overclocking (up to nvidia spec) the 8600m gt.

i haven't been able to set custom clocks for the 8600m gt (in windows) using conventional methods.

i tried both ntune and atitool.

is there a better way to do this? can i access the "bios" (or EFI) somehow and set it before booting into windows?

how do i access that, if i can at all?

or, preferably, what method works for setting custom clocks in windows?

i am using the 162.18 drivers on windows xp.

before i get flame attacked, this IS a macbook pro specific question. for some reason the conventional methods don't seem to work with the macbook pro?

thanks in advance.

 

I would like to also add my support of this thread. I have Windows Vista and have not been able to overclock my 8600gt with either RivaTuner, ATI-Tools or NTune. I think if we put enough heads together we can find a solution to this problem. The MBP 8600gt seems to have great overclocking potential, I hope we can take advantage of it!

 

agreed. i can happily get some serious cooling going by blasting the internal fan at 6k rpms (or just turning on the overhead fan, which will make me freeze, but its worth it for a few frames per second)

 

AFAIK, you cannot overclock in Vista. The kernel in Vista is different from XP's, and blocks certain hardware access.

 

i am curious about windows XP.

 

Try different drivers. I think the 162-163.xx don't allow overclocking. Try the 165.01, but there are reports that it's a crappy driver. Or try 160.03, works for me but I run in vista.

 

MINXSHIN....were you able to overclock in Vista?

 

Yeah, I used the 160.03 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com

 

One thing you CANT do is control the fans.

 

Minxshin...what program did you use to overclock and how did you do it? Remember, you are talking to a newb here.

 

I used the latest build of ATItool, which is fully compatible with nvidia cards. AFter you download and run it, reboot your computer. After that it should read your card specs. On the very right hand side of the program are sliders for the core and memory clocks. Open the 3d view, overclock it a little and hit scan for artifacts. If you see nothing, OC it again. If you see little yellow lines, you've gone too far, and slide it down. I use rivatuner or nTune to monitor my temps though. PM me or if you have AIM, message me @ minxshin and I can help you out a little more.

 

I just got done with some experimenting. Used the 165.01 drivers (Vista) with nTune. Was able to boost my 3DMark06 scores by 10% just pushing things up near the OEM NVIDIA specs. Temps barely even moved!

 

Has anyone tried the 162.22, 163.11, or 163.14 drivers? I know people have had performance increases when using the 162.18 drivers, but I am curious about the other drivers as well.

 

How do the base scores of 165.01 compare to 162.18. If 165.01 is naturally worse than 162.18, overclocking might only bring it to level with 162.18. Good stuff guys. After installing who knows how many 15x.xx drivers, I got tired with experimenting and just stuck with 162.18. Looks like I might have to get back into the game.

thegsrguy: Are you running XP?

 

No, I have Vista.

I actually created a new thread about overclocking temperatures.

 

Gentleman, is there is risk associated with installing new drivers? If my computer crashes etc....will I be able to fix it? I don't know anything about computers, are we talking about serious problems if I follow the driver installation procedure to the letter?

If I install new drivers, do I need to uninstall my current ones first?

 

It is a good idea to uninstall previous video drivers before installing new ones.

If you have a MBP and use the 162.18 drivers, they wont cause any video issues. Even if they did, you could boot windows into safemode and change them. It wont present any problems for you though, based on the multitude of people who have installed 162.18 without any problems.

 

165.01 freezes my machine (on xp) so i have to roll the driver back.

163.14 or whatever it was (for xp) seems to be missing a file? so i ended up using most of the 163.14 driver and filled in the missing gap with a file from the 165.01 set (don't do stupid stuff like this)

it works, but i still can't overclock. i'm going to revert to a pre-162 series driver and report back.

i (and a bunch of other people) can verify that 162.18 works fine in windows xp.

 

If I uninstall my bootcamp drivers...and dont like the new 162.18 drivers, how do I get back my original bootcamp video drivers?

 

make a restore point before deleting your drivers. I've installed 162.18 on XP pro using the update driver button in device manager. Follow these instructions.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=33

you can find the vista instructions in the same forum section.

windows will automatically create a restore point before you start updating your drivers

I haven't tried it but you should be able to roll back to the original boot camp drivers now using this method.

