Overclocking Drivers XPS M1530

Love this site, I'm glad I registered. I've been using the website for a couple of months but haven't had to post because it's been able to answer all my questions through searching.

I've recently undervolted using the guide here to get my temps down and managed to get it to 1.025 volts with a drop of about 12* on average.

I need to go out and get some new thermal past because lets face it... It's dell and it should just be assumed that after you've had it for a couple of months you have to replace the generic thermal past.

I use the ZALMAN Ultra Quiet Notebook Cooler Model ZM-NC1000 Black and it works good. I only wish that the cooler had vents further up top to get some additional airflow into the power source.

I'm waiting on the thermal past application to see what my temperatures max at but I was thinking of overclocking my 8600M GT.

My question is that I can't seem to find any forceware that will allow me to overclock. Every time I try any of the drivers recommended through this guide (which directs me to follow this one) on here the driver install package says it couldn't find any compatible hardware.

Can I simply use the latest drivers of the NVIDIA website? Or do I have to have the moded .ini files?

Also, is 80* to high to have your target maximum overclock temperature? Right now on the cooling pad with the undervolt it seems to max out around 75* and I'm trying to stay within 5* of that temperature even though the default factory temps are probably around 80* (I haven't checked them before the undervolt and coolingpad.)

And are there any problems that can be associated with undervolting and overclocking together?

Thanks,
Justin

For any others the laptop is great, yes it's a little on the high side with temperatures but it's a good gaming laptop. It's to be expected in my opinion and some tweaking is standard practice. I've had to replace my mother board and hardrive once however it was my own fault (rather my girlfriends.) Just don't leave your laptop on a pillow that blocks the vents for 4+ hours and expect it to stay cool. I should have tried to fry an egg on the thing. Anyways, dell support was great and sent out a technician within a day or two and replaced it no questions asked and no charge. I've had this laptop little over a year and I haven't had to replace the gpu contrary to what some people claim is defective.

 

You seem to have the same setup as me. If you want even cooler temperatures move the laptop further down the cooler so that the entire air vent is being cooled by the air holes. It won't sit on the cooler as the front of the laptop will have to come forward and sit on the desk BUT it does make temps drop by 3-5 degrees C.

I sometimes overclock using rivatuner and I'm using just the latest nvidia driver and it works fine with no problems. Clock speeds don't revert to stock speeds or anything. I did read that you need special drivers but the latest ones work for me so not sure what that's about? I can't use ATI Tool though because the speeds are locked....so maybe the special drivers are for ATI Tool...not sure. Stock is 475/702 and I can overclock to 650/950. While the increase in fps varies between games, the average is around 10 fps. COD4 only increases by about 6fps but in Dead Space is goes up by about 20!

Also, when overclocking, my GPU temps go up to around 78 degrees C. Without OC around 73. This is with undervolt and same cooler as yours. I did some tests and undervolt shaves around 3 degrees off the GPU since it shares the same heatsink as the CPU. The cooler shaves off around 10 degrees for me. So if I didn't use them my GPU temp would be around 86. Mind you I'm still using the thermal pads from Dell. Going to replace with AS5 soon.

 

Thanks for the reply. How long have you had your laptop? Like I said I've had mine for almost a year and it's really in need of some new thermal paste. On it's lowest settings my gpu will max out around 83* C! While not a problem yet... I suspect that If I apply some thermal past I can get temperatures near yours. Until then I'm not going to bother overclocking.

But the issue I have is Rivatuner doesn't pick up my newest forceware. Older versions however do work, so I just might have to go with an older version. An image is attached.

Nice to know about the cooler though. I had suspected it and while playing games I would move it down and notice cooler air coming out of the laptops exhaust vent but it's nice to have someone confirm it.

 

Hmm I just checked and I have forceware driver 185.81 which I only just updated to a couple weeks ago. I checked the nvidia site and the version you have is the latest so that must have come out just after I updated.

I've had my M1530 for just over a year now. However I've had the fan/heatsink replaced 3 times because of overheating. Temperatures eventually just kept rising to high temps again so I just took advantage of the warranty. After the 3rd time I kind of realised that it was just cause of the thermal pads/paste so now that my warranty is up I'll just change to AS5 when they get high again. So yeah if yours are high I suggest changing it because the high temps would be cause of the thermal pads/paste.

 

Ditch Rivatuner and install NVIDIA's own app - System Tools. Install the Performance Group only as the other two (System Monitor and System Update) are meant only for a nforce motherboard, but the Performance Group is the one you want to OC your GPU.

You can download it here and during install only install the Performance Group. Access the OC tools via your NVIDIA control panel once you have it installed. You can set up profiles, etc.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.03.html