Lets enable overclocking on all 6 and 7 series laptops

[Tech Inferno Fan]

Thanks Tech Inferno Fan - the problem is not the boot disk but the win8 UEFI disk. I can boot into Clover UEFI, the challenge is to have a win8 live usb to work against. I have win 7 64-bit installed and I don't really like to install win 8 on top of it, so would rather try out win8 uefi on usb.

To date I have not been successful in making a win 8 boot disk that can boot just like a livecd. If anyone can help me out it would be great!

I'm in the same situation. Win7 is my production OS and I dig out Win8.1 just for occasional testing. Win8.x supports USB-on-the-go: How to build bootable Windows To Go USB drive with Windows 8.1 | Next of Windows or

.

Alternatively, if you have a eSATAp port then just get a cheap HDD off ebay and attach it externally using a US$4 eSATAp cable as described: http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge-50.html#post86034 .

[Arise]

Not quiet in the mood to sleep after reading all above, so I decided to get off my bed and test the bclk in Clover.

There is something fishy, because the multiplier runs at whatever value it feels like when I start the bench, it won't boost at highest value, don't know why, maybe it is a bug, a limitation from Apple or my buggy kexts and DSDTs regarding C-States.

Anyway, I found out that throttling also happens, but not always, sometimes throttling kicks in and keeps my CPU under default power envelope (under 47W), sometimes it can go over that value.

In order to test a couple of scenarios, I also disabled 2 cores and hyperthreading to keep the power/temperature down.

Before showing you my screenshots, let me tell you something:

Cinebench score for a 4700HQ in MacOS is about 600 points (sometimes 599, sometimes 602, etc). I can get the same value from multiple sources.

Now, with my CPU in 2 cores and HT Off I was able to run my CPU at 4.12GHz (33x 125). - max frequency achieved.

At four cores with HT on I was able to run the whole test at 4GHz (32 x 125) basically ignoring the TDP limit, but this is not something I can reproduce every time.

Other times, it just goes at lower multipliers like 28 or 30, and that happens random, even when at stock bclk of 100.

So you may still ask, does this bclk from Clover works?

The answer is a strong yes, because I was never able before to get more than 600 points in Cinebench, now I got 800+.

Does it works in Windows? Sadly no, booting in Windows from Clover instead of MacOS and running CPU-Z will show the old 100 bclk.

[Khenglish]

I'm a little skeptical for several reasons.

1. Voltage does not auto scale with BCLK on SB and IVB, only multipliers, but maybe haswell is different. With no voltage increase 25% should make the system unstable.

2. What speed is the memory running at? Not much memory can handle a 25% overclock.

3. The only way I can see this work is if clover is somehow turning on a BCLK strap. 125MHz BCLK would never work through XTU's slider on any system. The system agent cannot handle it at all.

Have you verified that the system is still tracking time properly? I'm thinking that the system may be tracking time 20% slower and that there was no overclock.

If this is a full BCLK overclock, then the IGP will be overclocked. Try running a game or benchmark on the IGP and see if it's 25% faster or not. Also, games will very easily show if the system is not tracking time properly.

I really want this to be working, but 25% is huge and thus I am skeptical.

[Arise]

But this is MacOS so no familiar tools to check things like CPU-z.

And i don't have an iGPU cause it is off, only a nvidia discrete card.

Yes, I also thought about memory not being able to handle, but it just worked so never asked other questions.

Being on MacOS I didn't had to alter anything like voltages, however it was just plain stable, no resets or something.

---------------------------------------

Later edit: Khenglish is right...

I was able to set my reference speed at 200 instead of 100, and while computer reported over 6GHz and 85W power consumption using a stop watch to count time in Cinebench R15 resulted in the same 1 minute and 4 seconds. So no real over clock, just skewed time.

We are back at square 1.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jkbuha]

Ah - mystery solved then. I didn't see any clock anomalies on my system because I had set auto time sync for every 10mins. Turning it off resulted in gradual clock slowdown with bclk set to 125.

So basically any benchmarks on the bclk>100 setting are invalid? Pity, but at least kasar can now sleep better at night knowing that the theoretical max bclk o/c is still around 105

Also, is there any method to change the bclk strap on SB, either via bios or thru post such as Clover?

[kasar]

Pity, but at least kasar can now sleep better at night knowing that the theoretical max bclk o/c is still around 105

true ^^

however, I am now also a little disapointed expecting something higher for a long long time, and after all, finally, when mistery solves, it was just like a software mistake reporting wrong data due screwed time measuring.

edit: and yeah, I'm also interested on messing with that bclk strap and tweaking the multipliers with xtu, my brother have a non-extreme ivy bridge and he is able to modify the turboboost limits with xtu software by using prema modded bios.

