Overclocking laptop CPUs

[Weyoun]

Hi all

I'll be moving to Japan for 5 years in just over two weeks, and as such need a desktop replacement weighing under ~35kg (mostly the monitor incase you were wondering). I'm looking at a Dell Inspiron 8200 with the following specs:
P4-m 1.8GHz
nvidia Geforce 4 Go 440
512MB DDR RAM
i845MP chipset
30GB hdd

and so on and so forth.

Basically, I downgraded the CPU in order to compensate on other components. Now, I don't lurk in this forum often, but I'm aware of just how overclockable normal P4 1.8GHz chips are. I thought I might have a chance at overclocking this CPU for the following reasons.

• The P4-M series are only lightly modified from their P4 counterparts, so that same overclockability may be preserved

• Dell also offers the 2.4GHz P4 as an option for this particular model of laptop, which leads me to believe the cooling setups present in both are identical and wholly adequate in the overclocked state

• Just like the desktop P4, I'll be jumping between two officially supported FSBs, so with the appropriate multipliers applied, all of the other system busses should be in spec.

Can you guys comment on this? Has anyone actually overclocked a laptop in such a way before? If so, could someone provide me with a link showing their results?

Thanks in advance

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: Weyoun
Hi all

I'll be moving to Japan for 5 years in just over two weeks, and as such need a desktop replacement weighing under ~35kg (mostly the monitor incase you were wondering). I'm looking at a Dell Inspiron 8200 with the following specs:
P4-m 1.8GHz
nvidia Geforce 4 Go 440
512MB DDR RAM
i845MP chipset
30GB hdd

and so on and so forth.

Basically, I downgraded the CPU in order to compensate on other components. Now, I don't lurk in this forum often, but I'm aware of just how overclockable normal P4 1.8GHz chips are. I thought I might have a chance at overclocking this CPU for the following reasons.

• The P4-M series are only lightly modified from their P4 counterparts, so that same overclockability may be preserved

• Dell also offers the 2.4GHz P4 as an option for this particular model of laptop, which leads me to believe the cooling setups present in both are identical and wholly adequate in the overclocked state

• Just like the desktop P4, I'll be jumping between two officially supported FSBs, so with the appropriate multipliers applied, all of the other system busses should be in spec.

Can you guys comment on this? Has anyone actually overclocked a laptop in such a way before? If so, could someone provide me with a link showing their results?

Thanks in advance

You really don't want to overclock a Laptop.

 

[bacillus]

I would actually get a faster cpu & get the minimum amount of ram from dell.
buy the rest of your ram from crucial as it'lll work out cheaper than if you got it from dell.
as for overclocking on a laptop forget it.

 

[Bartman39]

If your moving to Japan I would just consider buying one there...? I would think they tend to have cheaper prices...?


Just a thought...?

 

[Weyoun]

Originally posted by: Bartman39
If your moving to Japan I would just consider buying one there...? I would think they tend to have cheaper prices...?

In fact, that's exactly what I'm planning to do I recently did a price comparison between Australian and Japanese Dell retailers, and I generally found that Australian laptops can carry a premium of anything between $1000AUD and $2000AUD (~$500-$1000 USD)over their Japanese counterparts

Originally posted by: bacillus
I would actually get a faster cpu & get the minimum amount of ram from dell.
buy the rest of your ram from crucial as it'lll work out cheaper than if you got it from dell.
as for overclocking on a laptop forget it.

Ok, thanks for the advice Also, Anand recommended in his review that we 'max' the laptop out to 256MB of RAM. I recently upgraded my desktop to 512MB DDR, and personally I couldn't imagine life (as I know it at least ) without it. Would 256MB be sufficient for such a laptop?

As for forgetting about overclocking the laptop... Why is it such a taboo? I did some pretty extensive searches through the forum archives, and found a few guys asking pretty much the same question as I. They all seemed to meet the same response. This laptop won't really be a laptop so much as a desk-bound thin PC, so battery life is of no concern to me (Which is irrelevant anyway, since I would only be increasing the core clock to that of a CPU Dell also offers for use with this specific laptop model; as I recall, overclocked CPUs use no more power than their equally clocked counterparts at stock frequencies) The cooling solution that ships with it should also be adequate for reasons already outlined in my previous post. These are the two sole arguments that the AT FAQ uses to dissuade people from O/cing laptops. My only real concerns are:

Whether Intel sacrificed the overclockability of the 1.8GHz chips to bring up yields.
Whether there exists a voltage difference between the 1.8 and 2.4GHz P4-M's
Whether the other bus ratios are hard coded for a particular CPU (which, amongst other things, would make it very difficult to upgrade the CPU)

Does anyone have any information addressing these two concerns?

BTW, thanks for your replies everyone

 

[Boyne7]

p4m cpus are very overclockable
but most laptops dont offer any overclocking options
also most laptops dont have adequate cooling for overclocking
even if you dont increase the vcore of the cpu it will still run hotter
thats mainly why most people dont overclock laptops i believe

 

[Weyoun]

I was hoping to overclock it using a software utility like SoftFSB instead of looking for jumpers/bios options

About the heat thing... I can see that an overclocked CPU will produce more heat than the same CPU at stock, but what are the heat statistics like when comparing a CPU overclocked to match the frequency of a higher frequency CPU at stock speeds? Disregarding efficiency tweaks in different steppings (an assumption which requires us to think of both CPUs as architecturally identical), one should conclude that they dissipate equal amounts of heat. This is important, because Dell also offer a 2.4GHz P4-M as an option for this laptop. Also, assuming that both laptops carry identical cooling solutions leads us to believe that the overclocked laptop would be adequately cooled.

Just a thought

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If you can get a DEll to overclock with software you da man It'll tell you the PLL is false and that the manufacturer didn't provide the additional options most likely.

 

[Weyoun]

Righto, this link pretty much destroyed any hope I had of overclocking... Apparently the i845MP chipset and P4-M only support a 400MHz bus, and most likely the bus ratios for that FSB alone.

Oh well, it was a nice thought while it lasted.