Functionality Guide for Laptops

[eleron911]

***this guide is mainly focused on functionality and not on very specific details for Vista, XP or hardware parts***

I have a laptop.And I want it to last and serve me well. So…what I do?



- Why a laptop, why in the world would you pay up to twice as much for a similar config in the desktop world?
Well , the easiest answer is : because we can!
No, it`s not that. A laptop is designed to save up space, energy and most of the time,noise.At a cost,true.

-What is mobility then?
The ability of the laptops to be carried with you wherever,whenever,and have a limited independence from the outlets, meaning that the battery will help you do your bussiness for a while.

-So what is portability then?
The ability of the laptops to be carried with you , and while it shares a common root with mobility, this one is linked mostly to the weight of the laptop.The less weight,the more portable.

-So,what is the big deal? We all know laptops are portable and mobile.
Yes, but not everyone knows how to take care of them.A laptop is most of the time an expensive piece of equipment. Unless you take care of it, it will break,overheat,build up dust ,lose battery life fast,etc.

-Ok, these are all basic information. What do I have to do then?
There are a few guides here on the forum about pretty much anything you need to know of.

-So why another guide?
Simple. Most of them are separated and finding what you need can be a real pain. Especially for new users,which have limited access or haven't been around too long.

-Ok,let me have it!
The basic thing about most of the laptops is the need to ventilate the hot air inside it . What that means is that a very high percentage of the laptops have fans to cool down the CPU(Central Processing Unit) and GPU(Graphics Processing Unit) . While the biggest majority of laptops have 1 fan,usually cooling down the CPU ,there is a special class of laptops, called DTR(Desktop Replacement) aimed specifically at people who require the power to run applications, games and heavy encoding.The have 2 and even 4 fans. So these fans suck up air from beneath the laptop. Therefore that place needs to be open to air access, so raising the back of the laptop by 1-2 inches(a book, a dvd case, special feet) can make all the difference in the world. Can lower temperatures inside the laptop with about 5C(9F).Also, it is important to keep the laptop on a solid surface,not fabric,and pretty much that excludes using it on the lap,unless it`s a small laptop and handles heat well.
Notebook Coolers are especially recommended on hot summer days or long gaming sessions. The Zalman NC2000 is among the best at the moment, fits both 15 and 17 inchers. Needless to say, smaller laptops will fit too.
Another thing to be aware of is dust(this is mostly for people whom have had the laptop for at least 1 month). Take a flashlight and look through the vents. If there's dust in there, it will affect temps,by raising them. So get yourself some canned air, and open the laptop and blow that dust away, in both directions until the light can cross the vents easily.
CAUTION : do not use canned air to clean dust from the screen as you will most certainly scratch it!
For more detailed info check out the new Cooling Central .

-Next thing is…
What should I use to monitor the temps?
Gophn has an excellent guide on this right here : Monitoring Notebook Temps: nVidia & ATI, CPU, HDD - Do your temps worry you?
While that thread is enormous, the first page should be enough for anyone to set up his Riva Tuner to properly show up the temperatures.
One thing to note, some cards do not properly show up the temps, it is then when you have to change a few settings like in the pic attached.


*After setting the tab with the GPU to show up the –default monitor- follow Gophn`s guide. *

-I paid a lot of money on this thing, why should I have to worry about temps?
Well, nothing is perfect in this world, and high temperatures can lead to overheating. As Gophn sugests, ALWAYS monitor your temps for safety. If you are confident your laptop is cool by nature, you don`t have to do it. It’s a preventing measure(see pic attached)


-What’s that, you have 2 temperature monitors there!
Yes, the second one is CPUID's HWMonitor, which works with pretty much any hardware and is a complete sollution to seing all the temps inside the notebook : GPU, CPU, HDD, ACPI, etc.
Other temperature monitors are: Hdtune (HDD), NHC(Hdd and CPU, and possibly GPU), RMClock(CPU),and many many more. I`m counting on wiki-posting to update this chapter.

