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    Undervolting Vaio Z11?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by SurferJon, Oct 9, 2011.

  1. SurferJon

    SurferJon Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi, I've seen many people say they have undervolted the CPU on their Vaios, but how exactly do you do this? I remember I saw a general guide for this a while ago, but when I tried to install the software it required, it was no longer free or compatible. Is there some new guide out there that the search function isn't finding for me? :p
     
    SurferJon, Oct 9, 2011
    #1
  2. Jorlin

    Jorlin Notebook Evangelist

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    Were you able to find anything new about this?
     
    Jorlin, Oct 16, 2011
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  3. darxide_sorcerer

    darxide_sorcerer Notebook Deity

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    is this the guide you're talking about?
     
    darxide_sorcerer, Oct 16, 2011
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  4. Squallff8aus

    Squallff8aus Notebook Guru

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    @darxide_sorcerer
    that guide does not work for i7 laptops of course.

    I can't seem to find anything on undervolting i7 laptops.
    No one cares about their notebooks dying from heat strokes anymore?
     
    Squallff8aus, Oct 16, 2011
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  5. darxide_sorcerer

    darxide_sorcerer Notebook Deity

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    i see, i didn't know. i had just found it and wanted to try it to undervolt my SA (which has an i5). so do you know which program in that guide does not work on Core i's?
     
    darxide_sorcerer, Oct 16, 2011
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  6. XTACTIC

    XTACTIC Notebook Consultant

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    Damn. i am also looking for a solution to this too. why can't i undervolt my i7-640m? it's a heat monster. when the gpu+cpu is under full load my temps can easily reach 95 Celcius!! that could be No Good for the longevity of the system.

    lowering voltages could significantly lower the temps thats fo sho. i used to do that with my old hp dv6000, though that was a core 2 duo and rmclock used to work for that.

    i would atleast like to undervolt the GPU (330M) PLEASE! it can be overclocked so much... over 650 mhz, with the stock volts, so im sure i can underclock that by a good few increments!..hopefully. so my temps might reach at most 90c.
     
    XTACTIC, Oct 16, 2011
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  7. darxide_sorcerer

    darxide_sorcerer Notebook Deity

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    yeah, i have already overclocked my GPU (Radeon HD 6630m), and the GPU temps are stable at around 75C when i play FIFA 12 with 15% CPU utilization. the reason i want to undervolt my CPU (i5-2520m) is to lower the temperatures more so i can still overclock the GPU even further to squeeze more performance from it.
     
    darxide_sorcerer, Oct 16, 2011
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  8. darxide_sorcerer

    darxide_sorcerer Notebook Deity

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    maybe this one helps? i just found it and haven't tried it myself yet...
     
    darxide_sorcerer, Oct 17, 2011
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  9. XTACTIC

    XTACTIC Notebook Consultant

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    Thats not undervolting. That is simply throttling the existing clocks. What we want is to be able to lower the voltage going to the processor at our maximum clockspeed, to lower temperatures under load, and also upkeep battery life with lower idle voltages where possible. but most importantly, to lower voltage on max clock.
     
    XTACTIC, Oct 17, 2011
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  10. Ashers

    Ashers Notebook Evangelist

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    Ashers, Oct 17, 2011
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  11. psyq321

    psyq321 Notebook Evangelist

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    You >cannot< undervolt post-Core 2 CPUs without dedicated control lines to the voltage regulators.

    As far as I know, no notebook vendor provides this - this feature is confined to the PC motherboards (especially enthusiast motherboards)

    The problem is simple - until Core i3/5/7, Intel CPUs such as Core 2 had a dedicated control register (so-called MSR) which allowed you to directly program the VID required, which would in turn tell the voltage regulator to deliver the proper voltage corresponding to forced VID.

    Software such as CPUGenie, RMClock, NHC all used this method.

    Unfortunately, as of Nehalem architecture, Intel decided to remove VID control and leave the VID selection directly to the CPU (maybe it is still possible to do it, but this time it is certainly not documented anywhere) - this means that you cannot force CPU to be in a specific VID.

    So, the only option left is to directly override the voltage regulator values - and for that you need special BIOS/EFI support, which notebook vendors are not really interested to support.
     
    psyq321, Oct 21, 2011
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