The MSI Overclocking Thread! (Stricly For OC)

Hello everyone, I have opened this thread strictly with the intention of over clocking in mind.

This means I will not be held responsible for any damages or failures that may occur in the preparation and over clocking process.

A lot of you here know the risks, a lot do not, the best way to use the over clocking utilities is to increase the FSB in increments of 10! No more no less, don’t try overloading it, don’t push it because some guy said it can do it, everyone’s chips are different, and you must remember temperature monitoring is VITAL!

First of all, you will need:

CPUID Hardware Monitor. (Freeware temperature monitoring tool!)
Found Here
http://www.cpuid.com/download/hwmonitor/HWMonitor_114_setup.exe

Second, tools to stress the system, this could be prime95 or Wprime tool.

Wprime 2.0 here
http://www.wprime.net/?q=download&f=wprime_200.zip

Prime 95 here
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103

Wprime is easiest to use, just boot it up and hit 1024, and I am unfamiliar with prime 95 but torture test is very helpful! (Appreciate any contributions on how to use this feature.)

Ok, as stated, here are the instructions for over clocking the GT725 via the program known as setFSB. ( Quad included)

It is designed to work on the GT725 (mainly MSI 1722 models with the Intel P,45 chipset)

Here are the requirements for software and firmware to over clock.

You will need:

1. The required bios with the number: A1722IG6.10S and can be found on the link posted below.
http://rapidshare.com/files/233584112/1.0S.zip


2. The EC version (for touch sensors) is 1722EG61.429, found below:
http://rapidshare.com/files/233584578/4.29.zip


3. SetFSB (Set Front Side Bus) from the website below.
http://www13.plala.or.jp/setfsb/download/ver22/setfsb_2_2_123_90.zip

The bios and EC firmware are from the 1722 Barebones or gx720 I believe but I’m not sure (hopefully someone can confirm)

Now that everything is in order, download all files, put them in a neat place so you have access to them.

Firstly, go into bios, load all bios defaults and disable C-State.

Second, you need to perform a bios update and ec firmware update, so perform the update or flash, whatever it is known as, when complete, again go into bios and load bios defaults and disable C-State.

Since I’m using a similar version on my machine, not the MSI one, I have had not needed to update the bios so I do not know how, can someone chip in here? Appreciate it.

What will happen is, you will loose function to the turbo mode on the touchpad (we can re-flash bios and EC firmware after, but I would suggest finding the bios and EC firmware before attempting this!)

When the flash is complete, we now have unlocked the limits that the MSI has in place (for the quad and duo!) but this means we can now begin slowly increasing clocks.

Start your SetFSB PROGRAM, and where it tells you to select PLL, you need to select the code.

ICS9LPRS113AKLF

When this code is selected, click the GetFSB and the values should be read and you’re FSB and core clock should be successfully read. At this point you have access to RAM speed and FSB as well as PCI speed, don’t touch the PCI speed, we do not need this at all and is best left untouched!

You can see the PLL version is input, and the GETFSB button has been pressed to reveal information


As stated before, over clocking takes time, and patience! It also requires you to be tolerant, if your Laptop cant handle the changes, don’t force it dam it!

Also it is suggested to read SETFSB read me, it has a lot of commands etc that can be used, you could even create run scripts

People have used this method (mainly folks over at gt725.de) and it works again OCing, too high and too fast, the system can crash.

Again all is at your OWN RISK!

Ok, so with the quad (duo core are just as important but you guys have OC ability) Take it up 10 mhz each increment until you reach say, 2.2ghz and run a test (Wprime1024 or prime95 + HWMonitor) then to 2.3ghz then 2.4ghz and so on, Asus’ record is 2.8ghz, There limit for this was also the ram, just like our limit is 2.4 so far because of ram, WE HAVE TO FIND THIS RAM TOOL!

Keep HWmonitor open at all time, make sure you monitor the temps.

And good luck over clocking!

Credits go to Msaw and Tester in the gt725 forum , i simply translated, and GPU (ATI 4850 tutorial will soon follow) Any questions, just ask!

Good Luck All.

Original reference - Here!
http://forum.gt725.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=228

Its German so it may need translation tools, but these folk tested the method and it ran sucessfully.


