Thinkpads Forum

OK so I can't blieve my eyes!
I bought this T61 for light gaming.
You know - older games like CoD4 or Silent Hunter 4.
I am aware of the nvidia issue so purchased this late production unit. [another 08/08]
Frames where great on both games but i wanted to enjoy more details so I OCed my
"NVS 140M (A 128MB 8400M GT Equilevant GPU)" to following:

CORE: 400MHz --> 500MHz
MEM: 600MHz --> 750MHz
SHADER: 800MHz ---> 1GHz


Temps raised on average to my suprise only 2 degrees .
So i decided to push it farther but before that i went ahead and ordered some AS5 and a T61p heatsink which is seems to perform somewaht better than my T61 heatsink and made for the much faster Quadro 570. (myabe bcause of the new fan)
After 3 hours of testing and OCing I am now at a WHOPPING:

CORE: 700MHz [ORIGINAL 400MHz]
MEM: 1GHz [ORIGINAL 600MHz]
SHADER: 1.4GHz!!! [ORIGINAL 800MHz]



And to keep everything stable the Voltage from 1.15 to 1.2


Under load temps max at 80 degrees after an hour of furmark which is 1 of the most intense stressing apps.
WEI SCORES INCREASED AS FOLLOWING:
-------------------------------------------------------
AERO: 4.1--->5.1
GAMING: 5.4----->5.8

Frames in resident evil 5 and GTA4 have almost doubled.
Battlefield 3 is now playable to. (average 30FPS on mid-low)
Skyrim runs like a charm too! (45 FPS AVG)
just wanted to share!

Thanks, it is well known that the nvs140m is intentionally underclocked. I still get nervous at the thought of overclocking a chip that has a less then perfect reputation for reliability, but as long as you're willing to "pay" in order to "play", then I don't see any harm in having fun, but if you're not willing to accept the loss of your board, I'd consider some more moderate settings... but I look forward to hearing more, so keep us informed.

All NVS140M chips have a very high overclocking potential. My sample can take Core frequency of 670Mhz.
The most important is that it can take 450Mhz while undervolted to 0.9v from stock 1.2v, temperature by GPU-Z is 65 deg Celcius instead of 75 deg at stock voltage. Note that TP Fan shows 10deg lower temperature than GPU-Z.

TuuS wrote:Thanks, it is well known that the nvs140m is intentionally underclocked. I still get nervous at the thought of overclocking a chip that has a less then perfect reputation for reliability, but as long as you're willing to "pay" in order to "play", then I don't see any harm in having fun, but if you're not willing to accept the loss of your board, I'd consider some more moderate settings... but I look forward to hearing more, so keep us informed.

i have a late production unit + almost never shut it off so thermal change is kept to a minnimum

The late production chips are very reliable, rarely if ever fail, but if you're going to push one to it's max, far beyond what it was intended to do, then risk is involved. For example, a Ferrari engine can easily rev above 7000rpms, but the person who does this regularly will sooner or later be buying a new and very expensive engine, one that cost more then most new cars cost. The point is, if you want to play, you may have to pay.

I think as long as you are closely monitoring your temps you should be ok, I'm just sounding a note of caution.


ps. I beleve TPfancontrol uses board based sensors that get a better overall idea of the chips temp compared to the internal sensors which can be effected by hot spots within the die. This explains the difference in the readings.

my Civic can and do rev past 7000rpm ... LOL

anyways, congrats on coming all the way to the fun stuff. Mine can do 660 core and 975 memory, but I run it lower for stability - at 600 core and 950 memory. Been like that for years .. lol.

best way I've found to test it - go and play Team Fortress 2 - it's free to download and play through Steam (which is also free). This is how I found that after some 2 to 3 hours of play I would get a BSOD from time to time while doing at 625 core, thus I lowered and no further problems.

watch your temps though. I never pass the 80 deg mark. Well 76 actually

miro_gt wrote:my Civic can and do rev past 7000rpm ... LOL

Fair enough, Hondas rev up nice and high if needed, but they don't idle at 2,500rpm like some of the old Ferraris do...

I guess I'll be following this thread asking for advice once I'm done building my nVidia-based FrankenPad...

miro_gt wrote:my Civic can and do rev past 7000rpm ... LOL

Racers have been revving smallblock chev engines that high for decades... a design that dates back to 1955, but RPM by itself is meaningless. My favorite engine of all time is the Chev L88 427. It was first produced in 1967 and in stock format could produce 585hp and didn't have to rev that high to do it. The one and only L88 entered in Daytona 500 that year was laps ahead of the pack all through the race, but the car was robbed of it's rank in history when it was unable to complete the race. Never the less it forced all the competition back to the drawingboard, but their best attempts never were able to outperform it.

a bit of trivia... since general motors didn't like the idea of having these cars on the streets of america at the time they required this engine be combined with another option that deleted the radio and heater, figuring it would deter sales.

sorry for going off topic