Highest 8600m GT Overclock

Hmm, sounds like a reasonable new level to OC at, will try it out sometime.

60C sounds good, as for my temperatures.. i should move the phone, after all, its sitting near the left side cooling fan and obscuring the flow of air =P

 

169.04 drivers
625/550
3dmark06: 4845 (1280x800)

Temps approach 70C according to ATI Tool. Is that normal/safe?

 

Hey guys i just bought this laptop, was thinking of playing crysis in it, im new to this OC thing so....after reading some "how to.." things i decided i wanted to OC the 8600....

-Crysis (1024x768, medium settings)= 18-23 FPS- STOCK (475-702)

-Crysis (same res/settings)= 21-32 FPS - OC using RivaTuner (600-850)

Temp never was above 75c
Tried OCing it at 600/900 but when playng crysis i was getting lots of artefacts and it'd freeze forcing me to hit the power button (lol) so i tried it twice and after getting the 2nd system freeze i stopped tring.

So my question is....
-what can i do in order to rise my FPS in crysis without getting into game settings?
-talking about OCing, ive seen some of you have the core speed higher and the memory speed lower...why is that?
-if i do that is there any chance of getting more FPS in crysis?
-And finally....is there any chance my system got damaged when i OCd 600/900?....havent seen anything different and i dont remember of smelling smoke or anything.

Ty in advance.

 

Woah there, how're you getting your memory clock up so high? mine caps at 600 and you're getting it to 900?? sure its not your shader clock?
For me, my limit for overclocking is 650(core)/545(memory) on my 8600m gt.

 

Heres AtiTool with stocks....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17374&stc=1&d=1207622519

Heres the artefacts scan..(notice the stock clocks)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17375&stc=1&d=1207622519

And heres overclocked at 600/900 (artefact scan)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=17376&stc=1&d=1207622519

Noticed how it just went from 65c to 68c but not above those temps...now it didnt crashed on me using ati tool but when playing crysis it did....i checked temp and it was steady at 75c.....any answers to my questions?

 

hmm, well i have my 8600m gt running on an inspiron 1520, is yours the XPS 1530?
plus, 75 degrees is pretty high if you've only been running it for a short period of time

 

Yup mine is the m1530....and yeah actually 75c is the highest temp my lappy has reached, no matter what (lol), it actually stays near 70, but when playing for long priods of time or when theres an intensive graphic usage it goes all the way up to 75 but no more....sometime it stays at 72 (thats the normal temp when playing)

 

Ahh, that would explain the ability to clock at higher speeds.
well, first off you should lower those OC numbers abit, you don't want to jump up too much from the original clock speed. Adjust it little by little until you achieve an optimal solution.
As for higher FPS, one can't certainly expect Crysis to run decently at higher settings, especially on a laptop graphics card. i suggest compromising abit of the eye candy for more smoother playing.
Also, try not to have any programs running as Crysis is also dependent on the CPU. When i game, i usually exit all my programs and just run the game alone so the CPU doesn't get bogged down by all these other processes.

 

Ive done some research and found that if you run crysis with DX9 instead of DX10 you get a lot more of performance....and ive experienced it, with the 600/850 OC, 1024x768 res, all medium settings, ive achived 34-42 FPS in crysis (34 being when theres a lot of action, you know explosions, enemys, lots of foliage etc, not the first levels of the game), my question remains....

-should i be worried about my lappy being damaged when it froze after OCing it to 600/900??
-How can i see if its damaged or not? im really corncerned about this as i tend to have obssessive behaviors (lol jk)...im thinking about any test where i can check my graphix card memory functionallity or something?

-P.D.: sorry about ym english, not my primary lenguage

 

I got Vostro 1500 with 8600M GT & T7300

Stock - 475 Core, 400 Memory

I tried with 169.04 and 169.09 and both works but only in nTune (doesn't keep clocks in Atitool).

I managed to get 645 Core and 470 Memory and I'm using Atitool to scan for artifacts.