-Ok, so now I know how to monitor temps.But it seems that my laptop is slow,can I make it run faster?
Of course,thanks to technology , anything can go faster.
First thing to know, HDDs are always the slowest part in the laptop. If you’re looking into performance, get a decent 7200 rpm drive,200 GB and 320GB are now available.If you’re into getting a better battery life,then a 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm drive is better. Or, if you have the money, SSDs are the way to go.
Look at Les’s guide on SSDs. The new SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News and Advice)
More over, software tweaks can improve your overall performance A LOT.
Guide by Les for Vista here : NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide
Another great guide by bootleg2go , here : How to Easily Optimize a Notebook Computer and Make it Faster Discussion
One more here , for those with new computers , by Barry J Doyle : New Notebook? Make it Secure and Boost Performance for Free!

Hardware-wise: The CPU(s) run(s) at a certain frequency,which can be altered to get better performance or better battery life.There are two things you can do in this regard:
1)Undervolting the CPU to get a better battery life, and a much cooler CPU. Works for both AMD and Intel CPUs,the first ones having the advantage of undervolting better.
Flipfire has an awesome guide here : The "Undervolting" Guide
2)Overclocking(from here-on known as Ocing) the CPU : This is done using SetFSB .


The PLL shown in the pic works FOR ALL M57xRUx based systems

First,you need your specific laptop Clock Generator-this is the tricky part:
-you need to find YOUR pll generator among SetFSB's list in order to actually manipulate it. There are only two ways to find out your PLL generator:
1. Open up your laptop, find it on the motherboard and then look at what it says it is.
2. Or you can just try with every PLL generator in SetFSB, until you get the correct one. The correct one will show your CPU frequency as identical to the one in CPU-Z. Find it via trial and error.

UPDATE : there are other ways ,like checking the BIOS updates --> thanks to Atthegates for this one:

This method will work only for Acer ICL50 based laptops(like aspire 5315,5715,7220 etc). I downloaded bios update from ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/notebook/ and in the zip there is a file which describes the new-features/fixes in every bios update so far. The filename is CL50_REV.txt

The method,done similarly though,might help others find their PLL.

Afterwards you have to use “get fsb” then move ONLY the top slider to the right, that will increase the CPU max frequency, visible just below the SET FSB tab.Hit Set Fsb to apply.To test stability ,you have to download Orthos


,and run that after OCing for about 30 mins(press START) to see if the OC is stable.One thing to note, do not move the slider like crazy, just a reasonable ammount.
Audigy is working on a great application here : >>> SetFSB Auto Tool v1.0 <<< - OC your CPU automatically - to make the OCing run at startup, since SetFsb is set to reset the values upon restart. Always monitor the CPU temp! If the Orthos stress test will make the CPU go above 70-75C, lower the OC, repeat the Orthos test until the condition is fulfilled.

The GPU can also have its frequencies changed. While the GPU cannot be undervolted as the CPU, it can be downclocked to get a cooler system and better battery life.
OCing the GPU can be done in many simple ways ,using Riva Tuner,Ati Tool, (Ati tool is probably the easiest to work with) or more recently,EVGA Overclocking utility(guide here thanks to Audigy again >> EVGA Precision - GPU Overclocking Utility << ) or you can use Riva Tuner -see pic attached:


and increase(moving the sliders) 5-10Mhz at a time, run 3dmark06 (demo is free to download) to test max temps,then repeat.
Overclocking the GPU needs more attention since it has to be done slowly until artefacts(weird dots or lines) start showing up on the screen. But more important than that : WATCH THE TEMPERATURE !!! It`s very important that the GPU temp does not go above 85C (which is the general consented max safe GPU temp) . If either of the two issues above arise, lower the GPU frequencies by about 10 MHz and keep them.

