Overclocking the GT 540M

[rogsh]

There's always a risk when you overclock. Generally a mild OC is pretty harmless, but when you start living on the bleeding edge, system stability starts getting sketchy. It's rare that an OC will actually break something, but it can happen. Usually though, you end up with an unstable system and/or graphics anomalies that cause you to back off on the gpu speed until they go away.

Mmm I see... but would a mild OC improve the gaming performance? Or the difference would be minimal?

Thanks!

[acruxksa]

Mmm I see... but would a mild OC improve the gaming performance? Or the difference would be minimal?

Thanks!

Honestly, I don't think you would notice the performance difference. Or at the very least, the performance difference wouldn't be enough to offset the possible instability.

I think the best course of action is to either use a lower resolution or reduce some game detail settings.

The GT540M is a respectable video card for a laptop, but at 1080P, it's never going to be anything more than OK for gaming. It's a compromise solution that does many things OK, but falls short of being great at a couple tasks.

I'm not against overclocking, in fact my computer hobby grew out of overclocking. The difference though is that we have much more control over desktop systems. Laptops offer extremely limited flexibility when it comes to cooling options, which severely limits their overclocking potential. Also they suffer from their mobility because in general you really don't control the environment you use your laptop in like you can control your desktops environment. This assumes you actually bought your laptop because of it's portability. If you bought it to be a desktop replacement, you probably should have gone for one of the larger systems with a better gpu.

[rogsh]

Honestly, I don't think you would notice the performance difference. Or at the very least, the performance difference wouldn't be enough to offset the possible instability.

I think the best course of action is to either use a lower resolution or reduce some game detail settings.

The GT540M is a respectable video card for a laptop, but at 1080P, it's never going to be anything more than OK for gaming. It's a compromise solution that does many things OK, but falls short of being great at a couple tasks.

Thanks a lot for the explanation.... I think I better don't overclock and take the risk... instead, I will reduce the resolution

Regards

[acruxksa]

Thanks a lot for the explanation.... I think I better don't overclock and take the risk... instead, I will reduce the resolution

Regards

NP, I edited my post above quite a bit, but you got the point.........blame the Sambuca. Took me a bit to get my thoughts composed.

[Neubeehunhun]

Mmm I see... but would a mild OC improve the gaming performance? Or the difference would be minimal?

Thanks!

Depends if you really need those extra fps or higher setting in game, or whatever yo might do with your GPU.

WoW with stock clock ran at ~20 fps with my custom setting, which was acceptable but still choppy. With my current clock it runs at 30+ fps, often 35+, which looks smooth. Totally worth it for me.

[NoSlow5oh]

Mmm I see... but would a mild OC improve the gaming performance? Or the difference would be minimal?

Thanks!

Sad to say, but the only way I was able to play COD Black Ops with decent frame rates was to oc my GT 420M (L501x) to 740/960. Only then did I get seamless game play. It didn't affect my computers temps either. If you are having problems with laggy games, try overclocking until the game becomes stable. Unfortunately we have medium cards and demanding games out, so overclocking is the only way to play these with a decent resolution and frame rate.

[joehempel]

I'll give some OC'ing a shot and see if I can't improve a couple things. Right now Resident Evil 5 runs at about 30fps with anti-aliasing and motion blur turned off at DX10, maybe a little less...see if I can't squeeze some things out....oh that's at 1920x1080

[joehempel]

Did the whole overclock thing at 768x960 or whatever the OP set to.

Got a 9384 in 3dMark 06, and in the Resident Evil 5 Benchmark, I got 8-12fps more than stock at 1080p, so I'm now around 33.6fps in the benchmark avg...that's with AA and Motion Blur off.

If I set to 1600x900 with AA at 2x and MotionBlur on, I get about 38fps average, topping out during game play at around 45fps.

If this is safe and just a marginal increase, I may keep it like this as my temps didn't get above 63C, sitting on my lap, no cooling pad.

[NoSlow5oh]

Did the whole overclock thing at 768x960 or whatever the OP set to.

Got a 9384 in 3dMark 06, and in the Resident Evil 5 Benchmark, I got 8-12fps more than stock at 1080p, so I'm now around 33.6fps in the benchmark avg...that's with AA and Motion Blur off.

If I set to 1600x900 with AA at 2x and MotionBlur on, I get about 38fps average, topping out during game play at around 45fps.

If this is safe and just a marginal increase, I may keep it like this as my temps didn't get above 63C, sitting on my lap, no cooling pad.

Temps are fine. That's a mild oc so you should be fine with it. Only if you start to see artifacts during game play, or stuttering issues should you worry about changing it.

[joehempel]

Excellent. I'll push it a bit more then. Not too much though. What do you think would he safe to push too. Im unfamiliar with the ratio numbers there.