Don't Overclock Your Notebook! instead, down-volt it

[irwan6179 0]

Ever heard of overclocking your notebook? please don't, instead under-clock it, it is safe, and fruitful( longer battery life, less wear and tear of your processor, less heat emitting, and a lot more)

Download Centrino Hardware Control ( i cant remember the website, but suing Google is good choice) and Prime95 from http://www.mersenne.org/download/

Unzip the programs to the directories of your choice

Launch Prime95.exe, download and begin calculations, minimize the window (you should see a red icon in your system tray), then launch centrino hardware control (chc)

go to voltage tab and check the lowest multiplier row

step down the voltage one step by one and it will check your stability for 30 sec.

Ensure that Prime95 is still running without any errors. An error will look something like this: "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4" or "Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt."

If you do not encounter any errors after a few minutes, return to chc and continue to lower your voltage again.

Continue decreasing the voltage and checking Prime95 until you encounter an error.

Once you encounter an error, raise the voltage by one stepping.

Then allow Prime95 to run for a few hours. If you receive an error, increase the voltage by another stepping and run Prime95 for a few hours until you do not encounter any errors.

If Prime95 runs for a few hours without encountering any errors, you have determined the lowest possible CPU voltage at minimum processor speed

Now check the maximum multiplier row. Repeat steps 9-15,

If Prime95 runs for a few hours without encountering any errors, you have determined the lowest possible CPU voltage at maximum processor speed

when chs is in the tray, you can change the setting whether u want max performance or max battery... this program is very interesting, just download and play with it

 

Please note: I can't be held responsible if anything happens to your notebook. Use the program at your own risk

[Jeigh1405241495 0]

While I figured overclocking a notebook would be dumb (they're hot enough without making them hotter), never really thought about doing this... if I get one I might have to try it out, seems like it could be worth taking a look into.

[jipman 0]

It's like putting a 50 mph speed limiter on a Ferrari F14..... quite a waste of all those nice and pretty horse power. .Anyways, I've been wondering for quite a while now. If you overvolt and undervolt your computer all the time (eg. switching voltages all the time, wouldn't it be bad for your hardware? I'd guess that it would wear your hardware down faster if you switch stuff all the time.)

[wwheeler 0]

I would reccomend that you NOT do this to a Dell Laptop, as you will permantly void your warranty, and also lock up the CPU!!!They use a chipset that is not supported by this software, and will not allow you to change the voltages that your system uses.....-William

[wutske 0]

It's like putting a 50 mph speed limiter on a Ferrari F14..... quite a waste of all those nice and pretty horse power. .

 

Anyways, I've been wondering for quite a while now. If you overvolt and undervolt your computer all the time (eg. switching voltages all the time, wouldn't it be bad for your hardware? I'd guess that it would wear your hardware down faster if you switch stuff all the time.)

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Why should it be bad ? PowerNow!, Speedstep, C&Q change the CPU all the time.

 

It can be bad, eg, my Nforce 2 can change voltage on the fly, but when the CPU is loaded, and I up the voltage, the vreg fails and puts 2.2v throug my cpu and it crashes (+ it remains 2.2v till reset). Same for lowering the voltages, it gets 1.1v and crashes.

[justin138 0]

I plan on getting a laptop soon and didn't know about this! Thanks for the information, as the battery that comes with the laptop probably isn't half-way decent and I can probably use this to spare some more charge out of it. Sweet.Shame that it voids warranties, though. Can they really find out if you clock it back to it's normal speed?

