Overclocking the i7-4710HQ on a G751JY and issues

[Edweird]

WARNING! Image Heavy!

Hey, everyone.

I recently purchased this beauty of a machine - a G751JY. (i7-4710HQ, GTX980M, 8GB DDR3L, BIOS 205)
After rummaging around the forums and with you guys' help (thanks to ASUS Support as well) I have managed (for now) to get some extra juice out of the already almost unnecessarily powerful 980M using GPU Tweak for Graphics Cards with the 344.75 drivers.

Yay! This is just the +135Hz standard overclock and the memory running at 6000MHz effective. I haven't seen if it would go up but from what I've seen I should be able to hit 6400MHz no problem.



So that being done, I think it's appropriate to talk about the CPU...
Especially considering that I can imagine a fair few circumstances where the CPU would hold down this beastly GPU.

So, what does HWINFO86 tell my uneducated mind about this processor:



Okay, so I did some basic research and from I understand, this information tells us that this CPU can take 2 extra frequency multipliers - so technically, I should be able to get a free 200MHz overclock! That is significant on a mobile machine with the thermal headroom and the G751 is definitely that.

Okay, so I loaded up Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and noticed that the clock multiplier can be pulled up but only by a factor of 1...huh. Okay so our new multis are 36-35-34-34 and a cache multiplier of 36. (Worth noting that I'm a complete noob when it comes to overclocking.)

So I applied the settings and ran a benchmark to see what would happen.



Odd... the CPU hit 3.4GHz only once for a split second. I determined that, obviously, XTU stresses all 4 cores for this benchmark.
Looking down we can see something more odd - the CPU is being starved for current by XTU! I guess this is how XTU stresses the chip? I truly have no clue. However, my non-OC brain thinks that XTU does this to determine how effective the CPU is at blasting calculations when deprived of "food", which WOULD explain the lower clocks.

Moving on - I loaded up ThrottleStop because of its simple and effective threaded benchmark so that I could test individual cores.



This time, there is no throttling of any kind. We see that a single threaded test mostly works the CPU to about 3.4GHz, rarely peaking to 3.5GHz. XTU reports only 1 core being active. This is very odd. So we've set the multiplier to 36 for 1 core, the CPU has enough current but it barely makes 3.5GHz? Throughout my testing I have never seen this CPU go above 3.5GHz.

Next, 2 threads.



Hmm...same results. The CPU peaked at just over 3.5GHz - but this is expected as our 2-core multiplier is set to 35. But it rarely reached that speed. XTU jumped between 1 and 2 cores.

A solid 3.4GHz for 4 threads for a multiplier of 34 for 4 cores active.



Okay, so let's look at the benchmark results.
Again, we can see here that XTU starves the CPU of current and the CPU struggles to keep up at 3.1GHz.



The result:



No idea how this stacks up.

Now with the tweaked multipliers:



Throttling again, but this time it's a steady 3.3GHz.

Results:



...What? Same results? What's happening?

This is where I am stuck. First, as I understand it, the CPU should be able to do 3.7GHz. Second, it doesn't even do 3.6GHz through XTU. This is where I'm hoping some OC savvy people will jump in. Do I need to tweak something else to get an actual overclock out of this CPU? Could it be that ASUS has changed how the CPU behaves and limited the multipliers through the 205 BIOS release? And I'm not liking the dips on that blue curve down in the left corner...

Any and all feedback on the process and any discussion is welcomed and encouraged!

[hmscott]

AQUASTEVAE wrote:
hmscott, i have taken your advice and using etu, i have pushed my multiplyers all the way up. they now read 37x 36x 35x 35x, with a cache ratio of 37x. afterwards, i ran processor and memory stress tests, and of course both passed, with a maximum temp. at any given time during the tests of
only 76c, which only hit this a few times during the tests. so with the multiplyers at this setting, is that the maximum tuning i can do to get the best performance safely out of this processor? thanks in advance.

AQUASTEVAE, you have a different processor, so you have more options, newer processors allow playing with the length of time for Turbo and you can increase the TDP / power allowed, but you will / may run into temperature issues.

I do know that increasing "Turbo boost Power Window" from a default of 8 seconds to the fixed setting I have of 28 seconds will increase boost time and improve performance, others have extended that time but in an ROG laptop to no apparent increase in long running thread performance - you can play around with it and increasing Turbo boost short Power Max and Turbo boost Power Max.

You will need to play with those values yourself, and when you find out the benefits / values that work for you, please post them here 🙂

[AQUASTEVAE]

sorry for being ignorant here, but which settings do i use to change the thermal design power?

my highest score on etu's benchmark is 843, with a max cpu temp of 77. but i also ordered this rig with ic diamond compound on the cpu and gpu. testing the turbo setting now.

update: with the turbo boost's powermx and short powermax maxed out, and the boost window setting changed to 28 sec's, i got a benchmark score of 844, but temps went way up to 81c.

[hmscott]

NitroX, there is one thing you can do to reduce heat and keep the same, or very very close to the same performance. And, that is to stop using the Hyper-threaded cores 🙂

I have helped guys out that are trying to reduce their temps in CS:GO, which uses all the CPU available, but showing them how to use Processor Affinity in the Windows Task manager to disable the "Odd numbered cores", which equate to the hyper-threaded cores.

