Aikimox

Ok, I got a 8470p BIOS dump. Any risk takers? What are the chances of bricking the laptop? I'm very itchy to give it a shot.....

With the 2560P, only the F.01 bios allowed RAM faster than 1333Mhz to be used. Version F.02 or newer locked the RAM to 1333Mhz regardless of faster RAM timings being available. See 2560P iGPU/RAM testing. The conclusion with a HD3000 being that overclocked RAM saw single-channel performance near that of dual-channel. Dual channel had minor gains.

There is a F.00 and F.01 bios available for a 2570P. Maybe it has unlocked RAM timings as well?

I saw your posts in the 2560p thread at nbr. Man, we really need to crack that BIOS big time and remove all the restrictions! So far, we lack the CPU power controls, RAM timings, need a WWAN and WIFI de-whitelist mod, mSATA enable mod,.... I'm seriously thinking to take a crash course on BIOS hacking. Only problem is time, am too busy with work nowadays

I bought second back cover yesterday, and Im going to drill some holes or lines near heatsink, and cover it with some mesh. I'm counting to drope temps in idle with 2-3C and in stress 3-5C. My calculations are based on experiences with 3m11 tests with cover, without or lifted up 2560p/2570p/8460p/8470p. For example there is very visible differences in temps when You lift 8460p/8470p during tests. (they have holes under heatsink, 2560p/2570p doesn't).

after mod, im going to use this "halfsquares".

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9056[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]9057[/ATTACH]

btw, two days ago I run 9 tests 3dm11 (without modded cover) and the max temp on CPU was 69C. Nice.

Sounds good! Do you know if a 2560p cover is identical to the 2570p one?

Will do some tests tomorrow with and without the cover and post the results. so far I'm really happy with the temps but haven't pushed my system with Prime95 yet...

On a side note, is there a way of getting a faster than 1600mhz RAM work in our machines? I put kingston XMP 1866 but it reverted to 1333 cl9. I want to get the fastest possible memory to improve the IGP performance.

Damn!!

And the mod is not even more complicated than my coin mod from what I see?

Did you choose any specific copper shims?

NICE!

Yes, it's pretty simple and quick, took me about an hour tops. For the radiator and pipe used the standard 15mmx15mmx0.5mm shims (ebay). For the cpu part destroyed my old ram heatsinks, leftovers from this project 2.5 years ago .

New heatsink mod:

New best stock wPrime1.55 run (notice the temps):

Still experimenting with cooling. So far, was only able to slow down the heat buildup, which also means a slow cool down process (which is fine by me). Shaved off about 5c at max load, which is very much in line with the expected results. To get a significant improvement beyond that would require adding and extra pipe => complete HS overhaul. The biggest problem would be to find a way of directing the heat out of the machine. I'm thinking about getting an extra bottom cover and drill holes in it. Also, a micro fan from some ultrabook might also help. Dunno, need new ideas....

8570P bios dump

Is there any Russian 2570P owner that want to submit 15 posts on vlab.su so can download a 8570P bios dump from vlab.su ? It would be handy to have to see if can find the 45W i7-quad power limit code/setting to our 2570P.

Bingo, Komrades! I'm on it!

Edit#1: It's going to take some time, I feel so dumb compared to those guys. Just to register I had to answer 4 questions on voltages, capacitors and chips, lol

Edit#2: Interval between posts there is 1hour minimum - Insane!

I did a few benches at different clocks to mimic other CPUs in an attempt to compare power consumption and temps. Very interesting results:

i7-3840QM@8x1400mhz - i5-3360m level of performance:

Notice the max power draw and temps!

i7-3840QM@8x2800Mhz - i7-3632QM level of performance:

Same thing here. It's ironic that a high end quad is actually far more efficient than 35W duals and quads when running at their levels.

Sorry Guys I am aware You're trying to get as much as possible from yours CPU's but is it possible to undervolt mobile IvyBridge by XTU?

Only if there's a way to unlock the BIOS. The voltage slider is grayed out in XTU. I can lower the Max Power short/long but there's no visible effect on actual power draw. The best I can do is set the max cpu/igp power state in windows to 50% to lock it at x12 resulting in very low temps and about 3w power consumption.

I browsed again my photos from unsuccessful IPS fitting and I've been wondering whether try it again but with bezel retrofitting. I'm just curious if 2560p bezel is the same as 2570p?

definitely try! I will do it too but have to sell my processors first, that 3840 OEM wasn't cheap

win8 loses track of time when you overclock BCLK in it. When you overclock BCLK 5%, to windows time now happens 5% faster. win7 does not have this bug and thus will properly report a performance increase with overclocking BCLK.

Buggy indeed. Here's the new wPrime155 run @104.8 :

Ok, so here are some details about clocks and scores:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9008[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]9009[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]9010[/ATTACH]

I was able to push the BCLK to 105.7 so far and got slightly over 3.6ghz. So far so good, but I hope there's a way of getting control over amps and voltages. Funny how the scores are better than those of the new haswell processors including the 4930MX lol

Just for kicks I installed windows 7 and ran the same benchmarks and got significantly better scores across the board (wPrime1.55, Superpi, CineBench R10, 11.5, etc) Dunno why but the system performs way better in W7....

If you can a bios dump (inc ME FW) from a 8470P/W or 8570P/W then it would give us a reference to increase power limits. Some were optioned with a factory 45W i7-quad CPU. I'd imagine then getting your 840QM to hold 3.6Ghz (4C), with potential for another 200Mhz via a BCLK overclock (3.8Ghz) would be pretty much maxing out the thermals of our little system. That would represent 400Mhz more than the stock settings.

