Khenglish

Go with the 670mx. It runs much cooler, and has tremendous overclocking room. It should take a lot of overclocking with extra voltage to match the power draw of the 675m.

The only issue really is getting an unlocked BIOS for the 670mx. There is probably a clock cap for the stock BIOS (680m stock BIOS only allows a 135mhz core overclock).

Well, I'll see about that, hahaha, but 2560x1440 at 27 inch is addicting...

Here's a first run with some OC:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6242[/ATTACH]

Nooo you beat my physics score! Hmm it is 27 out. Maybe if I opened the windows for a while I could get 4.5ghz to complete... the dumb thing is stupid XTU refuses to allow BCLK overclocking after running meset to force the fans high, and the BIOS is flashed to a multi of x43. x44 is unstable at high temps so flashing back down after concerns me (why do clevo BIOS's not have a disable turbo option?)

Please overclock higher so that I have no chance and thus am not tempted.

Update:

Actually only took 4390MHz to win!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6116858

Yeah, haha, pretty cool...

The PCIe stuff is weird, I set it to Gen3 in the bios, but it's still 2.0. Also one of the fan connectors doesn't seem to react to any setting... I guess that bios is messed up, no idea.

I just remembered that Nvidia makes you install a patch to enable 3.0 for SB-E:

NVIDIA Releases PCI-Express Gen 3.0 Enabling Patch for Sandy Bridge-E HEDT Platform | techPowerUp

How does seeing a max CPU temp of 47C feel after using laptops for so long?

Oh and it makes only like a 5 point difference, but it looks like you were running PCI-E 2 instead of 3.

I used that PSU for my 580 classified before the 580 died. It delivered rock solid power even at 1.4V 1.1GHz. It does whine some though. (I think the 580 died for reasons other than power. Probably that resistor I knocked off and lost)

If you're going to do water I highly recommend a real water cooling setup. It hardly costs any more. I used a swiftech 320 with the 580 and it was 36C max with 1.4V (IHS removed, with IHS was 39C) with normal room temps. The thing ran at 32C with 1.25V @ 1Ghz. The swiftech is a combo pump/radiator to save on room. It has a reservoir built in too, but it's rather small and needs to be topped off or else the pump will gurgle at top speed. If you get it make sure you get it with the pump. They sell a cheaper version without it. The main thing about water cooling to is get a much bigger radiator than what the air cooler would be, or else there's no reason to use water since all water does is let you move heat further.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the GPU block on this thing's 680m, but it's just a hair too big

I ordered some desktop parts... gonna build a rig. Never had a custom desktop, so it should be fun

Here's a pic of the parts which already arrived:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6142[/ATTACH]

Still waiting for a new monitor, PSU, motherboard, and... a certain graphics card

I´ll update this once I get the rest of the things.

We have the same exact SSD! We must be twins! Or maybe you stole mine?

The 840 Pro is nuts. The windows loading animation is only half done before the desktop comes up.

What are you planning on doing to the titan? Are you gonna look into the disabled shader block much? Maybe since it's the top end card it's not laser cut but just a bios thing, but people never enabled the 480's disabled block so who knows. Apparently the VRMs aren't that strong on it, so doing a mod to remove the power limit might not turn out very well.

And that CPU cooler is slightly bigger than this laptop's CPU cooler. It looks like you went for low noise fans. That titan's fan will most certainly NOT be low noise when overclocked/overvolted.

Interesting CPU choice. I suppose you're planning on getting IVB-E when it comes out?

Oh and I hope you meansured everything first to make sure the all your stuff will fit in that case.

I got a P150EM and got this mod to work:

XTU screenshot

Before the mod, only power limits worked. After it, everything is available. Everything works except for raising turbo multipliers, the thing that would be most useful. It lets me set it, but on the reboot to apply, it doesn't work. I found that trying to change the HD3000 clocks has the same result.

Modded ME FW download

That's an ME8 1.5MB. Note that I have a P170EM BIOS. Chipset is HM77. Not sure how other systems will behave by flashing that. Maybe it'll work on all 7 and even 6 series, or maybe it'll only work on 170EM bios's, I don't know.

I had to reinstall XTU after applying the mod. Prior to the reinstall XTU showed no changes. XTU is version 3.1.

There was no extra padding to the ME FW image after building. I did "compact build" of ME FW only. The way to build ME FW only is to open up an ME FW only image file, or else you will also get a flash descriptor in the image.