Their performance didn't drop, and the temperature went way down.

G750JM high temperature on CS:GO
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?50742-G750JM-high-temperature-on-CS-GO&p=429501&viewfull=1...

Also, I just recently saw a video that compared gaming performance across many different configurations of enable Cores in CPU's. The dual core isn't enough, but the difference between 4 Core and 4 Core + hyperthreading was minimal, and for most games the 6/8 core (real core not + hyperthreaded cores) wasn't appreciably better.

CPU Cores for Gaming: How many do you need? - Q1 2015 Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVl8Eupbr_E

So, if you want full performance, and reduced heat, it looks like you can slide up the multipliers to maximum, and tune the apps to not use Hyper-threaded cores for low temps 🙂

[diogogmaio]

Guys a quick question...

You made an awesome thread with so many info for new and expert g751jy users. Can u summarize the main achievements of this thread? For example...

---> Last driver that "safely" enables OC in gtx 980m from g751jy?? Because the newest driver crashes so many times with any overclock (my case)

---> What are the values in GPU tweak / msi afterburner to overclock the gpu? only a basic OC not extreme. Please give us some ranges.

---> In the XTU app where we change the values of the multiplier?

---> what's the best or the standard OC that we can apply in the CPU multiplier?! 1x, 2x or something else?

Thanks

[NitroX]

@Hmscott: I wasn't talking about XTU for OC-ing . I know that XTU keeps the multipliers and frequency between safe limits, this is why I have told him that for a further OC (more than what XTU offers) he might need to find a way to unlock the bios and make an overclock from there by changing the frequency of the multipliers. This is why I said that it is a time consuming and dangerous intervention, just for the sake of getting some more juice out of the CPU. It would be damn nice to see our CPU's reach 4Ghz but I don't think that anyone would be eager to go that far and risk a burned CPU or voided warranty.

As for the CPU performance, I don't feel like I'm wasting the performance. I seriously don't feel the performance hit with those clocks. On the other side, I do not like the high temperature that the CPU builds up with the default or maximum multipliers. I already said, my temperatures in AC Unity and Crysis 3 were going way up into the 90s with the multipliers on max and default fan profile. That was not too comfortable for me because: 1) I wasn't feeling good about the high temp, as I was used to see 80C max on the G75VW, 2) It was dissipating too much heat into the room and my temperature was raising like with like 3-4C ... Yes, I have quite a small room.

I already said that it might be a problem with the paste, but until I am going to call the service for a clean+repaste I have to handle the heat myself. It might sound like I am paranoid but I'm feeling quite comfortable with the settings I'm using right now. To be honest, I didn't even made a real comparison test between these settings and the maximum ones in any game but I will try to make one as soon as I will have some free time. Just to see if there really is a performance hit. But I do not expect to find anything serious. Maybe something around 2-3 FPS.

The facts that I am relying on are the CPU Core Usages showed by MSI Afterburner. When I saw the high temps in AC Unity I also checked the CPU Usage which was around 70% average and 80%max (and we are talking about a CPU power hungry game). Now, when I saw the usage I thought that "Hmm, now that's a waste of power", so I considered that lowering the clocks a bit will not affect the performance because the CPU had more than 20% room to reduce the clocks. After doing that, I was getting higher CPU Core Usages with like 5-7% but considerably lower temps. The frames looked the same for me, but as I said, there might have been a minor difference of 2-3FPS.
For Crysis 3 I don't even need to make a performance test, since the CPU Core Usages were like 50% so the CPU had enough room to lower the clocks.

I'm sorry if I am a bit hard headed but this is how my engineer brain told me it is right :)). I may be wrong with my analogy but it seemed okay to lower the power consumption since the power wasn't being used efficiently (thus resulting in the lowered temps).

I do agree that the thing with the Hyperthreaded cores does sound interesting and I will try to use it after I throw an eye on the thread you have linked here.

Thank you for your concern, and I am sorry if I misinformed someone over here. I was just expressing a subjective idea, that felt right for me.

[diogogmaio]

You made an awesome thread with so many info for new and expert g751jy users. Can u summarize the main achievements of this thread? For example...

---> Last driver that "safely" enables OC in gtx 980m from g751jy?? Because the newest driver crashes so many times with any overclock (my case)

---> What are the values in GPU tweak / msi afterburner to overclock the gpu? only a basic OC not extreme. Please give us some ranges.

[hexaae]

HELP!!!

I've just tried to overclock my G751JY using Intel XTU from 100MHz core to 108.0MHz (i7 4710HQ), checked "Force Reboot" and pressed "Apply"...
From now on the PC simply doesn't boot anymore! Black screen and switches off by itself, no BIOS and nothing!!! 😞

How do I reset everything to default?
I'm afraid that damn option "Force Reboot" should be renamed as "Make Permanent"... sigh...

SOLVED!
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?71728-Newbie-mistake-1-Where-is-the-G751jy-CMOS-battery-lo...

[HoTo]

Dunno... Getting pretty crappy fps in games that renders big worlds (for example PUBG), heavy for the CPU. Definitely throttled.

Might try to sell this laptop to think of other solutions sometime.