Alpha Bravo

Does anyone else here use BOINC on their laptops? I've got one with BOINC installed and it is running both World Community Grid and MilkyWay@home work units. In case you don't know, BOINC allows you to volunteer idle computing time to do tasks for a certain project that would otherwise take a supercomputer if it wasn't for network computing. Most projects only utilize the CPU but some of them like MilkyWay use your GPU as well. Some advice for laptops especially that you can feel free to take or leave: Don't allow BOINC to run while on battery power. Throttle your usage to 80-90% maximum to prevent overheating, lower if heating is really a problem (I also use an active cooling pad). Some general advice: Don't run too many tasks or you can miss deadlines (ya, I did this once....) Check in every now and then to look for stalled work units, and don't be afraid to abort them if you find them I find that BOINC is a great way to put an old laptop to work on if you have that beloved gaming laptop that served you well for years and you don't want to see it go. What are your BOINC experiences, advice, and general tips?

I've never had this problem, although I don't like the application in general. I hate it when you are in a game and you press "caps lock" and sometimes it will minimize the game to show you "caps lock on" or something. I've noticed that restarting the computer can prevent it from doing that (it's like it starts getting annoying only after you open the program, if it starts in the background it usually stays there). For your problem, I would just recommend reinstalling the application and try fiddling with the colors to see if a light burnt out or something.

I have two laptops, one with a 650M and this new one with a 980M. I know the 650M isn't a 680m but in addition to the expected increase in performance there are also new technologies in the 900 series like MFAA. The CPU isn't much different between the two, the new one is basically just a generation newer. Unlike CPUs, GPUs with significant improvements are being cranked out very frequently, so I would strongly recommend an upgrade (although I can't speak for simply swapping out the GPUs, I don't know enough about compatibility for that). For me the next biggest improvement is using an SSD as the primary hard drive and an HDD for everything else (or use an SSD for everything if you got the cash).

Is it possible to change the p state of a 980m card through non-bios software? Maybe an overclocking software? It cannot be done with nVidia inspector, so i was just wondering.

I don't know if this would qualify as impressive or not, but it's still a good laptop: CLEVO P157SM-A Core i7 Notebook Barebone, Intel® HM87, 15.6" Full HD LED Matte, PCIe x16 MXM-III Discrete Graphics INTEL Core™ i7-4910MQ Quad-Core 2.9 - 3.9GHz TB, HD Graphics 4600, 8MB L3 Cache, DDR3-1600, 22nm, 47W, EIST HT vPro VT-d VT-x XD, Retail CRUCIAL 32GB (4 x 8GB) PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz SDRAM SODIMM, CL11, 1.35V, Non-ECC ANTEC Formula 7 Nano Diamond Thermal Compound CORSAIR 120GB Force Series™ LS SSD, MLC, 560/535 MB/s, 2.5-Inch 7mm, SATA 6 Gb/s, Retail WESTERN DIGITAL 1TB WD Blue™ WD10SPCX, 5400-RPM, 16MB cache, 2.5-Inch 7mm, SATA 6 Gb/s, OEM OPTICAL DRIVE Slim Black 8x DVD±R/RW Dual Layer Burner, SATA GeForce® GTX 980M 8GB GDDR5 Mobile Graphics Card for P157SM-A INTEL Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 and Bluetooh Module, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, 867 Mbps, Internal PCIe Half Mini Card MICROSOFT Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit Edition, OEM w/ Media Standard 1 Year Warranty for Clevo Notebooks

I listen to trance music and soundtrack. One of my favorite soundtracks is from the Fullmetal Alchemist series.