I suspect, this can be done by adding xtu modules to the bios (we didnt had success doing this on the other forum anyway ..., I was just able to replace similar modules with newer or modified ones, but not add new at all)

[Arise]

What other forum? You can pm me the url to that topic so I can take a look at your attempts.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kasar]

What other forum? You can pm me the url to that topic so I can take a look at your attempts.

(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

we made most of our tests on that topic, both hardware and BIOS mods tests, success and failures are there.

[Khenglish]

true ^^

however, I am now also a little disapointed expecting something higher for a long long time, and after all, finally, when mistery solves, it was just like a software mistake reporting wrong data due screwed time measuring.

edit: and yeah, I'm also interested on messing with that bclk strap and tweaking the multipliers with xtu, my brother have a non-extreme ivy bridge and he is able to modify the turboboost limits with xtu software by using prema modded bios.

I suspect, this can be done by adding xtu modules to the bios (we didnt had success doing this on the other forum anyway ..., I was just able to replace similar modules with newer or modified ones, but not add new at all)

I'm going to mess around with ICC settings on my latitude. It's easy to get to the ME FW chip in case I do something that doesn't work so I can go for broke.

1st plan is to not enable the extra clock source for overclocking and just have everything on one clock. Maybe the better synchronization will help.

[kasar]

@Khenglish

oh, keep us updated

sadly I am outside home for some days and I dont have access to my spare chips or external programer in case something goes wrong, so I will be unable to flash anything in a few days.

relating your tests, as far I understood, you are going to tweak the ICC settings using FITC in order to get more stability and be able to archive higher OC than 105, right?

correct me if I am wrong

[Khenglish]

@Khenglish

oh, keep us updated

sadly I am outside home for some days and I dont have access to my spare chips or external programer in case something goes wrong, so I will be unable to flash anything in a few days.

relating your tests, as far I understood, you are going to tweak the ICC settings using FITC in order to get more stability and be able to archive higher OC than 105, right?

correct me if I am wrong

Yes that's the idea. If it doesn't work maybe I'll at least get an SATA overclock for my SSDs. That'll help the 840 pro in my clevo.

Update: switching SATA and PCH PCI-E to same source as BCLK did not brick. XTU slider though was limited to 99.5 to 100MHz. BCLK did change when underclocking without crashing. Widening PCH clock range over 100MHz has caused the XTU BCLK slider to disappear.

Update 2: I tried a lower clock range and got the slider to not disappear, but it's still limited to 100MHz despite clock limits set over 100MHz. Routing the unoverclocked source to the PCH restores BCLK overclocking, but of course the PCH is not overclocked.

Summary:

The DMI is the interconnect between the PCH and the CPU. My theory is that the DMI is being overclocked because the CPU is being overclocked, but the PCH is not being overclocked to handle the higher data rate of the DMI bus. Thus the DMI bus becomes unstable breaking communication between the PCH and CPU, causing the screen freeze we are used to seeing with a BCLK over 104-107MHz. I am trying to raise the PCH clock, which would resolve this issue if it exists. The problem is that XTU is locking the BCLK slider to 100MHz max with the overclockable clock source routed to the PCH, and the latitude does not have a BIOS option to override XTU. I could raise BCLK via BIOS flash on my clevo, but a brick recovery would require tearing the laptop apart to the bare motherboard to fix so that I don't melt the frame with my heat gun (The latitude has a metal frame).

[Arise]

Those are the clocks in my bios that get shown by the BIOS to be active: clock2 and clock3.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Khenglish]

@Arise yes on haswell, IVB ,and SB clock source 2 is the default clock for BCLK. When switching to overclocking clock 3 is enabled. Haswell leaves the clocks not to be overclocked on clock 2, and switches BCLK onto clock 3. IVB and SB do the opposite with BCLK switched over to clock 3, and unoverclocked clocks left on clock 2.

Source 1 is used too for things like display clocks, but processors and buses are all clocked off of sources 2 and 3.

[Arise]

Don't understand. Because now you say that in order to overclock I need to change clock 3, however right now on haswell to get bclk overclock at 102-104 I change frequency under Clock 2. Speeking about doing it right from BIOS menus.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Khenglish]

@Arise I just reread the intel doc's and you're right. I assumed that SRC3 was normally disabled on Haswell like SB and IVB except for overclocking, but it turns out that SRC2 is normally disabled except for overclocking on Haswell. FITC hides this numbering for haswell but exposes it for IVB and SB.

