

I did find that when i tried 650/950, it actually scored lower, around 9200, so aparrently either the core or the vram won't quite support those speeds, and although it wasn't artifacting or worse, it did perform slower even though it was clocked faster. On mine, around 600/850-900 has always been stable, and for normal gaming I usually don't clock higher than that, but for testing I will push it harder.... anyway, here's my pic, sorry didn't have the res and clocks page showing, but they were what I mentioned above

 

Not sure what is going on I tried at 575/850 and got 7860 score!!, then again I am using rivatuner to overclock the gpu which should not affect it negatively I think?

 

maybe it's not actually overclocking? That's all i can think of.... try using nTune and the Nvidia control panel... it overclocks, but then resets with a restart and you have to change it back.... but, atleast we know that it's actually overclocking. That's all i can think.... Rivetuner must not be working properly with those drivers. Even with my old cpu, it would go up noticeably, so has to be a driver/rivatuner issue

 

Hey thanks, also I updated the post above with a pic of my new score, but you were correct using Ntune I got 9251 at 625/850 and that is higher than I expected but now I feel much better and know that rivatuner is not compatible with the 176.16 drivers just like you had suspected and were 100% correct my friend.

I just ran it again at 650/900 and got 9401, not too shaby!.

 

If the chip runs cooler, does that make the GPUs hotter because the CPU fan won't be sucking hot air away from the GPUs as much?

Also, I haven't noticed any real improvement in OCing the VRAM past 812. On the good side, an oc of 555/1140 will put me over the 7800mark. [And I haven't done any of my planned upgrades yet, deciding to put my tax return towards a SLI desktop instead for now and wait for Bush to give me that $600 just about the time the laptop quads come. *just in case they'd actually fit*]

^Is there normally a difference in actual output at the same overclock between Rivatuner and Ntune or is it just when there is a problem with driver compatability?

 

thegreatsquare - With the cooler cpu the gpu's should stay about the same temps, since they have a fan to cool them and the cpu has its own fan separate of the gpu's.
I have a sli Desktop, its a matter of fact I had this for over 4 years now, I went from the 7800GT sli, to 7950GX2 sli, to now 7800GTX sli, I got my sli1 laptop so I can play when I am on the road, I just like the freedom of having a mobile sli1 capable laptop.
There is a real huge difference because rivatuner is not compatible with the 171.16 drivers, so when I was overclocking with rivatuner the changes were not being really applied to the video cards at all that is why my poor results. So for now if I want to overclock I will need to use Ntune even though I am not a fan of the program for now I have no other choice.

 

be77solo could you run a benchmark test with a game maybe Crysis or World in conflict, UT3 it would be interesting to be the fps difference with overclocking and a non overclocked T9300.

 

Yeah, I plan on running some more tests, just been tied up working and gettin' ready for a super bowl party ha! Plus, gotta head outta town all this week for a job, gotta pay for these toys somehow

But, yes, will definately when I get a chance.... I've got Crysis, COD4, World in Conflict, bioshock, orange box, most of the recent games, so let me know what you'd like to see

curious, how do you run the Crysis benchmark I see talked about? Is it done through the console or what? I'm not sure, but would like to play with it a bit.

 

Sweet! yeah, I knew you had to be in the same general ballpark, so knew something had to be up.... glad we worked it out! Will be glad when an updated Rivatuner is released, as I agree, it's a good program...

 

I ran FEAR benchmark a few times with the overclock speed and it went from average 133fps to 149fps and the lowest went from 73fps to 89fps so it does give you a bit more speed boost but my gpu's went to about 80c load temp from around 70c at stock speeds.

 

congrats be77 on the upgrade i was thinking of getting T9600. but i will wait since i put the x7800 in.

 

thanks, yeah, I pondered going for the T9500, but for bang for the buck (T9300 is $200 cheaper and a 2.4 verse 2.5ghz), was hard to justify the difference But yeah, was glad to get it workin!

 

Crysis benchmark http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=6 World of Conflict has the easiest one it's in the graphics menu.

 

Ok, I'll check it out and let ya know. Thanks for the link....curious, you have any results for your machine?

 

Can you run some more benchmarks like SuperPi or X264 encoding benchmark http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244231-29-x264-video-encoding-benchmark so we guys can get a better idea of how much better the T9300 is ?

 

I also swapped my processor in my 17" sony Vaio AR570... it took about 20 minutes with a small screwdriver and some arctic-silver. Piece of cake!

