M15x GPU Overclock Thread

what kind of temp is the danger zone for 260m gtx??

 

In bios A06 when you awaken your beast from sleep mode, sometimes it turns on stealth mode. this happens to me anyway. i hate stealth mode. seems pointless in any situation.

i would stop once it reaches 80-85* any higher and it could effect the longevity of the card.

 

I don't use sleep, but that must be a pain. Try out the Stealth Mode Indicator program so you can double check whether or not it's still on at any given time.

*LINK*

I wish Stealth Mode should only enable itself when it detects an insufficient power supply.

 

if the card breaks during ocing due to high temp this would void the warranty right?

 

yes. Dell holds no resposibility for damage done by overclocking. If you fry your card though i would think that if you just told them you were upgrading your card, they wouldnt know you fried your old card.

 

is 620/1550/1010 okay for gaming over clock? temps are at 75-80C
seems to be stable.

 

yeah that temp should be fine. Just don't go over 85. Other says 90 but for me 85 just to be safer.

 

Yeah 85 should be max. Although your temps are kinda high its this good. talked with a dell rep about oc'ing. Actually he brought up the subject, but he said software oc are ok. He told me to oc my 260 with Riva tuner, Hahaha to help with the throttling.

 

Hey guys. I want to stop using rivatuner and start using amd gpu clock tool. The only problem I have is that I have never understood the interface. I just want to OC my gpu a little, how do I go about doing this? Any time I try to set the clocks my screen just goes black and there is nothing I can do but do a hard reset.

 

What clocks are you using? Amd clock tool is one of the simplest oc tool to use.

 

It doesn't matter what I use. As soon as I click "set clocks" my screen just goes black...

 

Did you try to delete and reinstall it yet?

 

This is the third time I have installed and tried to play with it, with the same results. I have to be missing something. Do I have to do anything with the voltage? I already flashed the VBIOS to 1.15V

 

Set the voltage to the highest level available from the drop-down box BEFORE setting the higher clocks. Usually avoids the problem, which is a side effect of PowerPlay, primarily with Dell drivers.

 

I don't understand. I can't clock to the same clocks that rivatuner used to let me. I made 915/1150 with rivatuner and if I try to do that here it fails. I can go up to 915 but the ram won't go up to 1150. Why?

 

The same issue happens with me

 

I just used msi afterburner. Very easy to modify it to accept the 5850m and it will let me raise the clocks up to what I could with rivatuner. I posted the score difference between the new and old drivers and VBIOS and BIOS over in the benchmarking thread.

 

sorry for this noob question but where can i change my voltage ? is it in bios ? and should i change it to the highest volt avaiable ? I already flashed the voltage following the throttling fix thread.

 

the voltage change is only done with a vbios flash to your gpu. sounds like you done it already.

 

^What he said^

 

Thanks,

so i guess i already did all i can for my lappy. OCed, throttle fix, voltage flash. Any more that others can think of ?

I'm talking about performance of course

 

you look good, have you been using throttle stop? for the gpu thats pretty much all you can do.

 

seems that way, thanks inap

 

Just tried the new MSI Afterburner. Works very nicely for the 5850 after a simple modification to the config file. I was also able to o/c slightly higher than I can with AMD Clock Tool, which has gotten hinky for me with the newest drivers and/or the A07 BIOS.

 

Yeah. I really like the program. It seems a little bloated at first because of the unecessary themes and such but it works well. I would definitely reccommend it for anyone who doesn't like AMD GPU Clock tool and can't get rivatuner to work.

 

I'm noticing terrible OC support on the latest 266.58 drivers. I've even upped the voltage on my card to 1.03v, but I can't seem to get stable clocks any more. I used to get about 690/1080/1700, but now I'm struggling even at those clocks. I'm getting occasional graphical glitches here and there, and I've had some games crash a few times. I'm trying to get it stable at 700/1100/1700. It works for the most part, but I do occasionally see some kind of artifact (I've seen a lot of weird artifacts on my taskbar, it happens every now and then). So far no crashes at 700/1100/1700, but it's still not that stable. Any suggestions?