[yip1228]

hi guys, new to the forum and i saw this interesting post here. So I wonder if it would work on my dv7 7008tx, its has a 3820qm upgraded by me and recently throttle alot and I want it to be able to set the voltage offset plus adjustable TDP, does this trick works for wat im looking for? sry for my broken english.

[Khenglish]

@yip1228 Unfortunately I do not know how to enable those features. All I know how to enable is BCLK control. Even if I could enable them, laptop ivy bridge processors do not support negative voltage offsets to help with your temperature.

[yip1228]

@yip1228 Unfortunately I do not know how to enable those features. All I know how to enable is BCLK control. Even if I could enable them, laptop ivy bridge processors do not support negative voltage offsets to help with your temperature.

thanks for the reply. is there any mod that I can adjust my TDP so ill be able to benefit from the short term turbo while not being overheat for long term?

[Khenglish]

@yip1228 Unfortunately not. That would require a BIOS mod, and HP systems require an unknown checksum/signature on their BIOS which must be changed when the BIOS is edited, or else the system with refuse to run even if it is a completely healthy BIOS.

[Tech Inferno Fan]

hi guys, new to the forum and i saw this interesting post here. So I wonder if it would work on my dv7 7008tx, its has a 3820qm upgraded by me and recently throttle alot and I want it to be able to set the voltage offset plus adjustable TDP, does this trick works for wat im looking for? sry for my broken english.

With a TDP-locked HP you're max performance can be limited by TDP or thermal throttling If you have a heatsink that attaches to a dGPU and CPU then even a 17" may get thermal throttled.

To maximize performance within the 45W TDP limit, the best you can do with Ivy Bridge is increase BCLK to get extra performance in the headroom that Intel provides for stability. Also ensure if you have an iGPU that you've installed the latest Intel drivers and set it to run in 'maximum battery' mode in the Intel control panel. That gives more TDP for CPU use rather than iGPU use. You'll need to flash a special modified ME firmware to be able to increase BCLK which if you ask nicely, Khenglish may be able to help you with.

I found that on 45W TDP-locked HP systems there is no benefit in getting anything better than a i7-3740QM. Even then there can be variation of up to 200Mhz between individual chips. Even more alarming, a 2570P owner finding his BGA-to-PGA i7-3820QM missed 400Mhz in 4-core mode (max=x31 instead of x35) making it perform the same as an inexpensive i7-3610QM.

REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/throttlestop-realtemp-discussion/6958-haswell-step-backwards-ivy-bridge-i-have-some-shocking-tdp-results.html#post95181

[yip1228]

With a TDP-locked HP you're max performance can be limited by TDP or thermal throttling If you have a heatsink that attaches to a dGPU and CPU then even a 17" may get thermal throttled.

To maximize performance within the 45W TDP limit, the best you can do with Ivy Bridge is increase BCLK to get extra performance in the headroom that Intel provides for stability. Also ensure if you have an iGPU that you've installed the latest Intel drivers and set it to run in 'maximum battery' mode in the Intel control panel. That gives more TDP for CPU use rather than iGPU use. You'll need to flash a special modified ME firmware to be able to increase BCLK which if you ask nicely, Khenglish may be able to help you with.

I found that on 45W TDP-locked HP systems there is no benefit in getting anything better than a i7-3740QM. Even then there can be variation of up to 200Mhz between individual chips. Even more alarming, a 2570P owner finding his BGA-to-PGA i7-3820QM missed 400Mhz in 4-core mode (max=x31 instead of x35) making it perform the same as an inexpensive i7-3610QM.

REF: http://forum.techinferno.com/throttlestop-realtemp-discussion/6958-haswell-step-backwards-ivy-bridge-i-have-some-shocking-tdp-results.html#post95181

Thank for reply Nando, Unfortunately my bios is RSA signed, there is no way that I could flash the ME FW. Btw, I'm having a same 3820qm bga to rpga, However, according to your chart where the 3820qm running at 34x multiplier only hit 39W of TDP whereas my cpu will hit 45W at 32x. Is that just my cpu bad?

[Tech Inferno Fan]

Thank for reply Nando, Unfortunately my bios is RSA signed, there is no way that I could flash the ME FW. Btw, I'm having a same 3820qm bga to rpga, However, according to your chart where the 3820qm running at 34x multiplier only hit 39W of TDP whereas my cpu will hit 45W at 32x. Is that just my cpu bad?

The bios cannot be modified due to RSA signing, but the ME FW can. Though it needs to have the flash descriptor unlocked to be able to do so.