Here are the differences in CPU/Memory performance before and after:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Merom 65nm T7300 2.0ghz

CPUMetrics> (WEI RATING 4.9)
-CompressionMetric units= "MB/s"> 101.99107
-EncryptionMetric units= "MB/s"> 52.09843
-Compression2Metric units="MB/s"> 280.16687
-Encryption2Metric units= "MB/s"> 474.10568
-DshowEncodeTime units= "s"> 7.44784
MemoryMetrics>
-Bandwidth units= "MB/s"> 3589.53271

***********************-VS-***********************

Penryn 45nm T9300 2.5ghz

CPUMetrics> (WEI RATING 5.4)
-CompressionMetric units= "MB/s"> 125.85744
-EncryptionMetric units= "MB/s"> 64.43671
-Compression2Metric units="MB/s"> 371.56726
-Encryption2Metric units= "MB/s"> 588.18164
-DshowEncodeTime units= "s"> 5.61733
MemoryMetrics>
-Bandwidth units= "MB/s"> 4128.16016
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was also excited thet the RAM got a boost, it jumped from a 4.8 to a 5.0 WEI Rating. For vista users with intel processors, you know that the memory score is very hard to improve upon.

 

Hey guys, im new here and was curious about a few things. Seems like you guys are very knowledgable in this area.

Have a x205-sli2 and am using ntune. I'm using 169.09 drivers.
1st question - When I first OC'd from stock 475/702, (ntune MonitorView),the little boxes/squares in front of the core and memory speeds turned yellow. But then when I increased it from 560/875 to 600/895 They went to green...? Ntune says when its red, you should worry. Anyone know why this is?

2nd question(s) - Would you say that a 3dmark06 score of 8367 , which was ran at 1280X854 resolution, OC'd at 600/895 is fairly decent? I was monitoring my GPU temps between tests and they peaked at 80deg C., is this too HOT?? What is a good temp limit that I should set an alarm?

Any recommendations? Should I get a different/newer driver?

Thanks...I appreciate any comments..

X205-sli2 Core2 Duo T8100, 3Gb Ram, Dual Nvidia 8600m GT, Vista 32bit

 

wulfekej - I think that score is pretty good and the temps are normal, we are all getting the same temps and I would not worry about it. I am not too sure about the ntune indicator going green but you should be ok I overclocked mine to those speeds and had no problems.

 

Thanks Jesse6749 for the response. At what Temp. would you set the limit to. So that you get an audible alarm if it gets too HOT.

 

Hey guys I have had my Sli4 for a week and I'm using the 174.31 drivers. For some reason the GPUs start stuttering when i OC to like 575/850 even though they are artifact free(played HL2:E1 and the ash moves like slow/fast/slow/fast). At over 575MHz core 3DMark06 locks up on one of the last batch tests, but on nothing else. The GPUs are artifact free at 650/900. Why are my GPUs overclocking so poorly? I can't even run games well at like over 550/800 and 3Dmark never finishes the batch tests at more than 575 core. Why? everyone else gets like 625-650 and i can't even do 575. I've also used 169.09's, 169.61, and others.
BTW when I'm playing a game I get like an electrical noise coming out of the GPU HSF vent, even at stock, but louder when overclocked.

-J.B.

 

You sure the fan is working properly? You should hear it, it runs most of the time on these machines, and will be full blast when running anything GPU intense and blowing out some pretty warm air out the right side... assuming that's working fine and isn't causing the "electrical" noise you hear, it might just be your GPU itself... some don't overclock as well as others, and honestly I wouldn't really worry about it too much... I run mine 90% of the time at stock clocks and if you get no stuttering then life is good. Also, what are the temps when you run the tests?

If you are determined to overclock, try overclocking the memory and core seperately and see where each gets to before you notice any issues... I don't run my memory much over 800 or so when overclocking, and usually keep the core at 600 or under, but like i said, even that's rare as nothing really needs the overclock to run acceptably and doesn't do a whole lot other than testing and bragging rights. just my opinion though

 

Yeah nevermind it's not stuttering anymore. Temps are 65 idle, 85 max load. At 650 MHZ core, 900 mem I play HL2 episode 1 for a minute and then nvlddmkm stops working, yet it can do that speed in the Crysis windowed demo with no problems. Is there any way to fix the nvlddmkm problem? I have the same problem with my 7800GS in my desktop too.

-J.B.

 

650 is higher than I've had success with... somewhere between 625-650 on the core mine crashes or artifacts in 3DMark06, so I don't push it much past 600-625 range, and like I said, usually no overclock at all is needed.... I'm running HL2 on high at 1440x900 totally smooth at stock clocks, so don't really worry about pushing it too hard.

 

For anyone planning on doing this upgrade, DO NOT put Arctic Silver on the Northbridge and Video Chips because Arctic Silver is capacitive and can/will damage the motherboard/video card. It is fine for the CPU and southbridge because they have no exposed components, but for any chip with exposed components Artic silver should NOT be used.

To be on the safe side you should use Arctic Silver's Ceramique' which is non-conductive and non-capativie. You can literally dip the motherboard in this stuff and it wont damage anything. This is what I use at work whenever I re-apply TIM (thermal interface material) to any component .

 

Should I worry about this if I get a third party like Fry's to install the cpu?? They would do the installation for like $150 as long as I do the BIOS upgrade and know the cpu compatibilty with my laptop. I'm pretty sure they would know this type of information right???

