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Hi TL,
I just recently bought the Witcher 2, and as most of you know its a pretty demanding game. While I have no problems running the game at 30fps with a mix of low-medium settings, I was wondering if I am able to get more out of the card if I overclock it.The resolution I am currently playing at is 720p. My current laptop specs are:
Intel core i5-2410M 2.6ghz
4GB DDR3 Ram
500GB HDD
1GB 540M
Windows 7 64-bit
I was thinking of using nvidia system tools to do the overclocking, what do you guys think? Is it worth it to overclock a 540m?
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Overclocking a laptop isn't the smartest idea... I suggest you don't
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most laptops run hot, if you overclock it, it'll probably die in a fire.
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scatman is correct. You shouldn't overclock anything on a laptop. Unless it has a turboboost which it doesn't. Your bettter off playing on lowest settings. You should of gotten a 460m or 560m for gaming.
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I figured as much, I just wanted to see if there is a way to make what I already have better. Thanks anyways, I don't game much on my laptop other than SC2 and a few exceptions (Witcher 2 obv) so its all right. 
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Its worth a shot, just because it heats doesn't mean it's not worth a try like the people above suggested.
So long as your watch your temps, it should be fine. You can use Hwinfo in combination with MSIAfterburner On Screen Display Server to have your temps shown on screen while gaming. Before you try a game with the new clocks, get Furmark and do a burn test while monitoring temps.
edit: what is ur laptop model
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actually this generation of laptops actually run hot because of the processors and not so much the graphics processor
my laptop has an AMD graphics card but the same generation of intel processor and i can overclock it for about a 20% performance increase and the graphics card temps never go about 70ish. Whereas the CPU always hovers around mid 80s while gaming.
Unless Nvidia is different, you're probably fine doing a small overclock with a program like sapphire trixx.
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mid 80s for CPU is quite high.
Look, it is not advisable to overclock your laptop because laptop and cooling aren't exactly best friends. Combined with the fact that laptop fans are very hard to clean in general, it is not worth the risk. Even if you own a gaming laptop, I still don't recommend it.
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you can overclock a laptop GPU if you try. I'm good enough to replace all the thermal pads and stuff with stuff of my choosing and even after lowering idle/load temps by 4-5C it's still not worth overclocking for the tradeoff of battery life/temps.
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On December 24 2011 11:08 ilikeredheads wrote:
mid 80s for CPU is quite high.
Look, it is not advisable to overclock your laptop because laptop and cooling aren't exactly best friends. Combined with the fact that laptop fans are very hard to clean in general, it is not worth the risk. Even if you own a gaming laptop, I still don't recommend it.
sandy bridge gets hot in laptops
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops.
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On December 24 2011 11:25 Cyro wrote:
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops.
or don't overclock laptops that go over the heat threshhold
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
On December 24 2011 11:39 Slipspace wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 11:25 Cyro wrote:
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops. or don't overclock laptops that go over the heat threshhold
Most of them are borderline there anyay and have very little room for overclocking. It is best to leave OCing to desktops with upgraded cooling solutions IMO.
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On December 24 2011 11:41 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 11:39 Slipspace wrote:On December 24 2011 11:25 Cyro wrote:
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops. or don't overclock laptops that go over the heat threshhold Most of them are borderline there anyay and have very little room for overclocking. It is best to leave OCing to desktops with upgraded cooling solutions IMO.
or you can actually monitor your own laptop and determine if its safe to overclock or not instead of blindly assuming all laptops should not be overclocked because of a bad experience
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
On December 24 2011 12:02 Slipspace wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 11:41 Cyro wrote:On December 24 2011 11:39 Slipspace wrote:On December 24 2011 11:25 Cyro wrote:
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops. or don't overclock laptops that go over the heat threshhold Most of them are borderline there anyay and have very little room for overclocking. It is best to leave OCing to desktops with upgraded cooling solutions IMO. or you can actually monitor your own laptop and determine if its safe to overclock or not instead of blindly assuming all laptops should not be overclocked because of a bad experience
Most laptops will have very similar results with the same hardware, it is generally accepted that overclocking laptops is a bad idea because of lack of extra cooling room, thats why i said it
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On December 24 2011 12:31 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 12:02 Slipspace wrote:On December 24 2011 11:41 Cyro wrote:On December 24 2011 11:39 Slipspace wrote:On December 24 2011 11:25 Cyro wrote:
Last time i bought a laptop with a decent GPU, i had to underclock it by about 20% to prevent it overheating and crashing the computer while melting the back and underside of the laptop casing.
Dont overclock laptops. or don't overclock laptops that go over the heat threshhold Most of them are borderline there anyay and have very little room for overclocking. It is best to leave OCing to desktops with upgraded cooling solutions IMO. or you can actually monitor your own laptop and determine if its safe to overclock or not instead of blindly assuming all laptops should not be overclocked because of a bad experience Most laptops will have very similar results with the same hardware, it is generally accepted that overclocking laptops is a bad idea because of lack of extra cooling room, thats why i said it
if the laptop has sufficient cooling, a small overclock isn't going to hurt anything. overvolting is where you could run into trouble but even that is ok if you know what your laptop can and can't do.
just download a temp monitoring program and see what your numbers look like when the laptop is stressed before you do anything
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In many situations, multiple CPU or GPU options will be offered for the same model of laptop, while the cooling solutions for some options may be the same.
Sometimes you can just run a GT 540M (nominal 672 MHz) at GT 550M (same chip, nominal 740 MHz) speeds, or something like that.
But more often than not, the hottest configuration for a given laptop is really too much heat for the system to handle when fully stressed. It's not the lower-end configs that are overprovisioned, but that the higher-end configs are underprovisioned. As a practical matter, I wouldn't assume much headroom for overclocking on most laptops, that would make it worthwhile.
Maybe not if you've got a dedicated GPU that more or less shares the same cooling path as the CPU, and you want to overclock the CPU (if possible) to run CPU-only tasks where the GPU will be idling. It really depends.
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I tried messing around the with the graphic clock and memory clocks. I set the graphic clock to 800 and memory clock to 1000. I got a significant fps boost while playing Witcher 2. At 720p, the game now can run at high with 24-30 fps with fraps on. I checked the temperature after around 15minutes or so and it was at 70 Celsius. Is that fine?
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70C is great for a laptop under load, at least as far as CPUs and GPUs are concerned.
As a check, try some different games or maybe even something like OCCT or Furmark (or maybe slightly more realistically, 3DMark) to get a gauge on a worst-case scenario.
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Jamaica140 Posts
Trust me, I have an Aspire 5750G-6496 with a 540M, and the thing spews heat like a kiln. People have told me that it smells like it's smoking when it's been active for half hour or so [the card, not the cpu]. I WOULD NOT suggest you overclock it, it WILL burn it up eventually.
Edit: I don't have a cooler at the moment, I just elevate mine. I can't help but worry that in the near future my card will just die on me one day, it runs that hot.
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Witcher 2 is a very heavy game when it comes to graphics. STILL, there are out there some configurators (custom and probably with virus) that can give you a better settings with still "ok" frame rate. So if you are willing to risk them, you might get a better looking game.
As far as i know 2.0 patch introduced a bit of tweaking and a bit more effective settings for the engine, so have you tried patching it?
And as everyone said, "dont overclock" its becouse even if your overclock wont risk your gpu, it wont give you a decent improvemnet (540M is not a strong GPU, so you would need a crazy oc to get a decent improvemnt).
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EPT
