Need Mod / Overclocking Advice!!

[DreadLord]

All you modders and overclockers...

Anyone overclocking the CPU? x1400 graphics card? or RAM?

What physical mods did you make? What software did you use? How much can you overclock and still achieve stability?

...and importantly, what mods have you made to enhance the cooling?


I need some of you freaks to post some suggestions. My work just purchased a T60 for me, so now it's time to turn it into a fine tuned machine to support my side hobby of gaming! I don't care if it shortens the life of my machine, as long as it runs stable

[DreadLord]

Has anyone been successful in overclocking any component of the T60? Anyone overclocking their video card out there? If so with which program and what speeds are you getting without compromising stability? Any modders overclocking their CPU or memory?

I just tried installing ATI Tools and ATI Tray Tools to overclock the X1400 video card. ATI Tools crashed (blue screen of death) every time I tried to test for maximum GPU/mem, and ATI Tray Tools froze every time I ran Bench! and would never apply increased clock/mem speeds (went back to default every time I hit apply).

[ramian]

you can use an older version of Powerstrip to overclock the x1400.
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=29
Newer versions aren't able to change memory clock speeds.

[DreadLord]

Ramian, can't thank you enough, powerstrip vs. 1.63 build 540 is the only program I have gotten to overclock the x1400's core and memory (ATI Tray Tools, ATI Tools, and the most recent vs. of Powerstrip won't do it).

So far the benefits I've seen are fantastic. I used ATITool, 3d view, and was getting an average of 64fps. My default clocks were at 391/337 even though the bios sees them at 400/350 (I have a feeling IBM underclocks these cards since they are geared towards business users/stability). With powerstrip I have created a gaming profile so that I can overclock my x1400 card to 456/378 on demand. With that tweak my ATITool 3dview average got up to 74fps. After downloading and installing the latest Omega drivers I boosted that up to 84fps, with a 3dMark05 score of 2330.

I also successfully used notebook hardware control to undervolt my CPU by 10% so that it runs less hot with the same performance. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthr ... 293&page=3 My system is running completely cool and stable.

I would like to try increasing my FSB (i.e. OCing my CPU / RAM), but have not been sucessful so far. I'm not able to access the bios since this is a work computer. Does the T60 bios allow tweaking of FSB / RAM timing options? Anyone had any success OCing their CPU?

[christopher_wolf]

(I have a feeling IBM underclocks these cards since they are geared towards business users/stability).

Do they? I haven't seen it. Traditionally, IBM used to offer pretty good graphics cards and just left it at that. I haven't heard or seen any cases of the GPUs in Thinkpads being intentionally underclocked.

As for the FSB, it might be possible...but I have no clue if the rest of the board supports it. With the T4X Series, the FSB was pretty much locked down as far OCing went.

[ramian]

@DreadLord,

nice overclock of the x1400. I only bothered trying up to 432/378 using the latest Omega drivers and got a 3DMark05 of 2296 after which I just quit and clocked it back to default speeds 391/342 with a 3DMark05 of 2127. I didn't really notice that much of a difference in games and didn't want to un-necessarily tax my Thinkpad. I'm happy with the way it runs now and will probably only overclock if any game I might play (if I ever find time again) isn't up to my satisfaction.

I might undervolt to reduce temperatures. Would you mind sharing the multiplier/voltage steppings you used in NHC?

Thanks!

[DreadLord]

Sorry to take so long responding, work has been demanding.

I actually switched to RMClock 1.21 instead of Notebook Hardware Control since the latter was having issues (more on that later). The original multipliers / voltage steppings on my 2.0GHz machine were:

6x (1GHz) 0.95v
7x 1.0 v
8x 1.05v
9x (1.5GHz) 1.1v
10x 1.1625v
11x 1.2125v
12x (2.0GHz) 1.2625v

With RMClock I undervolted by ~.15v (where possible), so:

6x (1GHz) 0.95v
7x 0.95v
8x 0.95v
9x (1.5GHz) 0.95v
10x 1.0v
11x 1.05v
12x (2.0GHz) 1.1v

I set my RMClock profile to performance on demand, when I am battery, scaling up from 9x to 12x depending on my load. This means I am running at 1.5GHz (9x) and drawing the same amount of power as a normal machine would at only 1.0GHz (6x), which means more battery time and less heat. When I ramp up to full speed (12x), I am only drawing as much power as a 1.5GHz machine. I stress tested the CPU with Prime95, overnight, and everything is running stable and cool.

