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Lets enable overclocking on all 6 and 7 series laptops


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@svl7

well, in my laptop it wasnt a part of the bios update, we disasembled the bios updates several times, none of the versions containes ME FW updates, however I managed to update my ME version by making a package for FWUpdLcl.exe

I made one and tested it with the L502X and 15z, you can find it at the topic I posted before relating my modded bioses.

oh, thanks for the info :)

I will try replacing the fparts.txt file

I will let u know if I keep having issues with the notification mails :)

@Khenglish

yeah, exactly :)

that is exactly what I made on my laptop to enable it, I also had to do some hardware tweaks to be able to unlock the descriptor but yeah, thats it :)

about the tools version 8, try this link :)

ftp://europe.asrock.com/drivers/Intel/Others/ME_Win8-64_Win8_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista_XP64_XP(v8.1.10.1286_5M).zip

you will find the required tools at the tools folder :)

oh thanks for the info :)

well, to be honest when I read it I was somewhere confused, and I still with some parts :D

well, while I did the chip sockets I done it for many reasons, since I was messing with bios, and ME, I needed a way to flash a backup if something went wrong, I also needed it in order to unlock the descriptor by flashing a modified chip image, there was no other way for me to unlock this thing.

but since having a socket installed give me more range to do other mods I am open for other mods, yeah.

anyway sand the proccesor and bridge two traces I dont know at all (if there are even two traces to join, since I dont know about unlocked multipliers i3 from 988b socket ^^, take in mind the i3 are the cheapest ones from i5 and i7 :D)

well anyway while trying to understand more.

here is a pic from the net of the i3-2310m proccesor (taking appart again the machine I am using now to write this post just to take a pic from a generic cpu can be a little useless :D )

items_sr04r.jpg

while taking a look to the proccesor surface, I not sure if you are talking about the top face (the one from the picture),or the face from backwards is full of pins , dont remember if there was capacitors in the middle of the pins it last time I opened the lappy ^^

looks kinda difficult, also like you said, that was like a decade ago, while the locks were way easier.

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@Nando

well, didnt uploaded the file, just remembered where I downloaded it before and linked the file again,

it is directly from an ftp :) the file size is 117 mb ^^

@Khenglish

well, as for the cpu mods, shouldnt be easier doing something like this?

Intel Processor MOD (BSEL+VID) Guide

if we get the LGA775 pinouts , and also the PPGA988 (the one from the i3) and we compare the pin outs, we may find a way to replicate those mods into the 988 socket SB/IB

laptops ^^

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BSEL mod is useless. The clock gen is part of the cpu and not external. VID mod is useless if you have a locked multi. The pinouts can all be found in the Intel datasheets, but as I said, there's not much useful you can do. The easiest way for a better CPU performance is simply to upgrade it. BCLK allows only a very small increase, and it makes the system a lot less stable - many clocks use the BCLK as base, e.g. PCI-e.

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yeah, getting a CPU upgreade would be the easiest way.

anyway I get a "404 error money not found" while checking my wallet :D

I also love to mess with mods and stuff, but well, if BCLK OC is the far I can go, then I supose I already have sucess ^^

I think it would be nice to see pics from other people wich succeded to this mod to see if they also unlocked other stuff than BCLK.

for example, is there any way of unlocking RCR (Reference clock ratio)?

edit: notification mails and avatar working now , yay! :D

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yeah, getting a CPU upgreade would be the easiest way.

anyway I get a "404 error money not found" while checking my wallet :D

I also love to mess with mods and stuff, but well, if BCLK OC is the far I can go, then I supose I already have sucess ^^

I think it would be nice to see pics from other people wich succeded to this mod to see if they also unlocked other stuff than BCLK.

for example, is there any way of unlocking RCR (Reference clock ratio)?

edit: notification mails and avatar working now , yay! :D

Asrock already killed that link :(

And series 6 chipsets killed off BSEL and VID mods. VID is now controlled through 1 single pin with a serial data format instead of the old multiple pins with fixed voltages. BSEL mods are also dead since regular sandy bridge has no option for a BCLK other than 100MHz (SB-E does, but it's on a much different socket), so even if there were still BSEL pins, there would be nothing to select between.

And if paying for an i5 is a problem, you probably shouldn't mess around with fuses on your i3 to try to get a higher multiplier since there's a good chance you'll kill it, and you would need to buy a higher clocked CPU to compare against.

