OCing an Athlon X2 QL65 laptop

[PCTwin]

Before the overclock I ran the first round of benchmarks done at the factory settings of 2.1GHz CPU and 333.3 MHz ram. Starting with the CPU tests. After the scores I’ve put the position that score would hold if submitted to HWbot.

PCMark05: 3233 points. 3rd out of 3 = 1 point

Pifast: 63.04s. 3rd out of 7 = 1 HWpoint

SuperPi 1m: 44.662s. 2nd out of 6 = 1.5 points.

SuperPi 32m: 39m 29.453s. 2nd out of 6 = 1.5 points

Wprime 32m: 40.219s. 7th out of 7 0.4 points.

WPrime 1024m: 1250.152s. 5th out of 7 = 0.6 points.

It would seem there’s not that many to compare with, but a few brave souls have benched there laptops. Pretty average results compared to the few there are on HWbot.

I had to set the processor power management options in the control panel power options to 100% in order to stop cool n quiet from halving the CPU speed. It bugs me when I want to take a screenshot and the CPU speed is different.

The graphics chip is an Nvidia 8200M-G Direct X10 GPU. I had a look on HWbot and noticed that nobody had submitted a 3d Vantage score for this chip, ‘cos it don’t work. It’s Direct X10, but it won’t run Vantage, why. The worst score I’ve had in Vantage came from a Radeon HD2400 PCI card which scored a lowly 138 points, but at least it managed to run it. The test results.

3DMark 2001 se: 6,602 points. 8th out of 11 = 0.3 points.

3DMark03: 2,723 points. 9th out of 11 = 0.2 points.

3DMark05: 1,651 points. 7th out of 11 = 0.4 points.

3DMark06: 869 points. 5th out of 6 = 0.6 points.

Aquamark 3: 23,575 points. 9th out of 14 = 0.2 points.

Well I won’t be playing Oblivion on this machine so the benchmark scores don’t bother me. Still, that’s a total of 8.1 points to my total if I submit to HWbot. We’ll see. Time to overclock.

 

[86sixsix]

The graphics chip is an Nvidia 8200M-G Direct X10 GPU. I had a look on HWbot and noticed that nobody had submitted a 3d Vantage score for this chip, ‘cos it don’t work. It’s Direct X10, but it won’t run Vantage, why

Solid, decidedly average results all around there I reckon. What's stopping vantage from playing ball? My 8200M-G on a dell-stickered machine works fine... What's the vantage error?

...fire extinguishers at the ready in the PCTwin household...

 

[PCTwin]

Easier said than done. I tried all the different tools, AMD overdrive, setfsb, memset, tweaker, nothing works except Nvidia system tools. The first problem is that I can’t seem to change the cas latency for the memory. I can change all the other sub-timings but not that. According to cpu-z the spd for the ram at 400MHz is 6-6-6-15 but the ram is set at 5-5-5-15 for 333MHz. I can change it to 5-6-6-15 or 5-6-6-18 but I can’t change the cas from 5.

The results so far.

CPU-z: 2729.98. 1st out of 8 = 2 points. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1020948

2.73 from a 2.1 chip isn’t too bad considering how hot this thing was getting. More importantly, a promotion to 1st and 2 points.

PCmark05: 3979. 3rd of 3 = 1.0 points.

I just wasn’t getting anywhere on this test with this chip.

Pifast: 49.27s. 2nd of 7 = 1.5 points.

Almost 14 seconds’ improvement. Up to second.

SuperPi 1m: 35.755s. 2nd out of 6 = 1.5 points.

Almost 9 seconds improvement. Stayed at 2nd.

SuperPi 32m: 35m 33.191s. 2nd out of 6 = 1.5 points.

Just under 4 minutes improvement. Stayed second.

wPrime 1024: 16m 15.125s (975.125s). 1st out of 7 = 2 points.

Just under 5 minutes (275s) improvement. Big promotion from 5th to 1st.

wPrime 32m: 29.609s. 1st out of 7 = 2 points.

10.61 seconds improvement. Another big promotion from 7th to 1st.

A good improvement all round with the CPU tests, most noticeable in the dual threaded wPrime. An extra 5.1 points to boot, nice.

On to the GPU overclock. Using a standard CPU overclock of 2624.9 with the ram at 416.7 CL5-5-5-15, we managed to improve again.

Stock settings for this GPU are: GPU 400x Mem 675x Shaders 800. The GPU must stay at 50% or less of the shader speed or Nvidia control centre gets grumpy with you and resets to the last working settings.

GPU settings: 605x1200x1333

3dm01: 8759 marks. 3rd out of 11 = 1.0 points.

That’s a 6036 marks improvement. I’m stunned. From 8th to 3rd.

GPU settings: 605x1000x1275.

3dm03: 3835 marks. 3rd out of 11 = 1.0 points.

An extra 1112 marks and big promotion. From 9th to 3rd.

GPU settings: 580x100x1350.

3dm05: 2278 marks. 2nd out of 11 = 1.5 points.

627 marks improvement. I know the scores aren’t stellar, but the improvement is good. From 7th to 2nd.

GPU settings: 580x1100x1333.

3dm06: 1211 marks. 1st out of 6 = 2.0 points.

342 marks extra, more importantly from 5th to 1st.

GPU settings: 580x1100x1350

Aquamark 3: 33,288. 3rd out of 14 = 1.0 points.

9,713 points more. From 9th to 3rd.

For the GPU, from a humble 1.7 points to 6.1 points and 5 cups. Not a lot of points I know but it all adds up.

Looking at the whole package that’s 18 points, 4 gold, 4, silver and 4 bronze cups. Not too bad. I still won’t play Oblivion on it, but I might just move my Dreamweaver course work onto it. With a moderate overclock and a notebook cooler of some kind it would work.