I would recommend using RMClock as opposed to NHC as a newer version of RMClock was released a few weeks back and supports duo core processors, whereas NHC's latest release was in January. With NHC I tried using dynamic clocking yet it when I monitored my actual CPU speeds they never matched what I put in (or if they did 15 mins later it would default to original speedstep multipliers). Also, when I mandated maximum performance, I would not get 2GHz, it will still use speedstep to the lowest multiplier (i.e. 6x / 1GHz). Even worse, when I looked at the system tray it would sometimes mismatch the voltage settings with multipliers. My hypothesis is that these problems stem from some incapatabilties with duo cores. RMClcok is much more robust with many more options. And the dynamic speedstepping (starting at 9x and ramping to 12x under load) has worked like a charm when on battery.

[ramian]

Thanks for your voltage settings. I'm trying to understand how RMClock works here, so please bear with me.

I've used the Auto-adjust intermediate VIDs option to set the VIDs which is as follows:
6x 0.950v
7x 0.975v
8x 1.000v
9x 1.025v
10x 1.050v
11x 1.075v
12x 1.100v

I have also used the default settings to set all my profiles and am using the Performance on Demand profile on AC while Power Saving on battery. I however do not see the voltage decreasing from the default (1.262V) even though I've set it to 1.100v.

I'm not really sure what else I need to do.

[DreadLord]

Sounds like you have done most the right steps (i.e. you put in your new voltages, set it to a profile while on AC and another profile on battery). Now what you need to do is go to your performance on demand profile, click on the AC Power tab. You need to check the 'Use P-State Transitions (PST)', then click all the multipliers you want it to use (i.e. do you want the full 6x-12x, or just a subset like 8x-12x). Then go down to the bottom and check 'Override current Windows power scheme with settings above' and hit apply. Do the same for your power saving profile, battery tab. Finally, make sure on the management page make sure 'run application automatically when windows session starts' and 'start application minized to system tray' are both checked and hit apply.

Did that make sense / work?

[wareynolds]

So, if I do this for the battery performance, I will get pretty much same performance with some battery savings.

If there a way to overclock while on AC so I can get performace boost? If I understand this I am just undvolting and no overclocking.

[ramian]

@DreadLord,
Thanks for the tips. I've been running undervolted for the past few days now and things have been stable so far. How much battery savings have you achieved?

@wareynolds,
You're right, you should hope to get battery savings with the same performance when you undervolt. As far as I know, there isn't a way to overclock the Core Duo as of yet. I could be wrong though. Anyone?

[bim]

What value did you use in "Target CPU usage level %"?

According to Rightmark utility help:

Code: Select all

# CPU load - shows actual CPU load (i.e., the ratio of "active" processor cycles to the total processor cycles per given amount of time). This value is measured via CPU-specific performance monitoring counters and represents true CPU load, i.e., the amount of time the CPU spent in "non-asleep" state.
# OS load - shows CPU load level as reported by the OS, in a manner similar to Windows Task Manager.
NOTE: Due to the differences in the nature and the source of the measurements, as well as the detection accuracy, the displayed CPU load and OS load values may not match. A mismatch of several percents between these values should be considered normal. Also, systems containing logical CPUs may show up to 50% mismatch between these values. This is because the OS Load measures the load of the given logical processor, while the CPU Load shows the load of the physical processor/core containing this logical processor.

By using default 50% processor were constantly changing mode from 6 to 12 and back. CPU load maybe ~70 when OS load is ~10. I tried with value 80 and it looks better, but how this should be set?