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Thanks for the reminder Michael. I not only don't want to make a bad first impression at T|I but I'm not looking to cast aspersions about the good folk at NBR. I was pretty upset at what happened to Nando and I went way overboard. I have apologized to the mods I may have offended at NBR in my overzealous first post. Hope to wipe the slate clean and, after a few breaths, actually introduce myself. Thanks again.

Sup guys? Currently not at home and don't really have access to the Internet, I'll try to answer your questions once I'm back. [MENTION=5758]Annie the Eagle[/MENTION]: The M18x R2 still doesn't support ocing per software, you'll need to wait for a Dell bios update, or maybe I can patch together something when I'm back. Can't promise this though Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

Welcome to the 2560P Owner's Lounge! A place to liase with other owners and share useful tips/tricks/mods to get the most satisfying user experience from this exceptional ultraportable notebook. Release date: 9 May 2011 Reviews/Comparisons: laptopmag, NBR, pcworld. HP 2560P vs Lenovo X220 (butwhyme) HP 2560P vs Lenovo X220 vs other ultraportables/ultrabooks (spoiler below - Tech Inferno Fan) HP 2560P vs 2530P (butwhyme) HP 2560P vs 2540P vs 2530P vs 2510P (spoiler below - Tech Inferno Fan) Customized 2560P systems (ordered by approx additional expense spent) Owner Storage Other Mods 2.5" sata bay sata optical bay/2.5" caddy External Tech Inferno Fan ssd: 128GB MDS Bullet Proof hdd: 500GB/newmodeus - DC_optimized, GTX560Ti DIY eGPU SimoxTav ssd: ??? hdd: 250GB/ebay - i7-2630QM, GTX560Ti DIY eGPU, 8GB RAM vnwhite ssd: 256MB Crucial C300 hdd: 750GB/ebay - DC_optimized, i7-2820QM, 6300AGN, 8GB 1866MHz RAM RED - highest performance setup | GREEN - lowest power consumption drive setup (2.5" SSD see here). OS, drivers and disassembly Drivers, Manuals, Maintenance And Service Guide, Media Services Library with disassembly videos.Popular HP Notebook Software Collection : one-stop location for the latest versions of popular HP notebook sw.Win7 OEM sources : the additional HP installation contents added to a Win7 CD.HP/Compaq Desktop Wallpapers : A compilation of stock wallpapers from the HP and Compaq notebook rangeHP DMIFIT 118 Utility: change DMI details, eg: model number, serial, password. Used to tattoo your system in case you replace the systemboard. Usually done by a HP technican.StorageSecond hotswappable 9.5mm 2.5" HDD/SSD via optical drive bay. 2560P examples: ebay (SimoxTav) or newmodeus. e-sata/usb cable or enclosure, useful for external e-sata storage. Eg: convert optical drive to be external unitExpansionUSB 3.0: add a US$15-delivered USB 3.0 expresscard.DIY eGPU: to attach a desktop videocard via expressport. Provides HDMI/DVI and accelerated graphics. WWAN/WIFI card whitelist: the WWAN/WIFI cards the 2560P bios will bootup with.Ivy Bridge CPU retrofit for 2560P?: proposed method to get ME 8.x firmware onto a 2560P for Ivy Bridge CPU support.TweaksFlashing F.01 bios to a 2560P : to regain 1866Mhz RAM support removed in subsequent versions. Includes details on other hacks.F.28 or newer BIOS removes RAM frequency limit. Can use 1866Mhz RAM at full speed.HPFancontrol: set custom (quieter) fan profile confimed to work on a 2560P by pejxPerformance: running 1600, 1866 or 2133Mhz DDR3 RAM in a 2560p : gain up to 54%/10% single-channel/dual-channel HD3000 performance.DC_optimized: optimize the system to maximize battery life, idling at 4.7-5.2W!! Done with more sophistication by vnwhite &.Enabling third-button mouse click scrolling with touchstykDual-channel RAM: increases WEI RAM and video (1x4GB vs 2x4GB)How to enable Upgrade Bay Hard Drive boot: so can hit F9 at bios screen then boot off an optical bay caddy HDD or SSD.Disconnect upgrade bay caddy diagnostic pin: allows the system to fully shutdown rather than hang with a black screen.MiscRetrofitting webcam to non-webcam models : in case you have a non-webcam model.Backlit keyboard mod: HP Folio 13 backlit keyboard retrofit??EliteBook NightLight mod: increase the brightness/spread of the nightlight by removing the diffuser.Obtaining an expresscard blank: if lost or damaged yours. Replacement comes with an optical drive weight saver. FAQ about optical drive space saver: can it's faceplate be used on other ODDs or a caddy? Answer: no/maybe. Schematic - Inventec_Styx_MV.pdf (aka HP Elitebook 2560P). The block diagram summary is below:

Update: Moral Hazard used MESET.EXE on his clevo to force a dump and flash, but did not gain BCLK control. Update 2: SUCCESS by kasar on a Dell xps 15 (L502X) here! Unfortunately he needed to disable the ME region lock by desoldering and flashing the BIOS chip though. Update 3: SUCCESS by me on Clevo P150EM here! Mod relied on Clevo-only program to unlock ME region. Update 4: SUCCESS by Rhadamanthis on MSI gt780 dxr Update 5: SUCCESS by Akimox on HP 2570p here! At the hardware level, all 6 and likely 7 series laptops support overclocking. The problem is OEMs disable this ability except on laptops like the m18x. Clock configuration is NOT controlled by the BIOS. It is controlled by the Intel ME FW (management engine firmware), a BIOS extension. Only a few bits must be changed from a overclocking disabled ME FW to make it an overclocking enabled ME FW. Gigabyte accidentally leaked an intel utility that can read the ME FW, edit it, and write the new version back to the flash ROM, along with all the necessary documentation to make the correct changes. This flash ROM contains not only the ME FW, but the BIOS, flash descriptor, and 2 other regions called the GbE and PDR. There is one problem, which is that all laptop manufacturers (except ASUS) disable read/write access to the flash ROM. The read/write locks are contained in the flash descriptor. The security settings in the flash descriptor can be ignored by setting a special flag on BIOS startup known as the flash descriptor override, which enables read/write access to all regions. This override is used when you run a BIOS update. At this time there are methods to enable the flash descriptor override for HP and Clevo systems only. After setting the override and rebooting you can dump your whole flash image, edit the ME FW, rebuild the image, and flash. It is possible to flash either the ME FW region only, or the whole image. Obviously flashing the whole image is risky since you will also be flashing your BIOS, so I suggest just flashing the ME region. 6 series are more tolerable of corrupting the ME FW than 7 series. 7 series cannot run without a functional ME FW. 6 series can run without one as long as the BIOS detects that the ME FW is corrupt, and thus refuses to run its settings, however, the laptop can sill be bricked anyway if the BIOS thinks the ME FW is functional while it really is not, and attempts to run the inoperable clocking settings. Some of you may be aware of fwupdlcl.exe which can update the ME FW without enabling the flash descriptor override. This does not work for our purposes since it does not perform a full flash. It does not overwrite the hardware config portion of the ME FW, which is where clock configuration is done. However, if someone could figure out what this program does to write its partial image, it may be possible to use that knowledge to flash a full image. So here's the Intel Utilities and docs: 6 series chipset Link removed since the leaked FITC builds invalid images. Use the ME8 FPT and documentation for now. 7 series chipset: http://www.mediafire.com/?iwscmnadf5icnxq (thanks to kasar) MESET.exe to unlock Clevos: http://www.mediafire.com/?465pknsgc2z83s8 ME_Port by svet to unlock MSIs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/spmvxmz9pal1j6l/ME_Port.com BE CAREFUL WHEN USING FPTW64! It will happily overwrite your BIOS without any warning if you enter the wrong command. Even if you do things properly, still be prepared to have a dead ME FW and whatever the consequences of that may be. Although it is unlikely, trying to enable overclocking through my suggestions can kill your motherboard. There are a few combinations of mistakes that can be made which will most certainly do so. You have been warned, so don't blame me if you do. Also if you do, do NOT go RMA your laptop and make your manufacturer pay for what you caused. You took the risk, so you pay for the necessary repairs even if under warranty. If things go wrong I will do everything I can to help you recover, but please accept responsibility for trying this. Ok now that all that is out of the way so people can't justifiably yell at me. Back to how to try this. 1. Enable your flash descriptor override. Clevo users can use MESET.exe. MSI users can use ME_Port. HP users can use the keyboard sequence "WIN+left_arrow+right_arrow" during POST (got this info from Tech Inferno Fan). ASUS users don't have to do anything since they don't have the lock engaged. The rest of you guys are at this time out of luck. 2. So you'll first need to dump your ME FW image. This is done by running fptw64 in windows or fpt in DOS. It needs to be run in a cmd window with admin rights. The command to do so is "fptw64 -d imagename", where imagename is whatever name you want for your flash image dump. Prema found out that at least on Clevos, attempting to dump only the ME FW leaves out the clock control segment, so you need to dump the whole flash image. Note that you're also getting the flash descriptor when you dump everything, so you can edit it to not require the flash descriptor override to do any flash image reads and writes. 3. Now you need to change some bits to enable overclocking. By some, I mean you probably have to change quite a lot. The good news is that the settings on 6 and 7 series systems seem to be identical. When I edited my image, I followed the intel docs in the ME8 download. I've linked my original overclocked MW FW for comparison. You only need to make changes in the "ICC" section and subsections in FTIC. You can edit the ME FW as part of an entire flash image, or by itself. I edited it by itself, but have since then done several BIOS mods and flashing the whole image worked out fine. My modded P150/170EM ME FW: meoc.bin This image is just for reference to make sure you didn't miss anything. Don't just flash this ME FW. It might work, but there has been issues with flashing someone else's ME FW on HP and Dell systems and others may be affected. Dump and edit your own, or ask me to and I will if I have the time. Some manufacturers have additional changes. When it doubt read the manual or ask me if something should be changed or not. The Utility for editing the images is FTIC. This program has a GUI so it does not have to be run from cmd. Open your image and open the overclocking enabled image. Settings that are different from FTIC's generic 6 and 7 series file will be highlighted in yellow. What you need to edit is the ICC profiles under ICC Data. You can have up to 8 profiles. I think active profile changes depending on if you are say plugged in, on battery, on standby, temps are too high, etc. I don't really know how you identify which profile(s) much be changed, so I think you should just change all of them to make sure that if the flash works and you don't get overclocking, that you know you didn't miss something and that overclocking is impossible, so you don't waste time thinking about it and trying things. The number 1 thing to check that I found to make sure things don't go bad is your "clock source select" under "FCIM/BTM specific ICC registers". If it is 0x00011A33, then your laptop uses the PLL built into the PCH and you can keep going through trying this mod. It will be 0x00011A34 for enabling overclocking. If it is something else besides these 2, STOP NOW. This means that your PCH's PLL is not being used, and that instead an external PLL is feeding the PCH clocks to distribute. If you set your laptop to use the PCH's PLL, I think the PCH will get both clocks and you'll get a laptop with unintelligible clock signals. That would be bad. After making the changes you need to rebuild the ME FW image. You will then have a full image, and if you reopen this new image in FITC, FITC will create a new folder with the MW FW all by itself. You can use the full image or the MW FW image to flash. 4. Now the fun exciting part where we do the flash. I recommend doing it in DOS. The command to flash the ME FW only is "fpt -me -f filename", where filename is the name of your flash image. Don't forget the .bin extension. If you are flashing the entire ROM then you do need to leave out the "-me". If flashing the ME FW only and used the "build compact image" option in FITC, you should get a warning that the flash image is smaller than the total ME Region area that the flash descriptor says you can use, so the area after the file length will not be changed. This is OK and flash anyway. The image FTIC creates is not padded at the end, which causes the warning to occur. If you built a full image it is padded, so you don't get this warning. 5. You can now use Intel XTU to overclock. If you already installed it, you may have to reinstall it. BCLK can be changed in windows and takes effect immediately. Remember guys, this is risky stuff, especially if you have a 7 series laptop. If you're careful though everything should turn out fine.

