8400M GS Energy Saving

First thing to do is probably say hello to all of you
I bought an XPS M1330 from Dell, it hasn't shipped yet but I am already trying to tweak it A friend of mine already got one, so we are optimizing.

Well the plan is to get it as silent and energy efficient as possible. We've come to the point where the 8400M GS gets too hot and
a) sucks more power then needed, while being on the desktop and
b) gets too hot which causes the fan to go off...

We have tried different drivers but cant really get that Powermizer to work properly..It seems, that the Powermizer does not really do his job in the low - 3D environment (Aero) and does not clock down the graphics card far enough.
Tried Ntune and Rivatune, which work well for the clocking part, BUT we can't change the volting.
Is there any way to "under volt" the 8400M?

Thanks!

 

if you flash the vga card's bios you can...... but i think that will void your warenty and it may also not work on lappys

 

Well, just hypothetically where would I get such a Bios
Any other way?

 

Anyone?*bump*

 

As you can see in the attached screenshot from the -current- Nvidia driver control panel menu, Powermizer is not controlled via a Powermizer menu by default. It's controlled via Windows power management settings now (if Vbios is enabled to allow it and proper driver is installed).

Hope this helps.

 

I am sorry, but I dont get your point. Powermizer just does not work under Vista?

 

*bump* again

 

Correct. Depending on how interested you were, there is quite a bit of literature here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/powermgmt/default.mspx

 

Well tried Windows XP now..But the Powermizer still does not change the voltage of the 8400M GS.. This seems to be the main problem.
Is it generally possible to change the volting / undervolt the 8400M GS?
Thank you for that link btw jaxx1

 

For WinXP Powermizer should indeed exist in the Control Panel.

How are you determining whether it works or not?
Also, are you using a DELL driver, A modified Desktop driver (such as one from laptopvideo2go or modding the INF yourself?) ?
Please post details of your driver version etc. and how you installed it here.

Also, system BIOS version?

Given enough patiance, you can get it to work on winXP.
Using NTUNE to view the gpu performance + voltage is likely the best utility, but I can provide that info as appropriate.

 

Nvidia describes that Powermizer works. But it is regulated not by an own Panel, but by the energy-settings-panel of Vista. Chapter: Vista Power Management Settings...
http://www.nvidia.co.in/object/IO_26269.html

Windows Vista PowerMizer7.0
High Performance (Vista) >> Maximum performance (Powermizer)
Balanced (Vista) >> Maximum performance (Powermizer)
Power Saver (Vista) Balanced (Powermizer)

They maintain this at least. Or a not very efficiently conversion? I dont know...

 

I have the 8600, I've saved energy by underclocking the vid card.

 

... by using Rivatuner ?

 

Using ATI Tool ... went from 2:30 to 3:00 by underclocking the vid card that much.

 

To Abgar's post for Powermizer vista controls, that is 'usually' correct.
Some OEMs (not sure if Dell still does this, they used to, and Lenovo still does on some systems) actually change the registry keys that pertain to the power-state settings.

This is typically done when you have a power setting such as "Energy Star 4" or "Dell Recommended". In these instances, you're better off manually keeping on eye on the voltage + the clock speeds to see if they are working. As before, Ntune works great for this and it is from Nvidia free.
Rivatuner or Atitool have mixed results for providing data (atitool in particular is awesome for ati advanced video driver settings that ati does not normally expose). The latest gen of mobile gpus might be a bit...awkward, but new versions are always being released. I can't keep up w/ their development as much as I used to.

 

Well it is possible to manually underclock the 8400m, but that does not change the temperatures much... What should change the temperatures is changing the voltage, which is not possible.
I tried to use Nibitor, but it wont let me change anything in the VGA bios.
So the main problem are the voltages...

 

So does underclocking not save energy?

 

Not much as the same voltage is being pumped through the card. Although a t9300 (2.5Ghz) running in its lowest state of 600Mhz obviously saves a fair bit of power but that's a huge reduction in clock speed.