Does holding WIN+left_arrow+right_arrow on boot show a BIOS screen message. Something about HDA_SDO or flash descriptor? If so, then your DV7's flash descriptor is unlocked in the same way as Elitebooks/Probooks. If not then you'll need to research whether another key combo exists. If it doesn't then the way to unlock is to pinmod the audio codec chip which requires disassembling the machine. Eg of how I did it on my Dell E6440 is at http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/6980-14-dell-latitude-e6440-owners-lounge.html#post99289 .

You can see how good your 3820QM is by doing same test using Throttlestop 4-core TS-bench test as outlined at http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge-37.html#post77432 , building a table of multiplier versus TDP and comparing against existing entries in that table. If you can hold only x32 then you are -300Mhz from the i7-3820QM's max x35 4-core multiplier. Your chip would be one of the worse ones given that a highly binned i7-3630QM could do the same x32 4-core mode at a considerably lower cost.

[yip1228]

The bios cannot be modified due to RSA signing, but the ME FW can. Though it needs to have the flash descriptor unlocked to be able to do so.

Does holding WIN+left_arrow+right_arrow on boot show a BIOS screen message. Something about HDA_SDO or flash descriptor? If so, then your DV7's flash descriptor is unlocked in the same way as Elitebooks/Probooks. If not then you'll need to research whether another key combo exists. If it doesn't then the way to unlock is to pinmod the audio codec chip which requires disassembling the machine. Eg of how I did it on my Dell E6440 is at http://forum.techinferno.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/6980-14-dell-latitude-e6440-owners-lounge.html#post99289 .

You can see how good your 3820QM is by doing same test using Throttlestop 4-core TS-bench test as outlined at http://forum.techinferno.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/2537-12-5-hp-elitebook-2570p-owners-lounge-37.html#post77432 , building a table of multiplier versus TDP and comparing against existing entries in that table. If you can hold only x32 then you are -300Mhz from the i7-3820QM's max x35 4-core multiplier. Your chip would be one of the worse ones given that a highly binned i7-3630QM could do the same x32 4-core mode at a considerably lower cost.

Thanks again and first of all, following what you said before minimizing the energy draw from the iGPU does helps me bin up 100mhz where it set at 3.2- 3.3ghz now. I have followed the guide and dump the bios successfully before, but I have no idea how to mod the bios and the ICC part, moreover I dont know how to flash the me fw itself through dos. Anyway I researched about BGA and PGA, apparently BGA version of the processor generally required lot more voltage across idle to full load. I guess reducing voltage is the only way to bump up the speed in my case since my 3820qm already hit 45w when 3.3@4 core, there is no more room for BCLK oc where it will downscale the multiplier to balance the TDP I supposed.

One more thing, I found the new updated Xtu let me adjust the max TDP to both short term and sustainable one. However it doesnt take any effect no matter wat I did, I restart the program and reboot the system, it just stay same maxing @45W.

[Tech Inferno Fan]

Thanks again and first of all, following what you said before minimizing the energy draw from the iGPU does helps me bin up 100mhz where it set at 3.2- 3.3ghz now. I have followed the guide and dump the bios successfully before, but I have no idea how to mod the bios and the ICC part, moreover I dont know how to flash the me fw itself through dos. Anyway I researched about BGA and PGA, apparently BGA version of the processor generally required lot more voltage across idle to full load. I guess reducing voltage is the only way to bump up the speed in my case since my 3820qm already hit 45w when 3.3@4 core, there is no more room for BCLK oc where it will downscale the multiplier to balance the TDP I supposed.

One more thing, I found the new updated Xtu let me adjust the max TDP to both short term and sustainable one. However it doesnt take any effect no matter wat I did, I restart the program and reboot the system, it just stay same maxing @45W.

Your result with XTU and setting short/long boost duration mirrors mine with the Elitebook 2570P. That is, XTU/Throttestop allows it to be set but the system completely ignores it. The Throttlestop author, Unclewebb, believes HP are locking some chipset settings to prevent any changes to the factory-delivered TDP and turbo boost settings.

The BCLK overclock will usually have little effect on the TDP. What it does allow is to extend the working range by an extra 5%. Eg: your max 4-core turbo boost will increase from x33 -> x34.65.

As mentioned earlier, if you ask @Khenglish nicely he may be able to help create a modified ME FW to be able to change the BCLK. It would be great if you can document the process of how to get a BCLK slider in XTU so that other DV7 owners could duplicate and benefit from your pioneering effort.

[plutomaniac]

Have you guys kept any older 6 series ME tools (for ME v7 series)? I'm looking for the latest "leaked" DOS counterparts of FWUpdLcl, MeManuf & MeInfo.