- Joined
- Dec 15, 2009
This is my report in regards to this post:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=715376
Here's the following items to get the most out of this laptop for mobile multimedia and gaming:
1.) SSD (I got the Vertex 4 128GB). The reason for this is improved battery life and the Seagate Momentus that comes with it is only 320GB and 5,400 RPM. It was WAY too slow for me.
2.) 8GB of RAM. Reason for this is they only include a SINGLE 4GB stick in this laptop meaning that you're running in SINGLE CHANNEL
. I got 8GB of Corsair for $40 so it's not that expensive.
Moving on, AMD is deceptively marketing their Turbo Boost feature. When you look for these APU based laptops they only advertise a measly 1.5Ghz clock but then say (2.4Ghz TurboBoost) which, to me, would mean that when the processor is on load it should kick up to the referenced 2.4Ghz. WRONG.
This laptop will jump ALL over the place regardless of what you're doing. I hooked this puppy up to my 24'' Monitor with an HDMI cable and had CPU-z off in the corner while playing Starcraft and I swear this is how it fluctuated (keep in mind, for this particular chip the minimum Vcore is 0.45v and the max is 1.3625):
1500Mhz/1.100Vcore
1800Mhz/1.225Vcore
3600Mhz/1.3625Vcore
2400Mhz/1.3625Vcore
800Mhz/1.00Vcore
And I'm not exagerating when I say these fluctuations happened within SECONDS of eachother. It was absolutely mind blowing. Needless to say the B0 'boost' state never kicked on when it should've so this is another failure on AMDs part.
However, there is hope! These chips are very similar to the K10 Phenoms and are also unlocked. This means you can get the following utilities for Linux or Windows depending on what you're running.
k10ctl (Linux)
http://www.ztex.de/misc/k10ctl.e.html
k10stat (Windoze)
https://sites.google.com/site/k10stat/
Now this utility isn't very intuitive up front but it is very user friendly. Basically your Llano chip has several "states" it fluctuates between and, like I stated above, I have no idea what the criteria is for these states to kick in.
The good news is with these k10 utilites, you can set the FID/DID and the Voltage. I'm almost at hour3 with my 2.3Ghz overclock with the temps not exceeding 83c (the safe spot is around 85c, max is 100c at which point the laptop shuts down to prevent damge)
Rule of thumb is the higher you OC, the lower you want your FID(freq) and DID (divider). I've not tried to underclock it for battery performance but here are my results thus far:
FID: 7
DID: 0
Frequency 2300Mhz
CPU Voltage: 1.1250
Now if you enable "Boost" that just means "Can I use the B0 state?" I just disabled it since I've got it hardcoded for right now.
Also, make sure you rightclick on the k10 icon in the system tray and set the "Control Function" to Ganged(Based on Average Load) ... that seems to produce the most stable OC from what I've seen.
If anyone has any question about these little gems (I got mine for $350) feel free to PM me or post here.
If you all want benchmarks or FPS in games let me know.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=715376
Here's the following items to get the most out of this laptop for mobile multimedia and gaming:
1.) SSD (I got the Vertex 4 128GB). The reason for this is improved battery life and the Seagate Momentus that comes with it is only 320GB and 5,400 RPM. It was WAY too slow for me.
2.) 8GB of RAM. Reason for this is they only include a SINGLE 4GB stick in this laptop meaning that you're running in SINGLE CHANNEL
. I got 8GB of Corsair for $40 so it's not that expensive.Moving on, AMD is deceptively marketing their Turbo Boost feature. When you look for these APU based laptops they only advertise a measly 1.5Ghz clock but then say (2.4Ghz TurboBoost) which, to me, would mean that when the processor is on load it should kick up to the referenced 2.4Ghz. WRONG.
This laptop will jump ALL over the place regardless of what you're doing. I hooked this puppy up to my 24'' Monitor with an HDMI cable and had CPU-z off in the corner while playing Starcraft and I swear this is how it fluctuated (keep in mind, for this particular chip the minimum Vcore is 0.45v and the max is 1.3625):
1500Mhz/1.100Vcore
1800Mhz/1.225Vcore
3600Mhz/1.3625Vcore
2400Mhz/1.3625Vcore
800Mhz/1.00Vcore
And I'm not exagerating when I say these fluctuations happened within SECONDS of eachother
. It was absolutely mind blowing. Needless to say the B0 'boost' state never kicked on when it should've so this is another failure on AMDs part. However, there is hope! These chips are very similar to the K10 Phenoms and are also unlocked. This means you can get the following utilities for Linux or Windows depending on what you're running.
k10ctl (Linux)
http://www.ztex.de/misc/k10ctl.e.html
k10stat (Windoze)
https://sites.google.com/site/k10stat/
Now this utility isn't very intuitive up front but it is very user friendly. Basically your Llano chip has several "states" it fluctuates between and, like I stated above, I have no idea what the criteria is for these states to kick in.
The good news is with these k10 utilites, you can set the FID/DID and the Voltage. I'm almost at hour3 with my 2.3Ghz overclock with the temps not exceeding 83c (the safe spot is around 85c, max is 100c at which point the laptop shuts down to prevent damge)
Rule of thumb is the higher you OC, the lower you want your FID(freq) and DID (divider). I've not tried to underclock it for battery performance but here are my results thus far:
FID: 7
DID: 0
Frequency 2300Mhz
CPU Voltage: 1.1250
Now if you enable "Boost" that just means "Can I use the B0 state?" I just disabled it since I've got it hardcoded for right now.
Also, make sure you rightclick on the k10 icon in the system tray and set the "Control Function" to Ganged(Based on Average Load) ... that seems to produce the most stable OC from what I've seen.
If anyone has any question about these little gems (I got mine for $350) feel free to PM me or post here.
If you all want benchmarks or FPS in games let me know.