Does that driver matter in achieving higher overclock or it is just down to the card?
Also I see people here getting at least 500 Memory, but not with me. I'm getting yellow lines & stuff in Atitool's 3D view.

Also my temperature doesn't seem to increase too much. 67 stable with 3D view. I'll try FEAR in a minute.

Any suggestions? Thank you.

 

Any comments?

 

Got to 630/495 and got 4080 at 1280 x 1024. Haven't crashed yet so I'm expecting to get to 650/525 stable.

 

Which driver are you using?
And which program to overclock?

 

I got 3922 at 1440x900 (Basically the same as 1280x1024). The highest stable memory clock I got was 450, core becomes unstable much past 600.

 

I'm using the 174.31's straight from Dell and Rivatuner.

 

Well I was feeling daring and wanted to see what the absolute max overclock I could get without artifact/+75C temp. I used ATI Tool to find maxes for the clocks and for stability.

I got nervous so I stopped at:
687/1374/1033
Max Temp: 68C
Average: 65C

The GPU maxed at 687.2 as 687.4 was artifacting.
The clock on the otherhand was insane! It kept going and going! I decided to stop at 1033 because I was getting nervous, but who knows it might keep going...

I ran 3dmark @ 1280 x 800 (I know I know I'll do a 1440x900 soon, I don't have 1280x1024 option):
687/1374/1033 - 6543 (2752 - 2664 - 2200)
Max Temp: 72C
Average: 68C

3dmark did not show any artifacting (my eyes were glued to the screen )
I know I wont be running these speeds regularly, but I wasn't expending the clock to go that high especial without the temp increase...

Just incase there is doubt:


Edit:
Here is 3dmark06 @ 1440x900 -
687/1374/1033 - 5889 (2460 - 2309 - 2204)
Max Temp: 73C
Average: 68C

sorry for bigness :|

 

Very nice! Lucky... My highest is 4500... Repped.

 

Man, you people have such high 3DMark06 scores.. All I get is a pathetic 4225

Here's my config:

8600M GT DDR2 615/1230/521 overclock
Full Load Temp: 59°C
Idle Load Temp: 47°C
3DMark06 1280x1024 score: 4225

I never experienced any artifacts showing up at all either but I don't dare to go up higher.
BTW guys why are your memory clocks are always much lower?

 

What about your 2D settings guys?????

 

wow you guys that clock over 4000 is doin something right. I cant get over 3800

 

You got artifacts when you get over 600/530? Your memory clock is a bit too high. You might want to dump it down to 525 instead. But it depends if you get artifacts. I would suggest increasing your core clock to 650. Let your memory stay put at 530. It's quite high. Watch your temps. After getting to these speeds, run Ati Tool (0.27 works for Vista) and scan for artifacts.

 

4759 3D Marks!!!!
625/525 OC

 

What resolution, what drivers?

Thanks!

 

1280x800 and 169.01

 

You ran the test at less than the default resolution of 1280x1024. Your numbers are meaningless for comparison purposes.

 

1280x800 is the max my display can run at.

 

Highest i went is 660/930 Scored in 3dmarks06 at 1280x800 5932

Prob get more then 6000 when i oc my processor and oc gpu to 675/950

 

I just updated my Inspiron 1720 Overclock speeds....

8600M GT DDR2
650/1300/525 overclock

4338 3dMark06 score. 1280x1024 standard.

 

5671 marks @ 650/900 using 1280x1024 3DMark06 benchmark.

Very happy with the performance of this laptop, temps are looking good, even under load. I'm seeing 60-65C at high load on the GPU.

Using 174.31 drivers from Dell, which appear to be the fastest drivers I've tried so far.

 

Hey halkyon, forget if you already answered this in the other thread, but what are you using for stability testing?

I had been running at stable clocks of 610/950 for some time, however today I decided to play around and see how far I could go.

I was using some old-ish games for testing (UT3/Q4/COD4 are en-route, until then I'm oldschool...). Spent a good few hours playing NFS Underground 2 and Quake3 Arena, both with settings absolutely maxed at 1920x1200. Also ran 3dmark06 a few times, including doing a multiple batch run.