Compatible cpus would be:
t7500-Jesse
t9300-be77solo
chosin's installed cpu--can't remember off the top of my head. x-cpu?
what else?

jei

 

If you want I can do the install for you. I live down in La (400 miles). Just pay shipping charges and I will do the swap and bios update for you for 20 bucks. I am a Toshiba certified tech so its not like your are sending to to someone who doesnt know what they are doing. turnaround time would be 1-2 days depending on how busy I am.

I know a few poeple who worked at the tech deparment at Frys and from what they told me the people there know nothing of laptops and in general are not very smart.

 

Nice...thanks for the offer and I'll definitely consider it. I was intending to do it over the summer but my priorities right now is to save money for summer school and get a paid/unpaid internship...so yea...:cry:

jei

 

Well the offer still stands. If you ever do want to do it, just send me a PM.

 

i'd have to agree, that is a heck of an offer there MaxxRacer, I sure wouldn't wanna do it for that HA! Just the thought of getting the motherboard in and out of the bottom case makes me cringe This is a complete teardown of the laptop! Good call offering to help.

And just curious, I did it and i put it on the CPU and the other little heatsink that was on the same copper piped piece...that's the Southbridge right? Curious, as so far I've had no problems at all, things are running cool and fast.

Also, one last question for ya since you said you're a Toshiba Tech... my volume wheel is acting funny, has been for a while, when moving it it won't change the volume, than it'll change it quite a bit, either up or down, not responsive at all and sometimes backwards from the way i'm actually moving it... ever run into that? I'm assuming it's hardware and not a sound card driver glitch?

 

be77solo - Funny you mention the volume wheel since I am having the same issue. I was thinking of trying some contact cleaner that Radio Shack sells or at worst maybe replacing the wheel (varistor) altogether but I am holding back for now.

 

be77solo: where did you order the penryn from and for how much? also, do you think its possible to do that in my x205-s9800? i have a socket P merom T5550 processor.

 

I got mine from Lagoom.com, had a very good experience with them, hadn't heard of them before, but they shipped it out the same day and sent me exactly what i was expecting. Here's the link, $336 which is about what i paid if i recall. http://www.lagoom.com/Intel_CPU_Core_2_Duo_T9300_2.50GHz/BX80576T9300/partinfo-id-579832.html

Ha, Funny to hear you're having the same problem Jesse... it's not a huge deal, but is a bit annoying... especially since the speakers sound so dang good... let me know if you find an easy fix.... at this point it's not a big enough problem to me to actually disassemble the laptop again...

 

I have the volume wheel problem too. I have noticed that you must hav an application/window/something selected (DESKTOP counts as one too) before it starts to react to any movement, otherwise it will only change when a long scroll is made.

try it, click around different windows and move the wheel, u'll see what conditions it will not change smoothly.

 

damn...if i only had the money...

 

Hi guys just ordered a t9300cpu for my x205 S9349 and would like to know if anyone has any instructions taking it apart step by step. I really looking forward to this upgrade. I was able to overclock the gpu pertty high but after a point it didnt really matter because of the cpu .. . .

 

To be honest, I can tear down virtually any Toshiba laptop in 5 minutes. I tore apart an M35X in 2 minutes and 30 seconds before. So its not much time on my part.

that other part under the heatsink would most likely be the Northbridge. I have not yet had a chance to teardown a X205 so I could not say for sure.

The volume knob is a bit wierd. It appears to be a software issue. On my A205 the same thing happens. I found that if you just reboot the machine it will work again. It generally happens after i put the computer into standby and then bring it out. I've found that i can sometimes get it to work by putting it into standby and brining it out, but that isn't a 100% fix.

The volume knob on new toshibas is not entirely a vari resistor as it can spin forever. In any case, to replace it you would have to be able to solder VERY well and have a hot air soldering iron. and then you would need to find the OEM manufacture of the volume knob which is VERY hard unless you already have hookups with all of the connector manufactures. and even then its hard. And then on top of all of that, the knob is not even the problem, so you would have ended up wasting quite a bit of your valuable time.

 

MaxxxRacer- Yes, I believe that is the north bridge chip next to the cpu, wow but 5 minutes!!! tear apart, last time I took my SLI1 apart it took me roughly 30 minutes to take apart and put it back toghether completely, I got the X205 tear down process down to a tee. LOL!!! . Here is a link to a guide I even created for others to use if they felt like they could disassemble their X205's: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=179789 Too bad I have to wait 1 to 2 more days to get mine back from the repair center.

 

WOW, 5 minutes sounds insane for the X205's... i'm not calling you out by any means, but holy cow I spent 30 minutes getting the dang motherboard out of the bottom case alone lol, and a good hour or more just getting to that point.... ha, had heatsinks goin everywhere, connectors in the way, cables, plugs ha.... but dang it, it has worked perfect so didn't mess up too badly

 

i need to do that soon

 

Have you looked at my disassembly guide located here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=179789