Procedure:

Ran meset.exe for flash descriptor override (only works on clevos)

Dumped whole ROM image

Opened image with FTIC

Closed FTIC

Opened the decompressed ME FW image created by opening the full image with FTIC

Made edits with FTIC

Did flash in DOS on ME FW region only

Reinstalled XTU

update: Just did a pretty big update of the first post.

nice to see some activity back to this topic

@jkbuha

oh, so aparently you disabled the usb ports to get more stability.

I use all my usb ports, so it is a shame I have to lose that functionality to archive higher OC

and yeah, like @Khenglish said I think it is relevant since you have the highest OC from I can see<code>

and I'm also interested on what that giant string does, I have no idea what it does or if I need to modify it in order to use it with my L502X

anyway, must be something else we can do via ME firmware hacking with FITC to replicate what clover does natively, so we can OC also our windows OS.

OSX is a no go for me ):

oh, and thanks for the info @</code>Tech Inferno Fan<code>

that seems awesome news for all users

maybe the first post can be updated now including the tools I posted

edit:

@</code>Khenglish

did you found anything interesting at the i3-2310m proccesor? , not sure if you finally proceded to sand it.<code></code>

I want to try to figure out how setting multipliers works a little bit better since blowing fuses to set multipliers has been going on since the pentium 3, and sandy bridge is the first CPU I've seen with the giant 80 pad block. I'd like to play with pure software means through BCLK first too.

@jkbuha

If clover can load win7 properly with no overclock, but not with one, try "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true" in a command window as admin before restarting windows into an overclocked state.

Did you ever modify your ME FW? If not, then BCLK overclocking works without modifying it to intel's recommended overclocking settings.

Sounds like it's time to look up what clover is doing to set the BCLK.

Yes I put the default clock speed (100MHz) into my plist, but you can easily modify it either at load or runtime. To change it to 125MHz just put in 125000.

Let me know who gets similar results. My Geekbench jumped from 7400 to 9200 upon applying 125000, and I suspect I can get higher, but I'm not really going to try that out for now until I know exactly what's going on.

Also I'd like to understand the following as well:

1) Why can't I boot legacy OSes such as Win or Linux under clover

2) How are we going to enable undervolting for SB

Thanks

jkbuha

So it sounds like the SB-E BCLK strap is in fact not being used, and this is a regular BCLK overclock. I suppose lower values such as 110000 work as well?

Hi all

Apologies for not replying sooner as have not been registered on this forum.

@kasar rightly mentioned that I was able to use clover to clock my i7-2620m to 125MHz FSB, with corresponding 25% performance increases in geekbench. I've just posted the clover plist config in the bios forum (it's not really relevant here) but it is important to note that (i) I've only managed to make it work with OSX so far; Windows and Linux in legacy mode do not work (ii) as one of your has hinted previously, I *have* disabled USB3 ports purely for energy saving through a custom DSDT. Occasionally at 125MHz FSB (4000MHz CPU speed in HWMonitor) the system clock stops working; but otherwise I haven't observed any anomalies.

To be quite honest, I'm not really after overclocking - I'd much rather see if we can undervolt our series 6/7s to have better battery life just like I managed to get out of my older core 2 duo xps.

Any thoughts/comments welcomed.

Oh, and whilst I'm here - thanks for the great forum contributors - thanks to you I've managed to update my ME to the latest 7.xx firmware.

Thanks

jkbuha

Of course it's relevant here! This thread's goal was to get overclocking for everyone, and it looks like this method can do that.

It looks like this mod forces the 125MHz BCLK strap that is supposed to only be present on SB-E socket 2011 systems. Looks like regular SB had it all along. There is also a 166MHz strap... but that would be incredibly difficult to get stable.

How does that modified plist force the overclock? I assume it's something in the giant hex string under device properties?

And about undervolting. Desktop systems have a way in BIOS to adjust the auto voltage ranges up and down. If you can turn on the hidden 125MHz strap, you can likely adjust this setting if you know what to change.

In a few days I'll set up an EFI boot and see what I can do. What do you mean by win7 not booting? Can the EFI not find the win7 bootloader, or does it find it, but windows itself crashes? If it's the later I noticed this code in your plist:

<code><dict><string></string></dict></code><code>[key]CPU[/key]

[dict]

[key]BusSpeedkHz[/key]

[string]100000[/string]

[/dict]</code>

(turned <> into [] to stop stupid vbulletin from trying to print as html)

That's 100MHz. Windows might be reading this and not setting the system clock appropriately. Try 125000 and give it a shot?

For others interested in trying this out, jkbuha's original post is here

Do you live up north? If so bench that thing outside!