Not sure if there's someone who would be willing to dump his/her bios for us but we can try... But even if we succeed it would give us very minimal gain while bumping the temps significantly. I'm still hoping there's a way of getting a granular control over settings. With my old M18x I used to be able to fine-tune the power settings in such a way that @55-60W it (840QM QS) would hold +400mhz (40-40-41-42) + extra 200mhz from BCLK (~104) resulting in almost 4.5ghz on a single core! And all that @ low temps.

Any chance of unlocking power and/or multiplier control in the 2570P bios? I realize we don't have an unlocked bios to reference. Though m18x series uses Insyde bios. Could they be used as a reference. Eg: http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m18x-aw-18/1125-m18x-a03-bios-modifying-via-da_gs-method-hex-registers-editing.html

If that's a dead end and we are working within the stock bios power limits then it will be desirable to know which i7-quad CPU (720QM, 820QM, 840QM) and stepping has the lowest temps to get best performance. Eg: Jacobsson's has a 820QM-ES. Could his hold a x35 turbo mode AND apply similar 105.7 BCLK? If so he'd be hitting 3.7Ghz on 4-cores.

I'm wondering the exact same thing, haha. Regarding the temps and quads, the 3840QM would be the most power efficient of the high end quads, IMHO. In a screenshot provided by Jacobsson the 820QM is at 3.3ghz on all cores during prime and that's the max it can hold within the 40W envelope. That's my guess.

I got strange behavior like that too with the 2920xm in the latitude. 4c turbo never went above x29 even though it was x31. When the CPU hit 70C it would drop to x28, and when it hit 80C drop to x27. x31 ran properly in the clevo with all default settings. The latitude did not seem to have short term turbo properly implemented. He isn't hitting 45W though, while I was hitting 55W, so I guess the BIOS is just being conservative.

Yes and I wonder, since this is an Insyde BIOS, could there potentially be a way of stripping off all the custom menus and revealing the hidden stuff (if it even exists) like we used to do here?

I'm a little confused why your CPU is running 3.4Ghz in 4-core mode (4C). XTU shows a x36 multiplier for 4C. Shouldn't that mean then that with your BCLK overclock you'd be running 3.81Ghz with 4C?

It should, you are correct. The problem is in power draw, the BIOS only allows about 40W total for the CPU. It would need about 10-15 watt extra to hold 3.6 @ stock BCLK.

OCed 3840QM and temps under 80C? Madness!

Haven't started really stressing it yet, I'm sure it will hit 90c+ in no time. but I'm optimistic, at 40W I don't need to improve the cooling much, maybe an extra 5-10W would be all that's required.

Ok, so here are some details about clocks and scores:

I was able to push the BCLK to 105.7 so far and got slightly over 3.6ghz. So far so good, but I hope there's a way of getting control over amps and voltages. Funny how the scores are better than those of the new haswell processors including the 4930MX lol

First, big thanks to Khenglish for modding the ME FW for me! I didn't think there would be any chance of overclocking my machine (HP Elitebook 2570p) but I was wrong!

Here's the detailed info on how to flash and were to get the modded BIOS.

So after flashing I still couldn't see the reference clock slider in XTU. So, I reinstalled it a few times and eventually used one of the older versions. Dunno what exactly did the trick, maybe an older version, a number of reinstalls but it got unlocked in the end! Previously the CPU was locked at 38-39W and 3.4ghz on all cores, but as you can see from the screenshot below it can now hold 3.55Ghz @40W and 104.8BCLK!!!

Now, if only there was a way of further unlocking the BIOS to get some more juice for the CPU, I'm sure it would be able to go all the way up and beyond 4ghz. I'll need to work on the cooling system next to prepare for the possibility

^^ Whoa! I flashed the ME FW (major thanks to Khenglish for modding it for me!) and after a few reinstalls of XTU the BCLK got unlocked! I can now run stable at 3.6Ghz on all cores with only about 40W power consumption! Benches will follow when my 90W psu arrives.

I dunno yet, there's a chance that the motherboard can supply the required voltage, the IPS panel from Lenovo draws about 22Volts max and it does work in 2570p.

Edit:

On a side note here is the first CPU benchmark at stock clocks (wPrime1.55 32MB run):

A bit frustrating that it can't hold 3.6ghz on all cores due to some kind of power limitation. I have tried XTU and could set higher max power draw but it seems to be stuck at 38-39W and 3.4GHz on all cores.

Thanks for confirming my fears. So, it's either the 768p IPS or a try modding the DP port to support eDP panels. According to this article, it's possible and there's even a cable made by Intel (page 12), but we would still need to figure out how to power the backlight part. Maybe the screen used in XPS12 requires less voltage and can be powered by using the existing connector? The 1700p panel from Chromebook pixel requires about 30volts for backlight (uses about 18.5 mA and draws about 5.6w max).

Here's another bad news, a 900p or 1080p panel would require LVDS 2 channels instead of one and there's a very high chance that HP only implemented a single channel LVDS connection on the mobo. So, in this case all we can do is try that IPS HD panel from Lenovo.

There's quite a few LT131EE11000 LCDs on ebay-US: LT131EE11000 | eBay

Most of those sellers either state it as B131HW02 V.0/LT131EE11000 or compatible but those are two different panels. According to the datasheets B131HW02 is eDP. I'm confused. Maybe they are both eDP and if that's the case then there's no hope.

Here's the ghost panel I'm hoping to find - Toshiba Matsushita LT131EE11000 Overview - Panelook.com

What about a 12.5" Dell XPS FHD, IPS, capacitive touch panel? It gets plenty of praise at Review Update Dell XPS 12-9Q33 Convertible - NotebookCheck.net Reviews