 

uhh just check what driver you are using now. its 101.?

if you don't like 162.18, just load 101.xx

 

i am now using 158.51 and still no success.

i tried riva tuner, atitool, ntune, to set custom clocks.

regardless, they wont move an inch. stubborn clocks.

470 / 635.

i am in windows xp, not vista. any help?

 

Hi , with the driver 158.51 on Xp I do 4025 at 3Dmark 2006 1280*1024 on a mbp 17"
But with drivers 162.18 i do 4154.

I have noticed that the fan speed is better managed.

I will try to o/c after !

 

Hi Guys


Over the stock bootcamp 1.3 drivers for Vista on a 17" 2.4 MBP, what extra boost am I expecting to get with drivers such as 162.18 and 165.01 without any overclocking first?

After this then I will look at boosting with overclocking.

cheers

Dave

 

With the stock driverf of boot camp you will do approximately 2500 pts to 3Dmark 2006 compare to my 4154 pts with 162.18 without overcloking.

 

I had a pain over clocking the macbook pro. Well, that part was actually fun. The pain was unlocking the ability to set custom clocks.

I had the 162.18 drivers for a while, which lock out the ability to overclock. Then i tried using other drivers and i had major issues. In the future I will clean out the registry of anything and everything "NVIDIA" before swapping drivers.

The simple uninstall function is useless...

I found the upper limits, separately (with no artifacts) of the memory to be above 875mhz, and the upper limit of core was above 550mhz.

Increasing both at the same time (maintaining the 700/475 ratio) i first hit an artifact at 815/553, so i backed down to 785/532 and called it a day

I think that is a wide enough margin from the limit on both the core and the memory. Both are quite beastly, if i may say so.

Question: does the shader clock change in direct proportion to the core clock? ie. is the shader clock a function of the core clock speed?

I think it is but I could be wrong. Either way, I am REALLY close to an 8700m gt at this point. If apple put the 8700m gt in their laptops (and had the apple-standard slight under clock) I am pretty much certain I would be matching that right now.

Of course, the 8700m gt is only 17"+ (and thicker than 1")

Good news for those who would like to put the gpu back at the stock clocks. Those are 475/700. They are set to 470/635 by default. You should* have a LOT of room to push, but of course you are at your own risk.

also, changing the clocks seems to have no significant impact on temperature. They peak at about 80 regardless of what i set them to, even the low 470/635, all the way up to showing artifacts. Actually, thats not true, at much lower clocks (like the 2d or 3d low power settings) the temps go down a lot.

 

So what drivers are you using now and what program did you use to overclock? And what are your overclocked 3dmark06 scores?

 

i refuse to run 3dmark 06 anymore. it is pointless.

i went back to the apple default drivers (which are just 101.xx) i forget exactly what. i just wanted to see how far the card could go, and how much of a difference specifically the memory clocks made.

now i am trying to do a clean install of the most up to date and still over clockable drivers (158.51) i am having troubles. bagh. i will get it soon though.

 

Keep us up to date masterchef! Let us know how things go.

 

my system just completely freezes if i use the 158.51 drivers...

i am having varying degrees of success with different drivers.

anyone have one that worked for them preferably very recent but not one of the ones that locks the gpu clocks?

alternatively, is there a way to unlock the gpu clocks if the driver locks them? (i might try cool bits, any other ideas?)

 

I'd posted these scores in the 15.4" Macbook Pro Santa Rosa Review thread last month, but I'll repost them here, since you guys are interested.

All scores are with 101.34 default driver and overclocking GPU core and mem was done with the driver's in-built controls (Nvidia Control Panel > Performance > Adjust GPU settings)

CPU: 2.4GHz C2D
VID: 8600M GT @ 527 Core, 755 Mem (not maxed out at all)
RAM: 2GB DDR2-667
OS: 32 bit Vista Ultimate

Bootcamp: 1.3

Scores:

3DMark 03 (default settings) : 12,666
3DMark 05 (default settings) : 8,389
3DMark 06 (1280 x 800 res.) : 4,587

 

3DMark 06 (1280 x 800 res.) : 4,587

Please do the test in 1280*1024 it will be usefull !!!