***********Updated********************
A user named rupp3r here in the MSI forum has created a tutorial to benefit us greatly! The tutorial covers installation of 9.6 ATI drivers which supposedly give great increase in gaming performance.

http://rupp3r.free.fr/gt725/tutodriveren.htm

It should also grant some nice results overclocking with Overdrive (Tutorial soon to be made for OD clocking)

**************************************
Personal Message - Taking in factors from some more recent experience, i can conclude that Wprime does not really stress the CPU components much, but rather uses the full power of the CPU that is available, to stress the CPU and RAM, the tools i reccomend are (Prime95 - works for CPU and memory i believe and gives them a thorough testing, and OCCT test which requires all the stock heating paste and pads replacing as this test cooks the Laptop harder then anything i've seen, also if you do run OCCT, you will come to learn that the MSI has 1 more fan stage that you probably thing doesn't exist, but when temps hit 90C on the Northbridge, this stage kicks in and sounds like it almost doubles the RPM of the fan - This test burns, be warned!)

************Tutorial********************
The basics of overdrive.
Overdrive is an in built system tool, built into catalyst that allows you to overclock ATI cards (Nvidia have similar but i will cover later), this, theoretically should be supported by MSI due to the abilities they give you to overclock the system by default, meaning this should not break anyway warrenty, only by flashing the card v bios are you really stretching the card itself and leaving it prone to damage.

Step 1) Double click the ATI button on the right hand side of the task bar.


Step 2) When it opens you should see simple messages asking if you want basic or advanced settings, set it to advanced (its not really advanced by the way)



Step 3) Click on overdrive and click the lock that will bring up a warning promt,


Step 4)Go ahead an accept that, now you will notice that the greyed out information has become active and can now be edited with.
So just go ahead and slowly slide the bars up until you either experience problems when testing custom clocks, or you begin to artifact, i noticed 8.6 drivers had some problems trying to take them up to full speed, but all the 9.* drivers can handle 550 and 900 without sweating, but be careful either way.

This can add a few frames here and there and shouldn't be used 24/7 but if you really must , if you want to turbo charge the overdrive feature, u'l need to flash the cards bios but i wont cover that...yet.

***************Tutorial***************
Relocking Overdrive

Well i know your probably wondering if this is do-able or not, but just for future reference, it is

Do relock the overdrive feature, there are a few simple steps.

Step 1) Open catalyst control centre and hit the preferences tab, when the menu appears click restore factory defaults.

Step 2) Press the windows key and R button on your keyboard, and type regedit in the run box.

Step 3) Follow the registry bellow until you see Overdrive5.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > ATI > ACE > Settings > Dashboard > Graphics > Overdrive5
When you click overdrive5 the two registries (Default) and TimeUnlocked appear, double click time unlocked and type never then reboot, simple ATI is reset to default and locked.



Like this ^^

Enjoy!

 

So what's the highest OC did you get on yours?
Great work btw

 

Well i managed to get a friends to 2.35GHz but it jumped the gun to 2.7 because of intel dynamic accel (need to turn that off :/ ) But we definately know that RAM is the biggest concern here, if we could break that, the q9000 potential is unimaginable!

4850 flashing guide will hopefully be uploaded tonight

 

This is awesome! Thanks catacylsm !

MSI GT725 + qx9300

 

I just wanted to confirm that BIOS and firmware versions are from MS-1722 or GX720. I'm using barebone MS-1722 and my achievements can be seen in my signature. I didn't use SetFSB, just the ordinary OC button, witch is set to +24% OC form BIOS. I'm sure that mine can do more, but the memory is that it pulls it back.
Otherwise very good job cataclysm. Hope this thread grows larger.

 

Jeepers over 4k on that mark is great, what is the clock speed of the qx now??

Hey Genna thats good news, in some cases using turbo + setfsb can result in even better results , this is mainly good because it allows the q9000 to be overclock, with ram replacement and timings set correctly, we could hold 2.7ghz to 2.8ghz stable, just like they did in the ASUS thread with the W90 model.

And Welcome to NBR ain.

BTW we'd need a FSB of like 1500 haha

 

Updated with two more quick guides as well as someone will soon test the RAM tool i found, it reads and writes the eprom that controls ram and such.

 

i love the turbo button!! i read somewhere that laptops are capped at 3.0 ghz some where. if i upgrade to a t9900 on my gt627 will i go above 3.06ghz x 1.15%? or will i already be capped. thanks !!!

 

So in order to overclock a quad with a 1722/gx720, you need to flash to the gx725 bios?