NOTICE: Audigy is working on figuring out why some laptops,namely the M570RU cannot OC both the CPU and GPU in the same time:

Btw I´ve found the problem on M570RU when OCing the CPU and GPU at the same time.

The PCI-E has a base frequency of 100MHz, this is fed into a clock multiplier which increases the frequency by an effective 25x using one (or possibly 2) PLLs. For example if the base clock is increased to 120MHz the differential signaling rate is now 3GB\s. The line coding used (8B/10B) should allow for clock recovery. Due to the limiting factors such as line capacitance and slew rate, the only way to increase the maximum PCI-E frequency is to increase the voltage output of the driver IC’s, even then the de-serialiser at the other end may be/still be the limiting factor.

So the problem of M570RU is on it´s IC driver. If there was one way to increase the output voltage... maybe via hard mod... I need to dig more on this..

-So all that matters is the hardware right?
Wrong, the drivers can make all the difference in the world. Always update your drivers,but make sure to have a copy of older ones ,just in case.
GPU drivers for laptops are harder to find than desktop ones.
Guide by Dreamer here : Upgrading Mobile Graphics Cards - ***Read Before Posting***
The GPU is the one that receives the most updates.
While I am not very familiar with updating drivers for ATI cards,they also support OCing . You just need either Omega Drivers or get a regular driver from ATI and use the mobility modder to get it working for the laptop.
First,download Driver Sweeper . Then:
For Nvidia based GPUs:
-Step1:go to http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/...p?showforum=88 , choose a version(higher is preferred,currently at 175.xx) ,choose your operating system( Vista or Xp, 32 bit or 64 bit),then choose a driver ,preferably the latest(first on the page) , see pic attached:


download that driver-and the “modded inf” , extract the driver into a folder, and after that, copy the “modded inf” into the same folder,(when prompted to overwrite,choose YES).
- Step2: uninstall older GPU driver,
- Step3: reboot into safe mode(restart,and after the boot screen, press F8 repeatedly until a boot menu pops up and choose safe mode,follow instructions and go into it) ,
-Step4:use Driver Sweeper to remove leftovers from the older driver ( see pic attached) , click on NVIDIA-Display, then on the “>” sign , then on the “broom” icon(run sweeper). Should be close to instantly.
- Step5: Install the driver from the folder used at Step1 by running the setup.exe or using the have disk method : http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/...p?showtopic=33
- Step6 : reboot, and ejoy your new driver.


-Right, I see now that I can have a faster system, but my battery life is going down the drain now!
In case you`re looking into maxising battery life,besides Flipfire's UV guide, here are some more guides by chrisyano : Notebook Battery Guide and another guide on the net here : http://www.codeplex.com/vistabattery
Another great guide I just found out about is this one here : http://www.guruofgaming.com/modules....ewtopic&t=2182 , it's from KillerNotebooks' Mark, who specialises in extreme modding and getting the most out of the hardware.
***More to be added in tine***

[Harper2.0]

Great Guide + rep!

[Cin']

Awesome job, Eleron! + rep

[tianxia]

nice guide!

[eleron911]

I`m only hoping that now, with the upgrade to vBulletin 3.7 , the forum will adopt the wikipost and people will be able to add/modify the topic and update it accordingly...

[bigozone]

looks good....

but i hate pages larger than 1200 wide.......... i hate side scrolling,, just my oppinion

good work though,,
bigO

[eleron911]

I`m taking care of it as I type...

[HaloGod2007]

how come no matter what clock generator i use in setfsb, i cant get anything to work with my laptop to overclock the cpu? The laptop is in my sig

[eleron911]

Well, in SetFSB you need the specific CG ,and so far I only know the ones used for my Clevo.
PM AUDIGY , he should have an idea how to determine it.
It may be in the setfsb.txt file, that`s in the folder.

[Thund3rball]

Wow cool guide. Good job eleron. I hope no-one pukes on it

+rep