I worked my way up to 700/1000 clocks, which is pretty insane right? I've heard of other forum users running 980 so I figured 1000 was a small step, but 700 on the core seemed a bit crazy. But I still wasn't getting any issues in-game or otherwise, the only odd thing I noticed (at 700 core) was a couple of artifacts in the very first frame of a Quake3 round (but after that they were gone, and didn't come back).

I was still a bit scared though, so I turned it down to 680/1000. Gamed on it for a while, did a few batch runs of 3dmark06, all is stable and no artifacts / visual defects whatsoever. Temps reach 80deg in Q3A and 73deg in NFSU2. AS5 is en-route which should hopefully help shed a degree or two, but those temps are reasonable anyway.

Begs the question, how high can this thing go? Am I not testing with harsh enough software? I figure as long as it's fine in every game I want to play, I'm okay... but am curious if there's anything I should be testing to keep it fair.

Oh yeah, it got 5910 @ 1280x1024 in 3dmark06 at 680/1000, I'm sure it could hit 6000 if I tried. If this is as stable as it appears, I'm absolutely stoked on this kind of performance in a laptop of this size and stature.

 

Hey Udi,

At 650/900 I was playing Quake 4 for a few hours, all settings maxed at a resolution of 1280x1024. Running stable! I was checking HWMonitor for the temps of the GPU and it's going between 60-65 C. Impressive!

5910! Nice!

I'm sure it could go further, temps seem to be relatively stable at OC speeds.

I haven't tried OC further just yet, and you're right, this laptop could reach 6000 with even further tuning. Amazing laptop for it's class, still able to get decent 3D performance, yet maintain mobility, somewhat like the MacBook Pro, except a lot cheaper! ;-)

 

Have you tried OC'ing the processor on the XPS M1530, or know which clock generator it uses in SetFSB?

 

A guy on here OC'd his CPU using RMClock on the same notebook and it went fine. I'm not sure on the process though (I haven't much experience with CPU OCing) but he had his T9300 running at 3.0ghz. He said it increased his 3dmark score but only via the CPU test, so it wouldn't be reflected in actual gaming so much.

I'll probably try it one day myself, but I'm fairly sure it might be better to just OC the GPU in terms of gaming performance, because that will always be the bottleneck in games really. I say "just" because both the CPU and GPU are on the same heat circuit so I'm suspecting that overclocking the CPU may increase GPU temps, and reduce the possible clock speed you can run the GPU at.

Just a guess though, testing will probably confirm how it really is, be fun to try regardless. Apart from the heat thing though I'm sure the T9500's we have will happily run at 3.0ghz if required, and on a bright note the Penryn's run cooler than the previous gen too.

PS - do you think the MBP will OC this happily? I'm not sure if the cooling system is as good. I skipped it because it's a lot more money (and much prefer dell's keyboard layout + running windows natively) but I'm still curious how the 512MB 8600 equipped MBP will go against this laptop. I know the 8600 comes underclocked in that one from factory, hence my curiosity if it will OC as high.

 

It's a good point. I just clocked to 650/1000, and got 5867 marks!

EDIT: 700/1000 got 6130 marks! I've been playing Quake 4 for 3 hours now, and it's solid as a rock! Temps are ranging from 65-70 C on the GPU. This is perfectly acceptable, as the temperatures are not much less on standard clocks! (even when not in "performance 3D" mode, as shown in RivaTuner).

I couldn't see any artifacts, but I still need to do some longer tests to check stability... I'm sure the core would go higher than 650 as well.

As for the MBP, you're right about the heat - it does heat up pretty bad, even on the MBP I have with the X1600 GPU, I did manage to give it a decent overclock, but came nowhere as decent as the higher clocks I can achieve on the XPS M1530. As for the MBP model with the 8600M GT, I'm not sure how flexible they are to higher clocks, but I can assure you the MBP would heat up with the aluminium case most likely more so than the Dell. Comparing my two laptops, the Dell is the cooler running laptop than the MBP.

