Dell Inspiron 9300 {Advice Please}

[Riotz]

I got my Dell Inspiron 9300 a few months ago and I have been really happy with it. Its a bit big but that doesnt stop me from taking it everywhere with me. Lately I have been trying to see how I can make my baby better so I have been reading alot and trying to figure out what I can do. When it comes to laptops I didnt think there was much I could do to upgrade or overclock, boy am I wrong.

About 3 weeks ago I had an opportunity to upgrade my CPU so I went and did some research and found out that its relitively easy to change it so I went ahead and upgraded my Pentium M 1.8 to a Pentium M 2.0. I am wondering if it was a mistake now though after reading some posts on overclocking the I9300. Here is a pic from SioSoft's Sandra showing my CPU specs. Is it still possible to overclock this and would it be wise? I am also very interested in pushing my nVidia 6800 Go a bit further, is this possible also? Thanks alot for any help you guys can give :)

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a73/Riotz2/cpu_specs.jpg

[fork456]

Wow this thread is exactly what i was going to post. Except the upgrading my CPU to a 2.0. im still at a 1.8. But i have a gf6800 inspiron9300. sweet machine but i wish that i could get the processor speed up. i didnt want a centrino cause i wanted power but the batterylife is nice. Games run almost perfect on this ******* but i could use just a bit more juice. im sure more ram woulld help but thats 400 buck i dont have. but with a huge video card and CPu that has potential I want to figure out how to unlock more power. Can ANYONE help us out?

[Riotz]

$400? :eh?: You can get a 2GB memory upgrade for much less than that my friend. Check out newegg.com. There is a special that ends 10/04/05 fr 1GB Chips for $92.99 each. Here's a direct link to the product Kingston 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820144183).

Hope this helps you out in your updating endeavour. Me I just wanna know if its possible to push my 2ghz further. I have been thinking about it a bit more and I am wondering what the heat increase would be. I read a post on notebookforums about using the XPS2 Bios in the 9300 so you can use a Geforce Go 6800 Ultra and possible a 7800 Go in the 9300 so I am following that right now. Hope someone can lend some insight to what I would be looking at if its possible to push this CPU further.

[nikhsub1]

Seems to me that you have a 400FSB in your 9300... it is a 533 FSB system... I have a 400FSB Dothan in mine that I pin modded to run at 133 x 17 for 2.26Ghz. You can do the same but you'd need a 1.7 400FSB, I doubt the 2Ghz will run at 20x 133 for 2660.

[Riotz]

Bleh I guess I cant do it then. Oh well :(

I am gonna do some more research on the XPS2 Bios hack. I was looking for a 6800 Ultra card on ebay but didnt find one.

[m3x1c4nj3w]

the 6800 ultra is not worth all the hassle (new ac adapter, new battery, hack bios)

[ozzlo]

Pinmodding the 2.0ghz CPU will give you 2.66ghz which is starting to exceed the limitations of the dothan arecheture... the sucuess rate of pinmodding a 2.0 to 2.6 is about 50% give or take %20... Even with voltmods... on the notebookforums a guy had to put 1.6v through his chip to get it stable at 2.6v and all that extra voltage is causing the chip to exceed 75 C (BASICALLY HE TURNED HIS PENTIUM-M INTO A POWER HUNGRY PRESCOTT)



BUT THERE IS ANOTHER WAY...

You can use a progam called centrino hardware control to reduce the CPU speed and CPU voltage once you enter into windows to give you something that you can better work with like a nice stable 2.4ghz processor which only requires a little bit more voltage (usually about 1.44v) my 1.7 which is running at 2.26 is currently running at 1.404v and at any time i can change the max multiplier and return it to stock speed and stock voltage if I want to... If you want I can post more when I have a bit more free time...