 

I'm afraid I don't have access to an external LCD atm, maybe at some point in the near future. MBP screen res is 1440x900, so 1280x1024 is not possible on the notebook screen.

 

the 150 series drivers crash my system immediately upon installing, forcing me to go into safe mode and do a system restore.

the 160 series drivers block overclocking.

someone help me.

i am getting the same performance with stock clocks (470/635) and the 162.18 drivers, as i do with very high clocks (about 541 / 798) on the 101.34 drivers (or whatever boot camp 1.3 default drivers are).

counter strike source has similar performance on both drivers, but rainbow six vegas, for example, has a big difference on the newer drivers. i assume other brand new games have a similar performance change over the older drivers.

i would like to raise the clocks to maybe 784 / 532 or something on the 162.18 drivers. how do i go about doing this?

 

How do you access the built in driver overclocking controls? They are not present normally.

 

^^ Sounds like they used NVIDIA nTune.

 

You have to dl ntune

 

That's the point. It's clear that the 16x drivers are better optimised for some games / benchmarks than others. The problem is I don't think there is presently a way to OC with those drivers, and I'd rather not mess about with unofficial drivers for the moment, so I am ok with the 10x drivers for the moment. Of course Apple will release a newer driver revision at some point in the future as Bootcamp gets closer to final release. At that point, we can expect a nice jump in frame rates and these MBPs will really show their true potential.

I used nTune. It puts the tab under the advanced options under Performance.

 

right right. that works, but the new drivers won't let you change the clocks. it might be blocking it via the registry... i don't really know what it is doing.

obviously its not the video bios thats locking it out, because you can overclock with ntune or atitool, or whatever you want, assuming you are using the default boot camp drivers. i am basically giving up. i will just wait for drivers that are both good and allow overclocking, or a registry fix.

 

I just got new MacBook Pro 2.2 yesterday. Seems like it has even lower stock GPU frequencies:
Core 375 Mhz
Memory 502 Mhz
Vista Ultimate x64, using driver 165.01 (from laptopvideo2go.com)
3D Mark 06 = 3242 (1280x800)

with nTune I was able to change frequencies to:
Core: 470
Memory: 698
Temperature 60 C on idle and 61 C on 3d tests...
(both show green in NVMonitor - so it is safe)
3D Mark 06 = 3395 (1280x800)

seems like did not make any difference. Maybe driver is not allowing to change clocks even if NVMonitor shows it....

 

Ok - after i changed from custom to default clocks - it shows
Core 470
Memory 635

 

With Core 500 and Memory 756 i got 3517 3D mark 06. Not impressive but better than previous...Will try different drivers (maybe 162.22 from Nvidia).

 

With 162.22 driver you can not overclock.
3D mark 06 score - 3250

163.15 - no overclocking possible - 3317
both have visual quality much better than 165.01 (and simmilar score when not overclocked)...

tried 158.45 - but quality drops, and something is wrong with that driver - cause GPU temperature goes up and 3D score goes down...

Sticking with 163.15...No overclocking - but it is acceptable...

 

yeah i found the same thing with the 158 driver. i just fresh installed vista again and am going to try the 163.15...

 

WOW!!!! The 162.18 for Vista 32 are the absolute best driver of the bunch for the 8600m GT(and i have tried all of them). Only problem is that rivatuner/ati tool will not work.. Has anyone around here figured out a workaround to enable overclocking in these drivers?

 

163.16 - 3D Mark 06 scored 3030

 

Would
Core: 620
Memory: 500
be dangerous for my GPU?

 

Best overclock for card is (from default 475 400):
Core: 676 RAM: 551

Scores:
3DMark 2006: 4810
3DMark 2003: 13971
Crysis ALL MEDIUM 1024x768 average 28.33
Crysis ALL MEDIUM 1280x720 average 24.11

 

reviving old threads... for SHAME!

 

Is there a new thread for overclocking the DDR2 8600M GT that we should use?
If yes then I apologize.

Is this thread ok:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=216381