I guess I could try uninstalling my drivers, doing a complete driver sweep, then reinstalling the drivers and the nvidia performance panel. I'd hate to do all that work only to find that it didn't do any good though

 

Guys i am trying to over-clock my 5850 to 750/1050 with MSI Afterburner, but i am not able to up the voltage from v1.0 to v1.05. I have edited the MSIAfterburner.cfg file to enable "unofficial over-clocking" but i am still not able to up the voltage, any suggestions ?

 

Hai there!
I can see that this topic had gone a bit cool unlike my GPU!

Now I am testing out my m15x for an incoming overclock but I have noticed that if I play a lot of SC2 on highest settings my GPU temp reaches 67-68. That doesnt seem like a lot of space for safe OCing am I right?
So the questions are:

Is the temp of 68 before OCing a normal one or should I go for a deep clean 1st and change the mx-2 to mx-3 on my GPU.

After reading through the topic I think I will experiment a bit with the GPU settings but what temp would u suggest as proper safe? I guess 75 should be very safe on full Crysis Warhead full HD Enthusiast settings?

In case it helps my specs are:
Core-i7 Q740M @ 1.73GHz
GTX 260M

 

Yep, I mean if you hit 90 start getting scared Otherwise, anything under 85C (under 80 if you want to be safer) should be fine.

 

You will have to edit your vbios and reflash the card to increase the voltage for 3d clocks to 1.05v. Sorry for the late reply.

 

I am running stable at 700/1700/1100. Played loads of games etc but i do remove the bottom of the laptop for extra cooling with a custom built cooler with 3 80mm fans 2000rpm max 80cfm. temperature is around low 70s. anybody know how to overlcock this further. voltage 1.03 used nibitor 5.8. I stress the card as a run dual screen watching videos and gaming and no problems.

 

Does ATI Tools work ok on the 5850?

 

Trixx v4.0 works much better. Sapphire Technology - TriXX Tweak Utility.

 

Hey Guys,

Just some feedback on my overclocks for gaming. Throttlestop and AMD GPU clock tool seem to work incredibly well for me.

920xm - Gaming - stable at 26x across all cores
5850 - 715mhz core, 1050mhz memory - Anything higher than this and i get blue screens, so im not sure if its a power issue with my 920xm power draw being too high at 26x across all cores, or whether other software would help me to OC the GPU better.

Throttlestop is AMAZING though. Its completely transformed gaming for me. I dont even feel like im playing on a laptop anymore, it feels like i have the power of a desktop! I couldnt recommend it anymore.

 

Hey Rev,

Does Trix work much better than AMD GPU clock tool? In what sense?

Thanks,

Ryan

 

26x across all cores for gaming... what TDP setting do you use?

The BSODs probably aren't caused by power limitation... I never had a BSOD because of this afaik, even when the power draw was 170W and above.
Every GPU behaves a bit different, maybe you're already at the limit... you could raise the voltage a bit, then you should be able to clock higher (stable).

Trixx has theoretically the ability to set the voltage, I'm not sure whether it works as it seems I can't adjust the voltage of my card, but it's worth a try. Trixx is really easy to use and more up to date than AMD GPU clock tool, it's really a nice overclocking program.
You can verify the voltage change with GPU-Z. Be careful, try 1.05 for the beginning, this should already help. 1.10 is a more agressive setting and will also produce more heat. 1.15 is possible, but only suited for benching imo, that's pushing the card quite hard and it's getting really hot.

In case you can't adjust the voltage with Trixx you could still flash a modified vbios to make the changes.

 

Im using 92w for the TDP, and 80 for the TDC. I havent monitored the temps, but everything seems to be running fine. I do run some games on 26,26, 22,22 though, just incase over heating does become an issue, and its fast enough at those speeds anyway.

