M17XR2 Overclocking Guide

[TheCodeBreaker]

Welcome to the M17XR2 Overclocking guide!

This is not meant to be a full out guide, I am sure Mandrake will be able to do a better job when he gets his system.

WARNING: I do not take any responsibility for damaging your hardware, proceed at your own risk!

Now for the good stuff.
The CPU's in the M17XR2 are no longer locked seeing as you can overclock all the CPUs using SetFSB. But that will only give you the ability to overclock BCLK and not the multipliers such as the 920XM and 940XM.

CPU OC
First of all let me start of by explaining what is in the bios. To enter the bios, upon booting and seeing the splash screen, click on the F2 button. Once in the bios go to the advanced tab, go down the options, to performance options and click enter. You will find four options available if you have the 920XM and the 940XM(Extreme edition)

Turbo Mode- Followed by the status
DDR3 Voltage- The voltage supplied to the ram modules
CPU VCore- The voltage increase to the cpu.
CPU Frequency Overclocking- the % increase the BUS speed.

If you have any other CPUs you still have voltage control over the RAM and the CPU.

This will be the same way for both the 920XM and 940XM, but you can follow the steps using both CPUs seeing as its only a difference of one multiplier.

Turbo mode should be on to keep the processor running at its turbo mode value, for the extreme edition it should be 3.2GHz. DDR3 voltage, I do not recommend anyone play around with this, as it will not increase performance. The Vcore is the amount of extra Voltage supplied to the processor, used for stability reasons for really high overclocks. The 5% Frequency overclocking will increase The BUs speed from 133MHz to 140MHz. 133*24(the amount of multipliers) is 3190 MHz, overall CPU Frequency. If you decide to use the 5% boost it will increase the BUS speed to 140MHz*24 is 3360. That is approximately 0.15GHz more.

If the 5% factory overclocking is not enough for you, Well I'm not done! The 920XM has unlocked multipliers. Download EVGA E-LEET tuning utility. LINK.
After downloading and installing E-LEET,open up the program and it will give you information on the processor name, codename, Multiplier, Bus Speed, core speed etc. Like the following.



Now comes the fun part, overclocking th cpu even further. A note to mention is that some CPUs overclock further than others. To get a stable overclock you are going to have to increase the voltage in bios, save and exit. By supplying more juice to the CPU, it will help it increase the mutipliers and have it running with no issues. Some cpus will not need to increase the voltage as much as others, some can overclock further than others. The main thing to bare in mind is not to overheat and damage your system. I highly recommend using a fan under the system for proper air flow and for it to be flat on a desk.

Go into the overclocking tab in the E-LEET tuning utility, and you will notice that the only thing you can only change the amount of multipliers, which is perfectly normal, and what we want to do. Increase the multipliers to 27 and click on "Apply Selection", Go back to first tab and check on the core speed and the amount of multipliers. They should be set to the same amount as below.



CPU OC 2
Using the setFSB method you can overclock any CPU in the M17xR2.
Download the Latest Version of setFSB that is shareware

A link to original finder of this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alie...ng-setfsb.html

First select the clock generator from the drop down menu, it is ICS9LPRS365BGLF and click get FSB.
Go to the Diagnosis tab and there will be a few values that are in a blue font.
It should look like this


Now to increase the BCLK you should do the following:

Change the value at 00 (00) from 21 to 29, click update and apply.
Change the value at 0F (00) from D8 to 96 or 98( both will work), select update and apply.
Change the value at 01 (10) from 31 to a higher value, such as 34 click update and apply.
It will increase depending on what you selected for 0F (00).

It can go higher or lower depending on your processor. In the end it should look a lot like this:



CPU Tweaking
After a long time of waiting we finally got our wish. We can finally increase the TDP/ TDC limit!!
Using throttle stop you can increase the TDP limit by right clicking on the running application and selecting Turbo Power Limit, from there you can increase it what ever you fin suitable and stable.
I got to 93/73 stable so it can only get better to others.
This will reduce the throttling due to the TDP limit in the M17x's bios but watch your CPU temps closely as they will scale up fast.
It should look like this when done:


GPU OVERCLOCK
Download the latest ATI drivers.
Download GPU Z
To overclock the GPU, there are three ways of doing it. You can flash the bios, use AMD GPU TOOL, or use a combination of both of them.