So you've got hold of a 4GB version of a GTX 680m, figured out how to flash the vbios and it runs well. However, there are some things missing such as GPU boost and the ability to actually install drivers easily. Perhaps you are reluctant to run a vbios that ups to voltage to 1.037v. This thread aims to have everyone owning a 4GB GTX 680m get the most out of their GPU including enabling a GPU boost hack. This is not an overkill thread, but more about getting things working well with a good performance, quality and stability improvement over stock. There will be no crazy high voltages so everything should be safe short and long term however I take no responsibility for burnt or bricked cards. Please proceed at your own risk, there will be vbios flashing. First of all, the GTX 680m is similar to the desktop GTX 670 but severely downclocked. By OC'ing, one can get the core speed up to speed and beyond but clocking the memory @3Ghz (6GHz effective) in an attempt to reach its 192GBit/s bandwidth is very risky and likely dangerous. However, if the memory is clocked to 2250 (4.5Ghz effective) then the bandwidth is identical to that of the GTX 660 Ti @144GBit/s. Both desktop GPUs have the same base and boost clock at 915Mhz and 980Mhz respectively. This brings me to the vbios. Kindly created by master hex maestro svl7. The vbios (attached below) clocks in @915/1125(2250)Mhz exactly the same as that which I mentioned above. Those specific clocks are also what makes the GPU boost work well (I'll get to that later). The vbios is engineered from the MSI ES(FD) vbios and has a voltage of 1.025v and settles @1.0v during constant load. Not amazingly(potentially dangerously) high but there is still plenty of headroom for overclocking. Flash this, and verify with GPUz. Of course the memory clock can be anything but I chose 1125 as they are nice and neat as well as offering a mild but significant boost in performance. Next, drivers. The recent nvidia drivers are great but digging deep into the source code, we find that there are image quality hacks that trade image quality for performance. Plus some drivers just plain won't install if the GTX 680m is an aftermarket upgrade on unsupported mobos. These drivers are winners though: http://files.laptopvideo2go.com/Dox/geforce306.02.2-modded.exe Modded by the infamous Dox, all hacks are removed, quality is optimsed and support for all nvidia devices is included and should install without a hitch on any system. Drivers are uber stable but not great benchers as image quality is improved at some cost to performance. but I'd happily trade performance for decent quality and stability and use another driver to bench. And finally, enabling GPU boost. This method is not actually GPU boost but it functions in exactly the same way, call it "fake" GPU boost. What we need to do is to download Nvidia Inspector: NVIDIA Inspector 1.9.6.6 download from Guru3D.com Put that in a safe place and run it, allow overclocking and set the base offset to +65 to achieve 980Mhz, the same as the desktop cards. Now some of you may think that this is plain overclocking however, this is not the case. After applying the clocks (keep Inspector open), run a mild to moderately intensive GPU task such as playing HD video or opening the settings dialogue of Furmark (but not starting any test yet) and you will see that the clocks will still show 914.5Mhz. Start a game or Furmark and that will jump to 980Mhz similar to GPU Boost. Now click on "Create clocks shortcut" and a new shortcut should appear on the desktop. Drag that to your "Startup" folder in the Start menu and Fake GPU Boost should be enabled on every restart without any user input needed. I tested other base clock speeds ranging from 900Mhz up to 1000Mhz and and every boost clock speed from +1 to +100 and 915 -> 980 was the only combination that worked. Most other base clock speeds would always change to 928Mhz and without the 915Mhz baseclock, all other fake boost clock offsets would go to 966Mhz unless I went way beyond 1Ghz which I don't recommend anyway. Either it was coincidence that those clock speeds are identical to the desktop ones or that they are the only clocks that work on the GK104 which is why nvidia set them to the desktop ones in the first place. Please report back if you have any issues. I've only tested this myself but it should apply to all 4GB GTX 680m users. EDIT by svl7: Vbios is outdated, grab the latest one here: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/1847-nvidia-kepler-vbios-mods-overclocking-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks.html

