RainMotorsports (Clutch's) ASUS G50Vt-X5 (Best Buy) Review

Could you provide more details? As many as you can!

 

old topic but...

I just installed a t9900 in my g50vt-x5 and im a little disappointed at the OC performance of this chip.

My old CPU would overclock from 2.13ghz up to 2.5ghz. Thats 266 fsb up to around 315. This new chip starts crashing at 298. I read all these posts of others saying the t9900 easily overclocks to 3.6.

Im wondering if the primitive turboboost feature is perhaps causing the crashes when it increases the multiplier from 11.5 to 12. Although throttle stop never reports a full a 12, only about 11.7. I get the 12x reading from cpuz, and I still cant go higher with turbo disabled. Or maybe my thermal paste isnt making full contact with the northbridge after removing the thermal pad. Too bad theres no temp sensor there. CPU temps are 40-60 while OCed.

I have the SGLEE t9900 with E0 stepping, which is supposedly best for OCing.
Anyone have any insight here? Im not leaving out the possibility that my chip is just on the lower end of the performance bracket =/

i want to add:

EIST (speedstep) may be partly to blame, but the G50vt has no option to disable this feature. So throttlestop cant fully control the cpu =(
I dont believe that the windows power setting workaround will allow throttlestop functionality.

How are you other people with t9900 upgrades controlling your overclocks? just setfsb and nothing else?

 

Can't speak for the T9900 but I've heard there is a small voltage boost when IDA is invoked, so your stability number may not necessarily be affected by IDA. I have no data to back that rumor up, though.

I still think a 3.42GHz clock is pretty good. I've heard T9900's going from 3.2 to ~3.45GHz, but nothing much more than that. In all these C2D chips it seems voltage is the limiting factor. My E8335 lacks IDA and DFFS but has an insanely high stock voltage of 1.2250V versus the T9900's 1.2125V. My chip tops out a little over 3.52 GHz, so for you to be ~100MHz off isn't so bad since you're running at a lower voltage.

I OC using SetFSB, nothing else. I sometimes undervolt with ThrottleStop but that's it. Nothing fancy.

 

Thanks for the reply. I guess im still getting an 11% OC. I wouldn't mind the extra few mhz on the FSB because its increasing my ram speed too, which with the fast cpu and ssd is probably my next bottleneck. The t9900 is rated to run 1.250v btw, you may be mixing it up with a different chip.

I'll rework the thermal paste on the northbridge sometime soon, since I used the random little bottle the seller included with the cpu, replace it with AS5 or something nice and put the little thermal pad back on.

 

I was going off my memory but I think it is in fact 1.2125V. 1.2500V is more than any stock mobile Penryn CPU. Here's what I just pulled up from Intel:

Intel® Core?2 Duo Processor T9900 (6M Cache, 3.06 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB)

Reducing temps will help with the OCing stability a little but won't let you go too much further unfortunately. I really think this is a voltage problem--in my experience on these forums I've found people gain a lot more from extra voltage than extra multipliers.

 

odd! you're correct, now that I have installed win7 and removed vista I see a different voltage in CPUZ 1.175 I believe (not on laptop atm). Hmm, not sure what was causing the incorrect reading before, it would still fluctuate and definitely hit 1.25v. I am starting to think that my BSODs at previous FSB clocks are caused by improper thermal paste application on the northbridge since the CPU itself seems to run fine when it jumps to 12x at 297-300 but will crash on 11.5 or even 11x. Hope im making a correct assumption here that regardless of multiplier, its the final clock and voltage that will dictate CPU stability at overclocked levels. Temperatures are well within limits.

My other issue is the IDA feature on the t9900, I read that throttlestop has the option to increase my multiplier to 12x and keep it there as long as I can disable the EIST feature of the chip. Only way to do that seems to be through a bios modification but I have not read of any other G50vt users modifying theirs for this purpose. Am I to assume that others with IDA equipped CPUs in G50vt simply allow theirs chips to increase the multiplier only when one core is in high demand???

 

Sometimes CPU-z reports different voltages than normal, it can't really be trusted absolutely but rather relatively (ie: your max voltage reported will be equivalent to your maximum rated voltage). Different versions of CPU-z may report different voltages, too. For a while I could only get accurate readings out of certain versions of CPU-z.

So here's my beef with IDA: I suspect you're limited by IDA and you can push your CPU another ~133MHz (probably just a hair less) if both cores are locked to identical multipliers all the time. There are two ways to do this, you mentioned one of them:
1) Disable EIST and have ThrottleStop force a 12x multi (cannot disable EIST on the G50vt), or
2) Disable IDA and force an 11.5x multi.

Realistically, you're voltage-limited, so it really doesn't matter what multiplier you get, you can always crank up the FSB further. In fact, #2 will give you a slight edge in performance because you are OCing your RAM as well. Further, the only case where you would see better performance with #1 over #2 is if your RAM or other system components just could not handle any more clock from the FSB. But since they have the room to OC too, #2 is a better option.