GPU OC 1
To flash the bios, you are going to need to make a bootable flash. Follow ZFACTOR' guide LINK:- how to flash your bios with dos using a usb stick:
To flash the bios you are going to need to follow Mandrake's guide LINK:-
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread230061.html

Sorry, for the links, but they posted it first, and it would not be right to take their findings and use my name instead.

When using ATI Radeon Bios Editor, I would recommend increasing it 10MHz at a time from 600/1050 for each to find the maximum clock speed of your cards. You should also increase the voltage of the cards for more stability. Proper cooling is needed to get the best out of the cards, make sure the temps stay below 85C.

GPU OC 2
For the next, GPU overclock, you will need AMD GPU TOOL.
This will allow you to overclock your cards whilst in windows, which will relly cut down the time of finding You maximum clock limit. After downloading ans installing AMD GPU TOOL, open up the program. You will notice two different numbers. Like the image below.



One is the Core clock speed(left), and the other is the memory clock speed(right). Increase it up to 600 GPU clock and increase the memory to 1050. Set the voltage to 1.1(the program usaully sets it up for you.) If you plan on overclocking you cards to the amount tick the little checkbox on the left that says, "Same clock settings for all devices". It should look like this



Then click on Set clocks, and open up GPU-Z to check out your new clocks.

GPU OC 3

The third and final type of overclocking the GPU, is a combination of both. Instead of having to flsh every time to find the maximum clock speed. Flash the bios once using mandrake's guide, but do not change anything other than the voltage. Increase it to 1.15 and then boot into windows and gradually increase the GPU clocks using AMD GPU TOOL.

In the end you should end up with a system running like this or higher.



Or perhaps you increases the BCLK, and had better luck with higher clocks
This Guide is not meant to be a full out EXPERT guide on how to overclock the M17XR2. This what I have been experimenting with.

Feel free to add any new content.

[Aikimox]

Very nice of you!
I'll surely need it soon.
+1 rep.

[TheCodeBreaker]

Thanks, I noticed that there was no guide, and saw lots of member ssking for one , so i wrote it up in the last hour

[Zero989]

What's the fastest the 920XM can run at using all 4 cores and hyperthreading?

btw, very nice guide

[Mandrake]

OK I'll say it again....you figure it out sooner or later...settings the multipliers to 27 on the M17x does nothing! Once you test it out properly you'll finally figure out what I'm talking about.

Regarding the rest of the guide good job!

[CFrolander]

So Mandrake, how about 26x, or 25x? Those have a good benefit?

[Mandrake]

So Mandrake, how about 26x, or 25x? Those have a good benefit?

Probably not. All that will do is allow turbo mode to hit that on one core when the system is NOT under stress. Once I get the system I'll see how high it can go. 140x27 is not happening. If that was happening his Vantage CPU score would be 22K not 16K.

[TheCodeBreaker]

OK I'll say it again....you figure it out sooner or later...settings the multipliers to 27 on the M17x does nothing! Once you test it out properly you'll finally figure out what I'm talking about.

Regarding the rest of the guide good job!

I know that setting the R2 to 27+ multipliers does nothing but i did it to try and beat Rengsey's score. You never told us when you get your system.

[Mandrake]

I know that setting the R2 to 27+ multipliers does nothing but i did it to try and beat Rengsey's score. You never told us when you get your system.

That's why I want you to test it. My EDD is early May.

[TheCodeBreaker]

Probably not. All that will do is allow turbo mode to hit that on one core when the system is NOT under stress. Once I get the system I'll see how high it can go. 140x27 is not happening. If that was happening his Vantage CPU score would be 22K not 16K.

You are absolutely right about Vantage, I think you said it was the TDP/TDC limit that was holding us back. But for 3dmark06, the score is pretty good