[Riotz]

Wow thanks for the great info there Ozzlo. I have been messing around with my 9300 and I dont think it would be wise to overclock it up to those speeds. Right now I play alot of Final Fantasy XI and when I am in the game the temp goes up to 61ºC - 64ºC. So I opened it up and put some arctic silver on the CPU and GPU and now its a much more manageable temp. Idle its about 40ºC. I wish there were some other ways to cool it down but I cant seem to find or think of any additional cooling tricks.

Anyways, thanks alot for that great info.

P.S. How do I OC my 6800 go?

[ozzlo]

Probbably the best thing you can do for your cooling management is to get i8kfangui... this program allows you to dynamically control all the fans in your system... but there is a catch to this program... This program only works with 8XXX series laptops

BUT THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL...


A dude on the notebook forums (i read the notebookforums alot can't you tell?) has taken the source code of i8kfangui and improved it and made it compatable with 9XXX series laptops and hence the name was changed to i9kfangui. You have to first install i8kfangui which can be found all over the net with a little searching... after installing i8kfangui you then download and run i9kfangui... i9kfangui is kindof hard to find on the net but it does exist.



OVERCLOCKING YOUR GRAPHICS CARD EH?....

Go to www.laptopvideo2go.com (they changed their site since i was last there but all you need to find is the most updated stable driver that allows auto overclocking i'm currently using the 76.50 driver set with a modified INI file and i've been thinking of updating the drivers but haven't gotten around to it... I think that they are at 81.xx series of drivers now but the newer ones aren't as tested so it's always wise to stay back a couple of generations when using modified drivers. if after auto overclocking your graphics card you want to take it even further you will need to download a program called riva tuner.... there is a guide on (you guessed it right, the notebook forums) on how to oc your graphics card untill is squeals like a little piggy... if your interested I'll find the link for ya.


If you want to do the pinmod I can go and figure out a couple of pin combinations that will give you the optimal voltages that you might need... but only under one condition... You have to use centrino hardware control in order to do this properly...

actually if you want to trade processors I will pinmod mine for you (that would put ya at 2.26ghz) :D and leave me to the experimenting with 2.66ghz :D cause just thinking of somebody else's laptop running faster than mine is makin me jealous that I whimped out and only got a 1.7 :/

[Riotz]

LMAO - I had to do alot to actually get this 2.0ghz. I had a 1.8ghz to begin with but got a chance to upgrade to this and took it. I may actually have a chance to get a 2.13ghz real soon and I think I am gonna take it too :). Thanks for the great info once again. I already use the i8kfangui and I thought it was working but then again I dont know what to look for. I already got the latest 8x.xx drivers from that site but now I know about Riva Tuner OH JOY! I am gonna have some fun with that.

I am at work right now on night shift 7PM-7AM, I am the only one here and there is not a damned thing to do. So I guess I will be playing with OC'ing my graphics card :). Thanks again for the info Ozzlo.

::EDIT::
Been messing around with Forceware 81.84. Heres what I got out of it. I didnt try Riva Tuner with it yet, this is just with the setting at Auto Overclocking.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a73/Riotz2/3dmark05.jpg

Thats a pretty good score I am guessing. :)

[nikhsub1]

Not bad but with some manual OC'ing you should get around 4500 - 4600 or perhaps a bit higher :)

[TheGreySpectre]

download ether the omega drivers or the coolbits registry file so that you get the overclocking options for your 6800Go. It should than have an autodetect optimum frequencies option for auto overlclcokcing witch is nice and easy

My 6800GO went from all the way to 780Mhz on autodetect from 590mhz and I took my ram up to 360

[ozzlo]

you have those two numbers backwards... first of all if your core was at 780 it would probbably (let it's magic smoke out) and second of all you would be getting 9000+ 3dmark 05 scores...

oh and by the way... there is now a way to voltmod the 6800 so you can crank it all the way up to 6800 ULTRA speeds AND BEYOND.... but it seems that there has only been 4 sucuesses and 2 failures so far so I'm gonna hold off awhile and research what people did right and what people did wrong...



*EDIT* 10-10-05 the volt mod only seems to work on nv41 cards so I'm currently out of luck since I have an NV 42... :(