Does that make sense? It's counterintuitive: reduce the CPU speed via multipliers, but then increase the base clock (FSB). I encourage you to play with this a little perhaps, and try locking the multiplier to something like 11x, maxing the voltage, and then upping your FSB. If ThrottleStop can enforce that max voltage you should be able to OC the FSB more and end up with very similar CPU speeds as when the multiplier is maxed out. You will end up with a better ratio of CPU:RAM speed and have just a little more memory throughput.

Actually I just thought of this, perhaps the above is wrong: I've heard IDA increases the voltage just a tiny bit, but I can't confirm this. If this is the case you would get a higher OC with dual IDA enabled/EIST disabled, but unfortunately that's not an option with your G50vt.

Your other option is to pinmod the socket itself to increase the voltage of the CPU, which basically tricks the CPU into thinking it's running at a certain voltage when in fact it's running a few steps higher. Risky, but if you know what you are doing you can do things like make a P8400 run at 3.5GHz.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pll-pinmod-overclocking-methods-examples.html

Realistically all these changes are mostly "cosmetic" in the sense that you're really shooting for a higher number and won't see much of a performance difference except in some benchmarks. The fact that you've switched to the T9900 in the first place is responsible for your existing speed boost. But there's nothing wrong with cosmetically shooting for a higher number. It's what makes it fun

 

dtd00d, I appreciate your insight and find that your words carry wisdom. Few years back when I was buying an Asus business laptop for gaming, I was concerned that the GPU model wasn't of the highest trim. Fella at the shop tells me that in just one year its not going to matter which trim of the same model GPU I have, for which I would have sacrificed a pile of other features, and he was absolutely right.
You're correct and the same thing applies here, it doesnt matter if my CPU is at 3.4 instead of 3.6 or my ram at 890 rather than 945, I'll manage with a couple of less FPS.

In case I do decide to change my mind, you've pointed me in the right direction. Thanks for the feedback.

 

That's probably one of the most flattering posts I've received on these forums. I'll try not to let it go to my head. Thanks

You were lucky when you picked out your laptop that you got one that was CPU-limited instead of GPU-limited. Replacing the CPU is no problem, but replacing the GPU is a pain and on the G50vt, it's far from perfect (loss of fan control+HDMI out).

The way I see it, 3.3+GHz on a T9900 is excellent. If you really wanted to go further, you could pick up an E0 E8x35 CPU. These CPUs were made for Apple's iMac series, and run at a higher stock voltage but lack IDA and DFFS (basically SpeedStep for the FSB). This means they run quite a bit hotter and eat your battery for breakfast if you don't undervolt them (they undervolt very well). But if you're after performance over mobility, they are great.

So if for some reason you really wanted to get that last 150-200MHz, I think you could pull a small profit by selling the T9900 and picking up an E0-stepping E8335 SLGEB (2.93GHz) or E8435 SLGEA (3.06 GHz). Both run at 1.2250V. I can overclock my E8335 to just over 3.5GHz stably, and the folks on here with an E8435 can do about the same, sometimes reporting ~3.6GHz. However the heat from mine at OC+full load is tremendous; I am now using a heat-limited machine (the CPU actually runs at an acceptable temp, but heats up the GPU more). Just something to keep in mind.

So in short, you are running the most efficient high-performance Core 2 Duo mobile chip out there. No other chip could dream of breaking 3.3GHz, aside from the X9100 (which is considerably more expensive + runs hotter). At the cost of <200MHz, you get a balance of both worlds: your machine runs at good speed and good temperatures. A great deal I think.


PS: Thanks for some of the most-informed conversation I've seen here on NBR.

 

Long time visitor of this thread, just never got around to posting. Anyway the reason I'm posting, is because I found a way to get rid of the Lojack Computrace trojan included in the BIOS on this particular laptop. When I ordered this online, there was no mention of this software at all on the box or the system manuals. Personally I find it a huge void in my privacy. You can call Computrace to have them "deactivate it", but this doesn't completely remove it from the BIOS.

So here's the steps:

1. Download the latest BIOS 213 from the ASUS website.
2. Using MMTool, delete the two entries that have module id 35.
3. Save the file in an 8.3 format, i.e. "update.rom".
4. Reboot the computer and enter the BIOS.
5. Enter the menu "Advanced" and choose "Start Easy Flash".
6. Locate the new BIOS, in my case it was C:\update.rom.
7. Reboot. Congrats, you've just taken out the trojan.

If you still have the "rcpnetp" service running on startup, you can easily disable it by using the following steps:

1. Open up the Services Manager (Run -> services.msc).
2. Right Click on the Service and select "Stop".
3. Open up a command prompt (Run -> cmd.exe).
4. Type "sc delete rpcnetp" (without quotes).
5. Open up the System32 directory (Run -> %SYSTEMROOT%\System32)
6. Delete "rpcnet.exe".
7. Delete "rpcnetp.exe".
8. Delete "rpcnet.dll".
9. Delete "rpcnetp.dll".

When you restart the system, you will no longer have the BIOS reinstalling this trojan. If you want to restore it back, simply follow the above steps and install the original 213 BIOS.

Happy Modding!