You can actually get the old f8 ->safe mode to work in win8, what you have to do is the following:

Run Command prompt as Admin and type (copy/paste the following line in command prompt):

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

ensure operation completed successfully. restart system and you'll find F8 works

Interesting. I wonder if that will also fix win8 randomly failing to boot on my mom's laptop (it will black screen instead of showing the log-in page).

when the pc stops I always full battery.

RESULT: just changed the vbios> for BACK original BIOS 680MGTX of my clevo

When i run a game, the VBIOS Directly launch the nvidia GPU under the battery in place of the HD 4000 chipset => CRASH REBOOT!

The original bios Directly launch the HD 4000 chipset and not the nvidia GPU even if I force Nvidia GPU in panel config under battery => Security?

reference bios problem?

my original bios 80.04.29.00.01

my vbios : 80.04.33.00.10 rev 1

for vbios I have to take the same reference, or there is no effect?

in DOS :

I had an error on the front of pci flash but I force (nvflash -6 files.rom)

I think the battery can't put out enough power to run the 680m at full 3d clocks, so clevo sets it to be disabled on battery. The crash with svl7's version is likely the system BIOS detecting too low of a battery voltage and shutting the system down to prevent battery and voltage regulator damage. Since slv7's version lets you try using the 680m on battery, you could likely use Nvidia Inspector to disable the top 1-2 P-states to keep the power draw down. A 400 MHz 680m is still a hell of a lot better than a HD4000. Your battery wouldn't last much more than an hour though.

Running the 680m at full power would likely require an extra 8 battery cells jammed into the laptop chassis.

Very nice clocks Clyde. Too bad it looks like your cooling cannot sustain that voltage. Judging by how fast the temp ramps up from your GPU-z graphs, I think running games/tests longer would hit 100C.

alright, i will change the switch later. but im sure f8 doesnt bring to advance boot menu for windows 8. do the f12 button work? (it will let me choose which method to boot from, ie internal hdd, usb, wifi...) or , google brings me this page Advanced "Startup Settings" - Boot to in Windows 8 do you mean this one instead?

Yeah MS removed the f8 feature from win8 because "it boots too fast to press f8 anyway". F12 won't help. You can only access the old menu by going through a series of options after fully loading the OS, or if the OS detects a startup problem.

i've also tried nando's separate guide on e6230. i think the problem lies at, i couldnt install the nvidia driver. it will just stuck at about 10% and do nothing for ages........ T_T

I think you had a corrupted driver installation, or at some point your eGPU hardware went bad.

What does the device manager say about the eGPU? If the driver attempts to install, then the card is detected. Check the device manager for an error code. If the device manager does not list an error, then uninstall the eGPU's driver with the device manager. Make sure you check "remove files from system", or else win8 will immediately reinstall the driver without asking.

Below is just some general info:

The system should be able to boot with no driver with the iGPU disabled. If no driver was installed, windows will use the generic video driver.

Hibernate/resume is the same as a full power cycle as far as the BIOS is concerned. Do sleep/resume, not hibernate.

hi guys, i need some help! i just bought my e6230 i7 3520 model, everything seems perfectly fine but i cant boot up once i plug in my PE4L 2.1b + gtx660. it will lag the entire laptop on start up, then brings me to start up repair page and then it says it couldnt fix my problem. then once i unplug the pe4l adapter, the laptop flies again. T___T if i hot plug it in, it wont detect it. how do i work around? it worked once, when i hot plug it, my external monitor went on, but i dont know for what reason.

im using windows 8 64 bit btw.

How are you trying to hotplug? For a true hotplug, the card and laptop both need to be on, then the card plugged in (expresscard pushed in, not the card into the adapter).

I expect the e6230 to disable the internal HD4000 and monitor if you power on the laptop with the card on and plugged in. The card will then output to the lower DVI port. Does this happen?

Yeah Rhakis crossing even stutters with my desktop's sli OCed 670s, thx for fps cap tip, and thanks for input! I see you have an e6520 as well, any problems with this particular model with expresscard hookup?

The BIOS turns off the iGP if you boot with the eGPU on. Turning on/hotplugging the card after the BIOS splash screen appears avoids this. If I hotplug, the card starts up in pci-e 2.0. If I turn on the card while already plugged in, it starts in 1.1, but if I "eject" it then turn it off and on again, then it's in 2.0.

I would like the honest opinion of some of the egpu owners out there with a 1.2opt setup and a gtx 670/680. Can you get smooth framerates at "mostly high" settings, 1080p 60hz, on current games? I'm looking to possibly replace my desktop, at least until 2014 when I can evaluate the thunderbolt market and decide if I want to go back to desktops. I specifically play Diablo 3, Borderlands 2, and Starcraft 2. While I know I cannot get the performance of a desktop, is the ~70% desktop framerates pretty uniform throughout current games with an egpu?