Well a thread on another forum questioned people why they are AW fanatics which prompted a reply from me. Then I thought, "hey why not create a thread where AW owners can give feedback as to why they love Alienware notebooks?!" so here it is! Give us your reason as to why you love Alienware and keep coming back for more...here's mine: Let me chime in on why Alienware is by far the best notebook gaming brand in the universe: Next business day service (I'll expand on this more below) Excellent build quality Top of the line cooling (will discuss this further) Bios Overclocking (M17x + M18x) Design Appeal Extras (e.g. alienfx, wireless hdmi, msata drive, hdmi in) NBD Service As far as NBD service I'll give you an example of how Dell recently helped me out: My palm rest's touchpad was malfunctioning, I e-mailed one of the several excellent AW reps that are available on the T|I forums, told him my problem and the next day my new palm rest was waiting for me at home. Few days later, I noticed my media panel lights were having issues and again, Dell overnighted a new media panel cover. However, it turns out the panel was perfectly fine, the ribbon cable was the culprit, so again I e-mailed the Dell rep and the next day a replacement ribbon cable was there and my system is good as new. That's one story, another is that I previously had AMD 6990M Xfire in my M18x and was extremely frustrated with the AMD drivers. I pinged a Dell rep. about it and 2 weeks later had a brand new M18x + 580M SLI delivered to my doorstep WITH a return label to send back the other system. I have a challenge for everyone out there: Find me a gaming notebook maker that can match this level of service. I can back up my claims with screenshots of the work orders so if you claim you got the same service from another gaming notebook maker, back it up. I'm sure there's tons of other Alienware users that have similar stories as mine. Cooling As I mentioned, Alienware has exceedingly good cooling design built into their notebooks. While some other brand notebook owners are seeing high temperatures on their GPUs and resorting to modding their systems, Alienware owners don't have to bother. As another personal anecdote, I have a 4 GB 680M in my system and can run it at 1200+ core and 2500+ mhz memory and the hottest it gets is 84C at 100% utilization and that's in super hot Phoenix, AZ weather! As with any brand, Alienware also has its down sides and the biggest one is their GPU throttling scheme. With their recent 680M release, they have an algorithm built in that throttles the GPU after a certain power/temp threshold is crossed and thus overclocking is limited with the Dell 680M. IMO this sort of aggressive throttling is unnecessary given the excellent cooling built into their systems. But with everything taken into account, I'd still pick an Alienware system over any of its competitors.

