Overclocking a notebook computer

[Zap]

Anyone done it before? I did... with a friend's Toshiba Satellite notebook (don't know the model off hand). The notebook came with a P4 2.4B CPU running at 533FSB. He had a tower computer with a Celeron 2.0 on an MSI 645E Max motherboard. The Celeron CPU was already known to be good for over 2.8GHz. He wanted to play around with the P4 CPU in the MSI motherboard, so I helped him swap the CPUs. Since the Celeron was known good at overclocked speeds, I did a pin mod (http://207.215.129.246/computer/fsbpinmod.html) and the notebook now works great as a Celeron 2.66/533FSB.

 

[dnuggett]

So let me get this straight..... you swapped out a P4 @ 2.4 for a Celeron @ 2.66? How is this a performance improvement?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: dnuggett
So let me get this straight..... you swapped out a P4 @ 2.4 for a Celeron @ 2.66? How is this a performance improvement?

😀 Actually I understand where he's going with this, his friend want's the P4 to overclock in his desktop system which is probably his primary/gaming system, and he's just getting the most he can from the Celery since it's relegated to the notebook now. I hadn't consider a pin mod for overclocking a lappy before so it's cool to hear it being done :beer: Also, I'd like to know if it's a mobile P4 or desktop? and if it was a mobile if the battery life has taken a hit without speedstep?

 

[dnuggett]

Actually I understand where he's going with this, his friend want's the P4 to overclock in his desktop system which is probably his primary/gaming system, and he's just getting the most he can from the Celery since it's relegated to the notebook now.

Roger that.

 

[jschuk]

Originally posted by: Zap
Anyone done it before?

Sure. I have my wife's Tecra 8000 laptop setup to overclock to 432MHz, from 400MHz, everytime it boots up. Of course I am only using software to do it, no hardware modifications were necessary. Once in awhile, the video has problems when it runs at 441MHz. I am using SoftFSB 1.70 to do this using the Micron AL440LX setting. I tried to perform the Celeron 300A pin 21 trick on a mini-cartridge CPU, but either it didn't support it or I didn't insulate the pin enough (I didn't want to destroy a hard to find mini-cartridge CPU by ripping the pin out). You could probably overclock by modifying the pins on the clock generator as well. Here is a list of sites dealing with overclocking older laptops (mostly Librettos).

 

[Zap]

jschuk, pretty cool stuff at that link. I figured I wasn't a pioneer at it since a friend of mine had considered it (but not done it) with an old socket 7 notebook (had jumpers for multiplier). He had a 233MMX and I think the multiplier was maxed. If he had a 166 or 200, probably could have cranked it a bit.

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: dnuggett
So let me get this straight..... you swapped out a P4 @ 2.4 for a Celeron @ 2.66? How is this a performance improvement?

😀 Actually I understand where he's going with this, his friend want's the P4 to overclock in his desktop system which is probably his primary/gaming system, and he's just getting the most he can from the Celery since it's relegated to the notebook now. I hadn't consider a pin mod for overclocking a lappy before so it's cool to hear it being done :beer: Also, I'd like to know if it's a mobile P4 or desktop? and if it was a mobile if the battery life has taken a hit without speedstep?

The Celeron was definately a desktop version since I'm the one who originally purchased it. The P4 was AFAIK a desktop chip, not a mobile chip. IIRC a mobile chip will revert to a lower multiplier on a desktop board. My friend doesn't "feel" a difference in the notebook going from a P4 2.4/533 to a Celeron 2.66/533. I think benchmarks (PC/3Dmark) were pretty close as well. The video is (I think) a Geforce 440 Go. His tower computer got a boost in benchmarks and is a bit snappier.

BTW, the pin mod I did was permanent - I broke the pin off (intentionally). It was a known good overclocker, so, what the heck...

 

[Stoneburner]

What if you want to underclock your notebook? can you save battery life by turning say a 2.4 down to 2 ghz?

 

[Frightcrawler]

drop the multiplier, i dont see anything wrong with that.

 

[Zap]

Dropping the FSB would underclock a 2.4 to a 1.8GHz level. May have a bit of power savings, but really would need to also drop the voltage as well, IMO. Better to have gotten a Pentium M notebook to begin with.

Frightcrawler, AFAIK the P4 chips are multiplier locked except for engineering samples. Also, most notebooks would not even have the BIOS settings to change multipliers.