I have an alienware m17x, with an intel core i7 x920, and 2x ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870s. The ventilation is totally sufficient to overlcock my cards. I tried using RivaTuner, but it only overclocks ONE of my graphics cards and not the other. I can't get it to clock both of them. Any ideas, suggestions, other programs I can use? I tried using MSI Afterburner; it failed. Every time I ran the program, my computer would instantly freeze. I tried reinstalling it multiple times, same problem keeps happening.
dunno how to help but you are a funny guy overclocking an already overpowered notebook...and what do you think you'll get out of that??why do you want to do that??
It's not that overpowered. I'm a hardcore gamer. The cards can be overclocked highly, there's PLENTY of heat dispersion / thermal capacity. My laptop NEVER gets anywhere near hot. I have RivaTuner and it can overclock ONE of my cards from 555MHz to 625MHz with no problem, but not both. I will get much better performance from doing so.
Bro, I played Crysis on ABSOLUTE MAX graphics settings for 6 hours straight. It didn't get hotter than slightly hotter than room temperature. Also FurMark is not representative of actual gaming conditions.
Did you try to open Afterburner with Riva Turner on? Because if you did, its only normal you get conflicts and probably why you got lockups etc.
Just curiosity...which game can't you play good enough with 2xHD4870?and if there is any, what improvement, in terms of fps, are you aiming to? My advice is not to overclock any laptop and especially an uber laptop like yours.
Because I'm a graphics whore. My belief is that games are meant to be played at their absolute maximum graphics settings. Programmers and developers made a game to look a certain way, to attain a certain reality and realness to them, and if you're not experiencing the game at 100%, then you're not getting the full experience. If I can get closer to that 100% by OCing, why not? It will greatly enhance my gaming experience. Also, I got RivaTuner to work with both of my cards. For some reason, if I have GPU-Z opened when I overclock the 2nd GPU, my whole system freezes. But if I OC, then open up GPU-Z it works. And I get like 8 more FPS on FurMark when I overclock.
if he knows what he's doing and control temps there is no bad thing on OCing laptop., those ones usually weigh a lot and have plenty of room. Beware with motherboard temps specially, not only gpu's. Try with ati tray tools, MSI afterburner... and if they are asus cards, try asus smartdoctor Btw the system freezes because your second cpu its "sleeping". If you are on desktop, 2nd gpu disables itself. If you dont want this behavior at least for testing look on google at how to disable ULPS. And it doesnt answer to gpuz calls and such. So all freezes waiting for the answer -.- Its a nice idea but also a little buggy for people who overclock and such
Well, for example, I was frustrated the other day because I was playing Battlefield Bad Comapany 2 with my roommate. I was playing it on 1680x1050 with 2x ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870s, he was playing it on a regular quad core processor (pre i7 series) on an nVidia GeForce 8800 GT, at 1920x1080, and he was getting WAY more FPS than I was getting. and i was thinking "wtf this should not be, 1 mobility radeon 4870 is better than his 8800 GT". but after trying tons of **** out, i found that if i turned OFF crossfire, and used only ONE GPU, the game ran literally twice as good as it did with 2 GPUs. Also, it's not that games can't run it well enough, like I can run crysis and stuff on max settings, but i Just want more FPS because it looks more realistic. I was hoping to get like 4-7 more FPS on average on games like mass effect 2, just cause 2, etc.
not sure if it applies to you, but if youve got 2x4870 in your laptop, you'll need to delve into your windows registry to disable the ultra low power state, otherwise it will disable the second gpu when not being used. when you try to OC with msi ab, it will crash because it cant OC the second gpu when its off. run regedit, search for 'enableulps' and set every value to 0 (hexadecimal). reboot, and then OC.
a mobility 5870 its the same as a 5770 from a desktop o_o maybe that apply to a 4870, thats the why it can be worst than a 8800GT ( but its 2x mobility 4870 i i know) maybe the drivers for Xfire, hehe sorry im noob with mobility cards xD
but MSI afterburner didn't crash when i OCed the 2nd GPU. the whole PC crashes IMMEDIATELY after i click on the icon.
yeah, your whole computer tried to crash because you were trying to OC a gpu that was switched off due to being in ultra low power state. run regedit as i mentioned previously. myself and others had this issue when ulps was first introduced. i still have the OC crash issue everytime i install a new driver because it overwrites the registry and re enables ulps. try it first, then if it doesnt work, we can cross it off the list and see if theres anything else that could be causing the whole issue. but im pretty sure disabling ulps will fix your issue.