 

Darth Bane,
In order to use a quad core CPU on MS-1722 you need to update BIOS. Older BIOSes (before 1.0n) don't support quads. I didn't check what BIOS GX725 use, but I can tell you that updating to the latest 1.0s (you can download it from the first post of cataclysm) will do the job.

 

Actually, the lastest bios for the gx720 is the 1.0U. I already updated to it. The reason I asked is because you guys keep listing the 1.0S, which I assumed is for the gx725.

 

Darth Bane,
I don't remember right now, but I've read somewhere that in the latest version 1.0U there are less OC options. But the battery life is better. You will tell. That's why I'm still with 1.0S

 

What options would those be? I've looked at my options. Tell me which ones you think are missing and I can tell you.

Going from 1.0N to 1.0U, i gained some additional settings.

 

Its a barebone bios, not the gt725 as thats the one with the limit unfortunately. The P9500 CPU in the MSIGT725 can be Overclocked to 3.2ghz with turbo mode on and set fsb, but thats pushing quite far .

Im in the process of learning how to back up the bios so you guys can have a more up to date one (The Advent 6555 came with overclocking FSB right out the box) and the bios is farely new.

I think the only ability you will loose with this button is the overclock button on the MSI GT725, so if you already use barebones, you should be fine.

 

This seems like some pretty complex stuff you guys are dealing with as far as overclocking goes. So far on my GT627, I have went into the BIOS and turned my turbo button to 20%. Now, I'm looking to overclock the GPU a bit. I've heard the 9800M GS can be overclocked to 9800M GTS specs. I've downloaded nTune, is this all I need? What do I set core bus and memory bus to (currently 530 and 799 Mhz, respectively)? Anything else?

 

I thought it was a bios flash on the card itself, i shall look further into it for you

 

So does anyone know whats required to overclock the 9800M GS to a GTS? What specs do you set it to?

 

Some people use Ntune. I use zotac firestorm. Don't know about Riva tuner...

I have never gotten Evga precision to work.

 

I use rivatuner on a 7600go and it works wonders, even gives limits to clocks and such, it offers testing, manual clock setting (2d and 3d) and so on, i will make a tutorial on the usage of rivatuner.

 

I tried to use ntune. I went to gpu settings (core clock was 530, core bus was 799). I tried to raise these specs to 600 and 800, the specs of a GTS but when I clicked apply it just went back to stock.

 

EDIT: I just discovered i actually have the turbo button, which is good since I couldn't get setfsb to work anyways...

 

According to me is better to use BIOS flash. And YES it is possible to OC your GPU to 9800GTS. I wish I had one ...
All you need is nvflash. Download it form here. Use the program to read and save your BIOS. Make a copy of it and then make any changes. Always keep your original BIOS file. It not save to flash with new BIOS if you don't know what you are doing (depends what settings you've set). You can damage your card! What can I suggest you, if you still want to OC is to change only the core and shaders clock speeds to the 9800GTS ones. Don't change anything else.
Your core clocks are: Core - 530MHz; Shaders - 1325MHz, and 9800M GTS's ones are: Core - 600MHz; Shaders - 1500MHz.
Good luck!

 

SETFsb only works with certain bios', but its good you have a turbo button

 

Worked for me.

 

Interesting
Bump.

has anyone else tryied this?

 

update: The newest setfsb gave me errors, i had to revert to an older version.

 

I have GX623, and I checked the PLL and it's the same one as listed on the fist page of this thread, yet SetFSB doesn't allow me to overclock. Running 1=0s BIOS and tried with 1.0v before that.

 

The ram tool you need is SPDtool.
Or you can use thaiphoon burner.

Both tools let you flash the SPD of your ram.
That means you can change frequency, timmings, voltage and anything else.

It's not a great idea to change the voltage.


Also if you do a bad flash, you will need to tape all the pins on the ram except for the 4 spd pins and then "hot plug" the ram and flash a new spd to fix what you did.

Be carefull, and I hope those are the tools you wanted.

 

Hey moral, the majority of the tools dont work for notebooks from what i've seen, but have you managed to try any of this?

Its very good that we actually have someone a bit knowledgable in ram

 

Quick question - Do I use the page 1 instructions for a 1722 Quad Core machine? (Im fairly sure, but it says GT725 - and 1722) - I Dont want to use the wrong flash, of course...