[wutske 0]

You can better stress test your cpu using S&M (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/).This tool stresses your cpu much harder than any other tool and finds error much faster.You have to run FPU test @ 1OO% load

[kam1405241509 0]

Nah, undervolting is annoying since you have to manually set it up, or set it up permanently (after paying for an expensive fast CPU!!). Clock gating (speedstep/powernow) is not good enough. Power gating is next. Ideally I'd like to see the recent asynchronous ARM research bear fruit in the x86 world ... but that's probably being realistic since it's just too difficult to design currently (you have to get everything talking to each other in the chip, and at different speeds, one part will have to wait a bit for the others, and there's also got to be some handshaking to syncing all the different clocks, rather than just having a cental one etc .. nightmare!). It's easier to design a relatively simpler chip & bump down the clock when not in use. Asynchronous ARMs are cool though, in theory ... different parts of the chip can slow down, depending on the instructions being executed :-). Also it's cheaper just to modify a desktop core than to start from scratch ;-). And finally compiler design would be harder/different (see the async ARM compiler research). Transistor current leakage is also being worked on (see the recent IDF slides on their future manufacturing process). Google for asynchronous & intel/sun/arm/etc for a bit more in-depth info :-).Another area of interest here (to me anyway) is intel's announcement at the recent IDF about their plans to release an x86-based handtop running at a TENTH of the power consumption (0.5W :-)) of current mobile/laptop CPUs. Details are scarce, at the moment, though. There have been many handtops released recently, often based on stuff out of IBM Research .. bizarely big old IBM didn't want to commercialise something they solved, and now just let everyone else have it?!This is a much smarter & more sensible general-purpose approach than just running a 1GHz CPU at 100MHz all the time (undervolting), or some of the time (speedstep)! However, for now, that's all we have, I guess :-((.

[wutske 0]

okay, but this is handy, because you don't need all that raw power to type a text in word.Another thing is that you can undervolt your cpuwhil it's running at max. speed. (Bad comparison, but anyway) My XP2500+ normaly runs @1.65V, but it has absolutely no problem when it's at 1.4v.So, you can save a bit of battery time by doing so.

[irwan6179 0]

"It's like putting a 50 mph speed limiter on a Ferrari F14..... quite a waste of all those nice and pretty horse power."

i wouldnt say it as wasting the cpu horsepower because when we undervolt, the speed is still the same(please do not mistaken with 'underclock'). What is more Centrino Hardware Control(CHC) allow us to change the the multiplier setting ourselve instead of let the built-in intel software to decide it.
CHS allow us to undervolt for each multipliers (in my case between 6 & 16). so if we r going to play games or watch movie, just click the CHC icon in the tray and click max performance... this program also automatically set the setting to max battery when we are running on battery...handy!


btw, we never undervolt and overvolt, what we do is undervolt only.

[ArmTheMob 0]

Errrmmm... I didn't read the instructions but most new laptops come with features for this type of thing...

[irwan6179 0]

i dont think notebook vendor will include any undervolt capability to their laptop, because it is too advance for everyday consumer to have it as an built in application... maybe they have multiplier changer but undervolt sofware, no way

[ArmTheMob 0]

My friend has a program that came with his computer to run at lower power consumption. He was always fiddling with some icon in his system tray to save power. I'm not exactly sure what it was configuring but underclocking your processor to save power is ridiculous. I'm guessing but turning down the brightness of your screen will probably save you more power.

[ViriiGuy 0]

Actually most laptops now undervolt by default.My AMD xp 64 3000+ drops to 800 mhz when I am not using more than 50% of the CPU. It is a nice feature to have. Especiallywhen it is automatic. I get a little better battery life, and alotless heat.But when I want to play HL2, the laptop spins up to full powerand cranks out the frames with the best of them :)ViriiGuy

[irwan6179 0]

yeah, underclocking is a standard feature for most of the laptop.. mine also turn to 800mhz when not in use but goes to full-clock 2.13ghz when i play games or do some video conference. the centrino hardware controler give me the function to control what clock speed i want to use... so u have the option to run at the full speed or to save the battery. i usually use battery-saving most of the time, except while playing games. this, i think, will reduce wear and tear of internal components and what more, give me quieter environment coz the fan will run at minimal speed only. if u compliment save mode battery with undevolting the procesoor, u can get superquiet mode. coz the fan is barely moving... and i hope u guys understand the different between, underclock and undervolt. in short, undervolt lower the volt while maintaining the speed, it just make the processor less stable. while underclock as in intel speedstep technology, is reduce the multiplier to save energy and to lower power consumption...