Well its baaaaaccckkkk!!! I'll skip the introduction and just give the info. you need: [url=http://betaforge.multiplay.co.uk/servers/655378/view][/url] BF3 SERVER INFORMATION Name Tech|Inferno Battlefield 3 Server Game/Mod Battlefield 3 + B2K Expansion Address [FONT=Verdana]199.21.113.58:20367[/FONT] Battlelog Link Tech|Inferno MUMBLE SERVER INFORMATION Name Tech|Inferno Mumble IP Address 76.74.238.52, Port 2662 PW: babesandb00bs Mumble Link [URL]mumble://76.74.238.52:2662[/URL] BF3 SERVER SETTINGS ​ Players 16 Player Health 60% Tickets 600 Friendly Fire ON Kill Cam OFF # Players to start round 1 # Players to restart round 1 # TK before player kicked 5 3D Spotting OFF Kick Idle Player (seconds) 300

Awesome congrats. I think you should see some kind of improvement. Last I knew when it was network benched against Intel Wifi cards there was more than 3times throughput om various sorts of network transfers and lower latency in game.

as long as you buy the card at eurocom on ebay, you will have all the parts you need. Backplate, screws, thermal pads, thermal paste. You just need to drill down the holes of your backplate a bit to get your heat sink a bit more tightened. 5min work for amazing performance. It's worth it

Just wanted to post my benchmark from 3DMark11 (GPU 1000/1600) (CPU 40,39,38,38) AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,Alienware M17xR4 score: P6879 3DMarks Score P6879 3DMarks Graphics Score 6603 Physics Score 8672 Combined Score 6907 Since there is no R4 thread for benchmark, move as needed

if you want you could join our HWbot team. There you can compare as much as you want. Or just throw it in here. Got a new personal highscore in 3dmark11, yesterday. P5761

Hello test unigine 3.0 GTX 680M 2Go Dell Thx SVL7 Bios

Benchmarking section have been updated to support the latest refresh (M18x-R2)