 

Link to your cards details HERE Link to your dream video cards details HERE

These will tell you almost all of the specs of each video card.

 

Yes I have tried both tools.
They do work on my notebook and many other users also said it worked for them.

There are two issues you sometimes run into.

First they may not detect your ram. This is an SMbus issue, it can be solved.
Let me know if you run into it and I'll help you out. But it's not likely you will have the problem.

The second problem is more common. Sometimes the ram has write protection (WP) enabled. I'm sure this can also be fixed but last time I tried I failed.

But most of the time you should be able to use SPDtool and thaiphoon burner with no problems.

The safest thing you can do with the tools is increase the main CAS latency.
But you can do more. You can flash a lower frequency so that your ram will have a lot more room for when you overclock your FSB.

The other thing you can do is find an SPD dump of other SODIMM ram and flash that dump onto your ram so that your ram becomes like the other ram.

If you make a bad flash, you can save the ram (most of the time).
You can either try booting with some slower ram so that both sticks will boot at the slower SPD values.

But if that doesn't work then you would have to tape all of the pins on your ram except for the 4 SPD pins. Then boot with good ram and "hot plug" the bad ram. SPDtool should then detect the bad rams SPD and then you should be able to flash good timmings back onto it.

The one thing that I don't think you could fix is if you flash the EEPROM completely blank. One user did that and even after hot plugging, the ram was not detected by any tool and so it was bricked.

Anyway, try SPDtool (free) or thaiphoon burner (trial version or pay $$).
Before you make changes make sure to save an SPD dump of the current values so that you can fix the ram if something goes wrong.
Also before you flash, make sure you fix the checksum.

 

Aha, awesome, this could do with going on page 1

Could do 1 stick at a time, although my ram, hmm i could try actually going past 2.4ghz with my 6-6-6 hyundai ram.

If i leave the timings at 6, and flash down to 667 mhz, that would be pretty dam awesome.

If it doesnt go so well, then its most likely a Chipset limitation, i think it wasnt really designed to go past 1066..too far lol.

Will take a look at the tools in a bit.

 

Here is SPDtool:
http://www.techpowerup.com/spdtool/

Here is thaiphoon burner (official site):
http://jungle.at.tut.by/download.html

 

To anyone who tried this on a gt725: Did your bios say it's a gx720 or a gt725? (boot up into bios, it will say on the first screen)

 

Says GT725

 

why don't someone try 667 ram. Or a perynn CPU?

 

My RAM is set to 667mhz and I have a P8600 (penryn)

 

Hello,

Do we have a software to activate/desactivate ov/c? (to replace the turbo button...)

 

Bump to the top.

Found a way to overclock our 4850s (most likely other gpus) past the CCC Overdrive limits without flashing, effectively meaning warrenty not so voided by flashing.

Is there a way to edit thread titles?

 

Does it work for the HD3870 too? I want to push more than 10500 3dmarks THIS thing rox.

 

I believe so, i dont see why not, want to be my guinnypig tonight?

 

Could be ... Whats the trick???

 

Hmm its a real shame about the tool, seems to run the 4850s rather nicely, i still want them vantage marks mex the 3870 seems quite rediculous with that kind of clock!

 

Yeah... But it works great, temps are ok and Im almost matching the performance of a single HD4870 with my overclocks .

About vantage... I only have an ugly 1280 x 800 screen (I guess Ill upgrade to a 1900 x 1200 later I heard I could use a sager screen and it would work just fine) I dont think I could even run at "P". But Ill give it a try.

Can I use an external monitor?, Would it give me the same scores?

 

Use an external Monitor with 3dmark06 at 1280 x 1024. I know when I had mine I overclocked it at 750/1016 and the preformance was awesome.

 

Thanks for the advice, lol then it seems that these cards can be heavenly OCed . Ill try your clocks .

Edit: Crashed with those clocks ... Also using an external monitor cuts my performance around 10%, I ran the same test at the same resolution and got lesser scores...

 

Hows it cutting off performance?

I noticed a drop in vantage frames too occasionally on external!

 

Hmm I ran mine when I had it with and without an external monitor and the scores were pretty much the same. I figured those clocks would crash on you, I didnt use them to game though I used 749/927 and it stayed cool and the preformance gain was very noticable.

 

I saw a 1 fps drop, its the same as running a single test then running them all at once, i loose a frame there too