On a side note, I do have the same i3 that you have and a 2920xm ES. I'm thinking that the 3 rows of circular contact pads are where intel applied current to blow the fuses. There's probably a coating over them that needs to be sanded off to test resistances. I'm really not interested in sanding the 2920 since it's unlocked anyway, so I doubt I'll pursue this. It would be better to have the next speed bin up i3 to compare against to try to isolate the multiplier fuses.

I wonder if CPUID extensions are also set through fuses? Intel has to set them somehow, and I don't think CPUs have flash memory on them. This would be interesting since then you could not only enable a higher multiplier, but set it as well without having to hack the BIOS and ME FW.

I am willing to sand and test the contacts on an i3-2310m (2.1GHz) if anyone has a similar CPU such as an i3-2330m (2.2GHz) that they are also willing to sand and compare with. The idea would be to find 2 contacts that are connected on the 2330m, while the same contacts have no connection on a 2310m, meaning that the fuse between those contacts on the 2310m had been blown. I'm thinking that the 80 contacts are likely routed to VCC or GND, not each other.

Below is what I'm guessing is the fuse setup:

Inside the CPU die:

The CPU reads high or low voltage from a contact pad on the gate of a transistor. This gate is connected to VCC through a pull-up resistor (resistors are doable on a CMOS process).

Outside the CPU die:

80 lines from the CPU die go out directly to the 80 contacts in the 3 rows. The contact pads are also individually routed to GND through their own fuse.

How it works:

When a fuse is not blown, the voltage drop from VCC to GND will occur across the internal pull-up resistor on the CPU die, and thus the voltage on the gate is GND. When a fuse is blown, there is no connection to GND at all, and the gate will be pulled up to VCC through the internal resistor on the CPU die. There will be no voltage drop across the resistor because CMOS gates block all current. To blow a fuse, Intel applies a voltage to the contact pad. Since there is no resistor between the contact pad, the fuse, and GND, the fuse will blow, and the CPU die is unharmed as long as the voltage isn't too far above normal VCC.

In the scenario above, VCC and GND could be swapped, but the concept is identical.

A more complicated method where any of the 80 contacts can be connected together I think is highly unlikely. It would be a more costly method since it requires twice the amount of contact pads, and there would still need to be a direct VCC or GND connection anyway for the CPU to read the fuse state without possibly seeing a floating voltage. This is good for us, since it means that we just have to test the resistance between the pads and VCC or GND, which can easily be found on the socket pins on the other side of the CPU package, or any other contact with a non-blown fuse.

The main danger is the multimeter resistance reading circuit being too capacitive, which could blow fuses if the multimeter lead floats significantly apart from the voltage on the pad before reading the resistance. The fuse should be safe as long as the other lead is connected to GND (or VCC) first, and the multimeter is set to reading resistance before contacting the pad. For complete safety a resistor could be added in series between the multimeter and the CPU. This will make sure current doesn't flow too quickly in case the multimeter is floating significantly. An intact fuse should have no readable resistance, so you'll only see the resistance of the added resistor.

I might test out this theory on my spare i3, make up a diagram, and start a new thread looking for volunteers. Will probably be a few weeks before I do though.

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another thing wich makes me mad, is that jkbuha, who have a 15z, wich is almost exactly like the xps15 without some features.

he was able to do overclock using clover efi bootloader on osx (we cant use clover on windows anyway)

and he said he have set a 125MHz fsb. and that he got 3375MHz from stock 2.7 (excluding turboboost)

that makes sense

27 multiplier x 100 = 2700mhz

27 x 125 = 3375 mhz

my question is how that is posible, maybe he was able to unlink the cpu and ram speeds from other elements by using clover, idk.

oh, you are right, my bad, well, then I am lucky I had the original file, I uploaded it to mediafire.

with my sh1tty connection it took hours D:

edit, uploaded both 7 and 8 version tools :)

CPT_1.5M_7.1.20.1119.rar

ME(1.5M_8.1.10.1286).rar

yeah, there is a lot of chances I kill my proccesor by doing that specially without help or documentation

oh, huge thanks for your interest of unlocking the proccesor and the effort of sanding the same proccesor I have.

