T42p Overclock

[amdaman]

Ok, i've been reading up about overclocking then stumbled across a thread that had SetFSB, I remember somebody saying that it didn't work on certain chipsets and I tried it on my T40 and it didn't work..

Anyways I can't help myself from messing with the laptop so I tried it on my T42P and it seems to have worked?? I assume the T42p has a different chipset?

Anyway I upped it to 110FSB and eventually I got a memory error, so I assume my memory sucks lol.. Plus the CPU is heavily undervolted. I've set it back to standard for now but will mess with it again in due course There is no reason to overclock but I just like messing about, I'll see what benchmark results I get though with an overclock!

Screenshot:

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/9778 ... ockcl0.jpg

MOD EDIT: That pic was way over the forum 50K limit. Use Links for big shots.

[Bgradid]

off topic: awesome, you play company of heroes too

on topic: trying to overclock while undervolting is probably not going to end well, I've found my t42 runs plenty hot as is anyway

for curiosities sake though, see how far you can get with normal voltage

[amdaman]

Yeah it's an awesome game! It's very playable on my T42p too on 1440x900 res (my ext monitor) low settings though!

Yeah I upped the voltage to 1.212v for 3dMark2001se for the 16x multiplier and it ran without a hitch as I expected @ 420mhz bus, i'll mess more with it later (I got just under 120003d marks )

[amdaman]

Woohoo 12,000 .. still well below stock volts too.

[FTC]

Hi, this is fun, but one small warning :

Test your sound if going above 114Mhz FSB speed. In my experience the T4x sound chip is the first thing that fails when overclocking...

Good news is that I've been running happily at 112Mhz for 2 years already without any problem.. also did set my memory CAS to 2-2-2-5.

[amdaman]

I tested a movie at 110Mhz and it was spot on, not sure i'll go much higher as the CPU gets hotter and the RAM isn't that good.

Was 114Mhz your maximum?

What volts are you running?

Did you use setfsb? How do you get it to load up each time windows starts?

Also how did you set your RAM cast to 2? As I can change the timings using the Rightmark memry tool but the CAS is locked at 2.5!

[cchsiao]

Last night after seeing this thread, I tried this on my T42p, and the result is a dead HDD I don't really know what happened, but now my HDD does not work at all. It's really at your own risk program

[amdaman]

A dead HDD??

How far did you try and overclock exactly? Excessive overclocking may well corrupt the IDE bus but that's pretty rare?

For it to destroy all your data too?

Even when mine crashed after i overclocked it to 440Mhz while it was undervolted (oops) it didn't do any damage at all. And I had a big game on Company of Heroes @ 440Mhz with upped volts yesterday and it was excellent.

You do know 40 represents 400Mhz on that program don't you?

[cchsiao]

Well... I didn't even overclock at all. All I did last night was to download the program, and then tried to use that program to "get the FSB". Initially it didn't work at all, so I checked "Ultra" then "get the FSB" again. Suddenly, my T42p hung, and then after rebooting, I found that some files in my HDD corrupts and I cannot boot into Windows anymore. So I decided to remove the HDD and connected it to my X41t to backup the files since I wanted to make a clean installation instead of repairing the OS. However, after removing the HDD from my T42p, the HDD didn't response at all, no matter where I connected it to. This morning I even bring this HDD to my office, and try to connect that HDD via the 2nd HDD caddy on my T60p, but it still doesn't show any evidence of life. So... it's clearly dead now.

[amdaman]

Ultra box???

I'm pretty sure you have used the wrong version. You need the version for the X31 and there is no checkbox for ultra.

I bet you have downloaded this from setfsb's official site? If you have it's the wrong version.

[FTC]

cchsiao,

Even if the wrong version was used it would have been *extrremely unfortunate* that this breaked your HDD. Me I have personally tried most SETFSB versions in one of those T42s which can not be overclocked and never got a problem... just some times you have to do a hard reboot and/or remove and reinsert the battery, but the machine has always recovered without problems from this test. It is possible though that you overclock too much and get data corruption... but I would say it is more likely that you killed the HDD while manipulating it because of static than by the use of a wrong SETFSB. (not to say it is impossible though).

amdaman

Regarding your questions of my experiences with the overclockable T4xs, my max was of around 115Mhz in both cases (2 machines tested) after that sound did not work / hanged the machine.

Volts, well, the required processor voltage does increase as expected with more frequency... it does not really matter if this additional frequency is gained through FSB overclock or higher processor multiplicator. Right now I am running 2.0Ghz out of a native 1.8Ghz chip with around 1.3v

Did I use setfsb ? yes. I got it to load with a shortcut to it in the startup folder. It does accept load time parameters:
-w[00-99] : Wait [sec] default=10sec
-s[000-999] : Set FSB [MHz]
-i[00-99] : Increment [MHz] default=max
-t[0-9] : Test 0=[PLL] , 1=[SMBus(I/O)], 2=[-], 3=[Config Reg]
(There is a readmi command line parameters text file somewhere explaining those).

Changing RAM timings : there are a few programs that can do this i.e , look for 'Tw855.exe' in the net. Note that your memory should support this (be good enough to run at more aggressive settings)

So all in all, whatever you do, test it throughfully for stability and add some 'safety margin'.

[amdaman]

excellent, going to have a play tonight!

Also got a 1gb stick of DDR that should be here today.

[screwdriver]

which setfsb schould be used for the t42?
I always get an error message when I try the one for X31...

[FTC]

Hi,

which setfsb schould be used for the t42?

Yes, it is the one for the X31, but NOT ALL T42 are compatible with it. It depends on the PLL used, since some T4x have programmable PLLs and others have fixed (non overclockable) ones. I have seen both cases of T42.

[KristianJ]

amdaman, please forgive me for being picky, but I would encourage you to post a link to that picture as opposed to the pic itself. A moderator changed your first pic to a link to conform to the forum's policy of embedded images being no greater than 50kb, and they will most likely do the same if/when they see this one.

Related to the overclocking, I haven't tried SetFSB on my T42p, but on a T40 I managed to get it up from 1.5 to about 1.7GHz without any issues.

[ResidentG33k]

Last night after seeing this thread, I tried this on my T42p, and the result is a dead HDD I don't really know what happened, but now my HDD does not work at all. It's really at your own risk program

Pretty much any Over Clocking program/Fan Control program should be an "AYOR" app. Overclocking programs are almost like "Buyer Beware". I used SpeedFan on a desktop computer and it burned out my Nvidia GeForce FX5500 $90 down the drain.

[beeblebrox]

Overclocking the T40-T42 is next to useless. The problem with the HDD is known (you damage the internal parallel buffer).

However the perfect overclocking is if you have a T43 board which uses a 533Mhz CPU (7x5 series) and then put in a 400Mhz bus Dothan (7x0) with the internal wire (see anandtech).

using a 2Ghz 755 Dothan will give you an effective speed of 2.66 Ghz.

[aaa]

using a 2Ghz 755 Dothan will give you an effective speed of 2.66 Ghz.

Pretty sure that doesn't work out in practice, they usually stop working somewhere a little before 2.6.

[screwdriver]

yes, it's already pretty hard to find a 1.8 dothan that runs stable with the higher fsb...
best for the pinmod is the 1,7 (sl7ep).