The GPU voltage is already at 0.9v for 2d, and 1.0v for gaming with the 3d clocks, however theres no option in AMD GPU clock tool to go higher than that. Even without my CPU overclock, the max that it will let my OC my GPU is 715,1050 before blue screening, so its either the limit on my card, or the voltage needs increasing to bring it higher. I will have to look into this

 

26,26,22,22 will be fine, you could even lower the TDP with these settings, but I doubt 26x is possible with 92W TDP when the system is already hot from gaming. You'll probably get some thermal throttling when there's a lot of load on the CPU for a while, 26x across all cores really heats up the CPU.

24x is possible for gaming without problems, a TDP of about 82W will probably be enough, I never used higher settings for gaming so it may work but you have to test a bit. I'm pretty sure you get some throttling with 92W and 26x on all cores (though as long as you don't realize the throttling it won't be too bad )

 

Although most 5850m's will easily exceed 715 at stock 3d voltage (1.0v), cards vary. In any event, it sounds like you need to increase voltage to increase the overclock. Right now, there are two options -- amend the vbios and reflash the card or use TriXX, which I referred to earlier. With TriXX, go to the Overclocking tab, use the slider to increase voltage to 1.05v and then increase Core Clock to 750Mhz. Click Apply and the new settings are live. Use GPU-Z to confirm that they were accepted. On my card, I can o/c up to 850-875 at 1.05v; above that (900+), it needs 1.15v, but you should not expect those higher levels with the same voltage. When you hit the limits at 1.05v, increase to 1.10v and try to go higher. It's a matter for experimentation.

Edit: If you're going to o/c either the CPU or the GPU, or both, you need to keep track of your temps. HWiNFO32 is good and allows you to track both on one screen. GPU-Z and RealTemp are good standalone utilities. Your choice, but get something or you'll be flying blind.

 

Thanks for the advice Rev! Im busy writing up my dissertation for uni at the moment, but once all the work is out of the way with, i will give this a go. I didnt realise that the 5850 clocks could go that high, the higest that ive seen on this forum is 800.

I currently use a cpu monitoring widget on my home screen which has realtemp embedded into it, so i can just monitor temps withthat. I never really check them during gaming though, but im never concerned when i see the temps after coming off any games.

 

Hi guys,

Above solution works for me. Just wondering do we know why it happens?

Got to do it everytime I want to OC.

 

Don't use rivatuner, there are better tools. What GPU do you have?

And about the stealth mode... it's buggy, nothing we can do about. Though it doesn't happen that often with my system... try a power drain (aka M15x panacea ), may help.

 

Thanks - M15x with 260m using EVGA. Will try the power drain too though.

 

@godber69 -- Download and install the utility StealthModeIndicator, created by Wattos, a former member. See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/463382-stealth-mode-indicator-10.html#post6592496. Then create a shortcut to the application, run the program, right click on the green Alienhead icon in the task tray and check Auto-Fix, then drag and drop the shortcut into your Startup folder so that it starts each time Windows is loaded. Your Stealth Mode issues will be 99% gone.

 

^^^ ya, stealth mode indicator is a must have for all M15x users.

Personally, I like MSI Afterburner better than any other OC tools out there.

Cheers

 

GPU temperature shoots upto 98.6 C while playing games.

What could be the possible reason.

 

wow that the highest rpms ive seen on the fans, u seriously need to redo the thermal paste on both cpu and gpu....

 

a) Dirt, dust and hair clogging up the vents and GPU fan, or
b) Thermal paste/pads on the GPU that have deteriorated to the point that they do not adequately facilitate cooling and need to be replaced.

Start by removing the bottom panel and cleaning the vents and fan. YouTube - Cleaning the Alienware M15x

 

i need some help with amd gpu clock tool, i set the mem clock and the screen turns black blue and then i freak out and turn it off lol. any suggestions?

 

Use Sappire Trixx. Much easier.