 

I don't know of any setting that allows OC'ing in RMClock.

 

Also, on another note - is there a utility that can be used to keep the fans going, and one that works with this particular laptop? One thing I continually notice is that when the fans go on, the temperatures go way down to 40 C on the CPU, and 55 C on the GPU. Having the fans going continually when gaming would be good to keep the temps down at these higher clocks.

 

I must have got a crappy card. can't clock the mem past 445, core past 625. Highest 3dmark was 3960.

 

You either got a 8600M GS or the memory is GDDR2, instead of GDDR3 which is what we've got. The higher memory bandwidth makes all the difference!

 

I got 5300 + on a T7500 using ntune.

Laptop was 1530 + 8600gt ddr3

I have seen people break the 6k mark easy on a T9300 +

 

DDR2 running at 600/500, standard default settings in 3dMark06.

 

Nice result for DDR2!

 

Nice, that's an awesome result. Are you running XP SP2? And 174.31 Dell driver still? I'll have to see what I get at 700/1000. It's great to hear those settings are stable.

Most of those people are running 3dmark at 1280x800 because they don't have displays capable of displaying the default 1280x1024 (3dmark changes the setting itself to suit the display).

I think at the real (higher) default resolution, the score halkyon just mentioned is about the limit. Time will tell, but I'm fairly confident our 700/1000 clocks are at if not very close to the upper limit the hardware will handle.

 

Running XP SP2 and 174.31 Dell drivers. I think this is the best combination to squeeze the most performance out of the graphics hardware. Also, 700/1000 appears to be the maximum RivaTuner allows for with the 8600M, as I tried to go even further but wouldn't let me... I'm pretty sure this is the limit though, I'm guessing any more than 700/1000 will result with instability.

Also, as a side note, I was playing Crysis, on high settings just to push this system to the limit with the higher clocks. I'm surprised to discover that even on the highest setting, it's actually playable at 1024x768, giving around 20-25 fps. The Crysis CPU and GPU timedemo gave me an average of 19 fps for each, frame rates were jumping between 20-25 fps. However, CPU2 timedemo gave a mere 13 fps, which seems right considering the "ice" levels/maps seem to drag the frame rate down on almost every system.

 

Yeah same as me then.

Strange though, I only got 6042 @ 700/1000... almost 100 marks. Is there anything else that might be different about your setup?

Wonder if I should do a clean install when I get the chance and try again

 

You've got the T9300 right? If so, then I have an extra 100MHz in CPU speed. However, I'm not sure if 100MHz would actually equate to 100 marks, the T9500 isn't that much faster than the T9300.

 

Nope I have the same config as you except with an LG wuxga panel.

T9500 @ 2.6ghz
4gb
200gb 7200rpm

 

Hmm, not sure.

I've installed quite a bit of stuff on XP now, so mine isn't really "clean" anymore.

Here's a screenshot of the results for mine. Which scores are lower for yours?

3DMark06 still doesn't get my GPU or CPU name right... It says "Core 2" and "8600 GS".

 

Wow man, you people with DDR3s... I'm so jealous! Grr.... Someday... just someday.... Once I sell off my Inspiron 1720, I'll get there. LOL.

My 8600M GT DDR2 results:
650/1300/525 overclock

4338 3dMark06 score. 1280x1024 standard. Windows Vista.

 

Considering my core is 50 lower and memory is 25 lower, 4210 is quite OK with me for the temps I get. Memory clock is really where the gains are at on the DDR2 model once you get to around 600 core.

Are you using ATITool (On highest sensitivity) to scan for artifacts?

 

Yeah it's actually the memory that plays around with the performance and score of the 3dmarks.... No wonder the 700MHz memory advantage wins for DDR3s...

Yeah I'm using ATI Tool (0.27) to scan for artifacts. One weird thing about this tool is that if you stop running the scan, and re-run it again, it doesn't seem to detect the artifacts fully even I can see some. I had to close it completely and restart it again for it to work.

Oh by the way, you're using XP right?