Overclocking for Noobs

Given there are many new M11X owners out there, I was hoping to gather some basic information about overclocking. To help start the discussion, some questions:

1.) Benefits of overclocking?
2.) Risks of overclocking?
3.) Optimal overclocking setting in the BIOS?
4.) Should you overclock both the CPU and the GPU?
4.) Additional programs to overclock? (Turboboost, Throttlestop?) (see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/524257-how-supercharge-m11x-core-i5-i7-um-cpus.html)

 

Note that I can only speak from the experience of an R2. The R1 should be quite similar, but I can't say for sure.

1. Plain and simple, things run faster. As gamers, this is especially relevant to us, as framerate is important. For more demanding games, overclocking can mean the difference between being able to play something well or it can be the difference between being able to play on medium or high.

2. I wouldn't really say there's much in the way of risks. I can't remember of reading of anyone in the forum who's fried something after overclocking. The biggest negative is that overclocking reduces battery life. Also, keep in mind that if the gpu fails an overclock (in my experience) you have to reboot before it will overclock again.

3. Optimal settings in the BIOS can vary. Personally, I have left TurboBoost, SpeedStep, etc. at their defaults, though you may find some varying opinions on that. The important one, of course, is the CPU OC. It is important to note that everyone will not be able to get the same overclock settings and run stable. Plenty of people can run fine at the full 166MHz and others can't OC at all. Realistically, you can start at either end of the scale and either increment the OC up until it is unstable and back down or start high and decrease until stable. Note that just because you can boot into windows at a certain OC doesn't mean that it will be stable under load. For example, I can boot a full 166MHz fine, but it will crash a few minutes into every game. The bottom line is to be patient.

4. This is a good question and I would actually say that OCing the GPU is more important than the CPU, but depends on the game. Performance can either be held back (bottlenecked) by the CPU or the GPU. Games that are most likely bottlenecked by the CPU are RTSs like Starcraft II and others such as Bad Company 2. So, for a given game, an OC of one component may be more beneficial than the other. The GPU is also easier to OC, as it is done in Windows. The process should be fairly similar to the CPU (I recommend starting small and slowly increasing speed for the GPU), except that you have to consider the core speed and the RAM speed.

5. To OC the GPU, you need software. I use EVGA Precision, but there are others that all do the job fine. I highly recommend Throttlestop. However, it has been noted that you will really only see benefits with a CPU OC and my own tests seem to confirm this, so keep that in mind. I would also recommend something like HW Monitor to watch your temperatures since OCing will raise component temperatures. I would recommend looking through some old threads to see what kind of temps and GPU OCs people are getting.

Feel free to ask for any clarification or additional questions.

 

Not true. With overclocking there are so many variables such as VRam/Core clocks, FSB, multiplier, voltages, etc that can throw the systems stability off. Especially when dealing with changing voltages you can cause major damage if not done carefully. Most of the risk isn't something that will permanantly damage a component but heat is by far the biggest risk with overclocking. As long as you move slowly, apply things correctly, and above all monitor temps then the risks are very minimal but they are still there.

 

The m11x feels like a different machine when overclocked. It's like night and day when doing computationally intensive tasks like gaming. You won't notice much of a difference in day to day use though.

 

The M11x-R2 uses Intel UM processors which are so badly under clocked when fully loaded that you have to do something to get some performance out of them. Even when fully over clocked and using ThrottleStop, these UM CPUs are still running a lot slower than Intel's regular Core i mobile processors so you're not exactly stressing them beyond what a typical Core i CPU was designed to handle.

Bios overclocking + ThrottleStop will make your M11x R2 perform the way Dell should have designed these things to run in the first place.

 

Uh...they're low voltage for a reason. If you want a good core i7 then maybe you're looking at the wrong laptop.

 

You're missing the point. They're /crippled/ low-voltage processors in the R2. There was really no reason for Dell to have done that for a notebook targeting mobile gaming. Power management, Speed Step and Turbo Boost would still provide the efficiency necessary to achieve reasonable battery life.

 

more performance
none, so long as you do it through the bios.
optimal depends on the particular unit
I do
I do this when gaming, no reason to do it any other time- imho.

 

Ya'll are awesome! Special thanks to capielloa for your thorough explanations!

 

Good thread, I'm still on the fence about overclocking. I'm getting lower than expected frames in Fallout: New Vegas, but thinking this can be attributed to the Dell drivers and many bugs still out there for the game.

 

Yes, they are crippled low-voltage processors. And I absolutely agree with the choice to use them.

Most things you do on your PC are not CPU-limited. Loading applications is bottlenecked by the speed of your storage system. Games are bottlenecked by the speed of your GPU. Only very few cases are bottlenecked by the CPU - namely CPU-based video encoding, and a handful of games (Civilization 5, the poorly-coded GTA4, and Starcraft 2).

So, there are very few situations where having a faster CPU actually makes a difference. However, having a faster CPU means less battery life. And battery life makes a difference every single time you are unplugged from a wall.

Having an 11.6" portable gaming laptop that would only get 2 hours of battery life is useless as anything except a laptop that you leave plugged in all the time. And if you were going to just leave it plugged in all the time, why not just get a 15" laptop instead? Going with an ULV CPU makes absolute sense to me on an 11.6" laptop.

 

If you're using the R1, I see no downside to overclocking the CPU.

Also, thank you kent, that was what I was going to try and say.

 

Actually they only crippled the top end. I don't believe there's any difference in power consumption when you're running ThrottleStop (in order to overcome the limits they've imposed on TurboBoost's /max/ frequency) while running Outlook, a few browser sessions, Word, etc. You're only going to see that difference when the CPU is under full load and that max frequency is actually being utilized.

The point is that they took away the top end and when you're running applications that benefit from that top end, you aren't generally doing so on battery. Again, I don't see why it was necessary to cripple them. I'm not disputing whether the ultra-low voltage was a good choice or not.