With a 580 overclocked sc2 and d3 run great maxed out. The story mode campaign parts of sc2 ran in the 40s at worst, with the actual gameplay 80+ except for intense late game combat. D3 will stutter in some places on rhakis crossing, but the rest of the game is smooth. rhakis crossing stuttering can be eliminated with an fps cap. Very intense fighting with multiple players and 50+ monsters on screen can drop fps to 30s, but that is rare. Not sure about borderlands 2.

IMO the ASUS.

vs Precision:

The weaker support for the ASUS doesn't mean much since you know your computer stuff. Everything in the laptop is less than the $300+ you saved in the first place. The most expensive should be the motherboard at around $300. If something does fail you can just order a new part right away instead of shipping the system out for over 2 weeks for a refurbished replacement.

vs XPS:

The 630m is half as powerful as the 650m. That's a lot.

vs Lenovo:

Mediocre but not terrible battery life. ASUS likely lasts ~60% longer

vs Samsung:

The samsung has a somewhat stronger GPU, but it's an AMD, so battery life will not be good since not only does enduro hurt FPS, it also can't properly turn of the dGPU to save power. Plus it's so thin it probably has terrible thermals. I don't see a fan in the screenshots posted...

You can use the money saved on the ASUS to buy an SSD.

Another option is to give her your M18x and buy yourself a new one. You can take the best 680m's for yourself

That's why I never let a tech touch my system. They can watch me do their work The first time a technician came to my place to replace the GPU he started removing the screws which were holding the screen... that's where I had to step in, lol, those guys are just on contract with Dell, and most of them have never ever seen an AW system, so I decided it's better to do it myself.

By screws holding the screen, do you mean the screws that go through the laptop body to the screen hinges, or did he actually think the graphics card was in the screen, so he was taking the screen bezel off? The former isn't really so bad since you could think you were taking the back plate off but just picked the wrong screw, but the latter... that's bad.

If you have a P170EM you can overclock the BCLK with Intel XTU. A P150EM can also be overclocked if you flash on the P170EM bios. It won't get you much, but it's more than nothing.

The 3720qm and up can be overclocked by 4 multipliers in addition to BCLK overclocks. The xm series allow any multiplier as well as any power limit.

Hi ppl,

I've been using the vbios from this thread http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/2062-using-your-4gb-gtx-680m-its-safest-full-potential.html, on my GTX 680M, and so far I managed to get 960/2400 stable clocks

But after seeing this thread has much more up to date vbios, do you advise to change mine? If yes, to which one?

Thank you ppl,

Best Regards to all

The only real difference that I am aware of are that the BIOS's in this thread have higher voltage options. The one you are running is 1.0V, while the ones here go up to 1.05V. If you have the thermal and power headroom, then there's nothing wrong with the higher voltage. If your temps currently get over 85C, I would stay with your current BIOS, if they're under, then you should be OK temperature wise to go with more voltage. I think 680m's throttle at 96C or so.

The only hard part is figuring out if you'll blow out your motherboard or not. I haven't heard of anyone doing that when overclocking a 680m, but it's possible. A struggling power brick will put more strain on the motherboard's power regulation. Some laptops like m18x's have plenty of power headroom, but others have less. If you have a 180W PSU or weaker, I advise that you do not exceed your current 1V. Someone once posted a 680m laptop at 1.0V at 980MHz with only a 3610qm pulling 190W from the wall. If you've seen someone else with your same laptop handling the higher power draw, then you should be OK.

I believe your current BIOS will put out a higher 1.025V if you set exactly 915MHz base clock with 65mhz boost clock, giving you 980MHz at 1.025V. You can try that if you wanna test out how your system handles more voltage first before flashing.

Nice memory overclock BTW. I think most people can only do around 2200.

mmm, so, relating to the i3, bridge those pins isnt the way, right?

I highly doubt it. They likely were originally for SMD capacitors, but the caps got removed to save on costs.

Your upload contains a lot more that the utilities we already had. Looking through it now.

Wow someone got a 25% BCLK overclock on a sandy bridge? He probably dropped his memory clocks low with high timings. 25% overclock is pushing PCI-E and SATA stability. I'm not sure if BCLK overclocking also increases the USB clock. USB is known for not handling overclocking well at all. He may have disabled all his USB devices.

I think the those are just some extra capacitors on the i7s to handle the higher power usage. There are many more caps on the underside of the CPU die.