awesome proccesor you have there, I wish I had an ES proccesor to play with multipliers :)

sadly I just have this proccesor too, so I dont have any other to sand it, my best proccesor after this one is a core 2 duo, and some pentium 4, p3 and older hardware, so probably not really usefull.

there are some people with me at the uefi firmware modding projects

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

all our progress of bios and me unlocking has been made there.

relating to the proccesor, well, at the top part, I noticed on some online pics the i7 have some caps, resistors or fuses (not sure from this pic)

90607d1358546432-guide-upgrading-p150hm-2960xm-overclocking-img_2242.jpg

compare it with the six pins at the top and those four at the bottom from the i3

items_sr04r.jpg

should bridge those points be a good idea?

itemssr04r.jpg

here is a sample version (es) of the proccesor

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Intel-Core-i3-2310M-Processor-Q1SP-CPU-ES-version-2-1GHz-Mobile-Processor/669465848.html

well, checked an image from a i3 2350 (2.30 ghz and it doent have those caps there)

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/673638291/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_Core_i3_2350M_SR0DN_Processor_FF8062700995906_3M_Cache_2_30_GHz_CPU_Wholesale_Retial.jpg

D:

I have absolutly no idea what that will do to my proccesor.

I dont know if I will end with a fully unlocked i3 or with a smoked and burned proccesor and a unusable expensive laptop :D

oh I have some more questions

while checking my non modded ME firmware.

I noticed about two fields modified by the manufacturer (the ones in yellow color)

changedoptions.png

I am trying to understand what those options do

Relating with FITC documentation

OCK default value is 0x1FFF_0F8F

and

PMSRCCLK2 default value is 0x0000_0F98

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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.

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oh, well, all the interesting stuff I think is at the tools folder, on the 8 tools there is also the cctwin app inside ICC tools

I use mainly ones : Flash Programming Tool,Flash Image Tool.

give also a read to 1.5MB FW Bring Up Guide 7.1.20.1119, it is full of interesting information, however I dont understand some parts fully, maybe you guys can give me a little help with that :D

not sure what jkbuha did (the guy with 25% OC) he said he just used cloverefi and set the fs into a file to 125, said it is stable and using hdd and other stuff probably, I am as surprised as you guys, but if it works for him even without ME hacks, then we should be able.

there must be some way of unlink usb, sata and other devices from the proccesor and ram speed, so we can push higher.

I tried some tests with FITC at my firmware, but I just bricked my laptop and had to reflash the whole chip with the programer to get it back to live.

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

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  • 2 weeks later...

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

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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

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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

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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>

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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?

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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.

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Unfortunately I don't know if win7 can load properly because I have win8. I suspect it's most likely my crappy Dell SCT 2.0 Bios.

I also did modify my ME FW from 7.0.x to 7.2.x.

Just to chime in - windows in legacy boot mode is indeed unable to work with Clover no matter what your settings are, because uefi can't hand bios emulatioin properly due to the fact uefi was locked from factory. Windows installed in uefi, on the other hand, can boot perfectly fine. But having UEFI windows on sct2.0 is another story ...

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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.

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  • 4 weeks later...

First thanks for the info. Istill need to read it 3 more times, at least to understand it. But my question is how much does these help your FPS? And in which games? Cause my understanding was that you'll gain more benefit from GPU OC. So please help me clarify those two please

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  • 4 weeks later...
First thanks for the info. Istill need to read it 3 more times, at least to understand it. But my question is how much does these help your FPS? And in which games? Cause my understanding was that you'll gain more benefit from GPU OC. So please help me clarify those two please

Sorry for late reply.

More CPU power helps in some games like BF3 and Crysis 3 if you have a strong GPU. A GPU overclock will help more in most cases. 3Dmark11 is very CPU light compared to games so it is a poor example. You're going to have a hard time finding a tangible improvement in games with just 4-5% on the BCLK, but it's better than nothing.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Any chance of getting this to work on a series 5 HP laptop with an i7 740qm?

The ME tools linked in the first post don't work on 5 series, but I managed to find an older version of them (6.0.0.1184) that work for this series. However when trying to use fptw I get an error about not having any supported SPI flash devices. I assume that the tools I found aren't up to date enough to recognize the type of ROM that my laptop utilizes.

It'd be cool if someone could post a newer version of the ME firmware tools that supports series 5.

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