Unbelieveable 50% speed boost in Mobility Radeon 9600/9700

You know how your comp runs, everyone does, you know exactly what fps you get in rthdrbl or in the dawn demo. Or in the ATI demo's Debevec natural light, or in Farcry, etc. You know it is what everyone else with a machine of your spec gets too, because you check. You know your 3d marks, etc.



5 Minutes ago I did something that made all my FPS values shoot up 15%-50%.


I downclocked this computer.


This is a 5680, a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz HT laptop, 800 Mhz FSB with 512 dual channel Ram. I had always ran it normally, but then I started looking around for something that would make it run quieter, cooler, longer and extend the life.

Why have it running at 3.2 Ghz all the time when I'm surfing the net? It just puts wear on the components.

So I found a tool to clock it down to say 2.6 or 2.4 ghz,.. more than enough for everything.



I clocked it down (first by hitting get values, then sliding the fsb, then clicking apply) to 2400.68. Any lower and the screen would freeze and it would need a reboot.


Imagine my surprise when, upon loading all my favourite demos, games, to see how much slower they had gotten, my surprise when I actually saw an increase in FPS in all of them! From 15% to 50%.


Before/After values:

Dawn Ultra Demo (1152x964, 2xAA): 17 fps went to 23 fps
Rthdrbl (ultra cool DX9b Highpass demo, default sett.): 29 fps went to 38 fps
Debevec Natural light (1024 0xAA) (the peak after 10 secs): 42 fps went to - 55fps


Even when I had overclocked my Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro insanely, I never got these sky high fps values, plus what I did get I had massive artifacting. Now it's like this is impossible, it just can't be, I checked radlinker, my clocks are still the same (defaults no less).

It just feels like this little trick opened up a whole other 4 pipelines in the GPU.


I can't explain it I got 50% more fps for free by down clocking???


Can people please check this out.



This is the tool

http://www.cpuid.com/download/CG-ICS952607.zip


If people with other laptops wanna try,.. my motherboard is the I865PE, but the file (CG-ICS952607) is listed as for another type of board but it works!, just goto the homepage for a choice of the different versions.




Downclock the 3.2 to exactly 2.4 (no less) to do exactly what I did, and check with fraps.



Very strange.





P4 3.2 HT (running at 2.4)
512 Ram
DX9b
Win XP SP1
Cat 4.7
Mob 9600

It won't down clock below 2.4 ghz, it freezes the system.

The temperature doesn't decrease increadibly, just to 43-47c in moderate use.

Anybody with a 56x0 just try it you people, I just ran CMD4 on the incar view at 80 fps, it only used to manage 50 fps!


Just try this, it is so weird how much speed you get.


I sort of demand an official explanation from Sager,...

Don't you get it? GPU is capped!!

Have a 2.0 GHZ or a 4GHZ notebook it doesn't matter,.. your FPS will only allow the maximum that the Mobility Radeon can pump out at a SET clock speed. It is the BOTTLENECK.


This trick increased that maximum FPS tremendously without overclocking the Mobility Radeon. That's the strange part, games should only run faster if the mobility runs faster. And in this case the mobility is running at the same speed!


It should not be possible unless there is a design flaw that strangles the GPU (without decreasing clock hz?) when CPU runs at 3.2 Ghz.


I just ran Farcry at 60 fps on Very High ... what will this do for HL2 - Doom3.


I just can't explain this.

So how does it run faster without increasing clock and mem speeds?

I thought the same and I checked Radlinker.

No, still the standard 351/250 clock speeds.


Hell a month ago I o/c'd it to 435/315 and set the 2nd fastest Mobility 9600P score in the world (on futuremark 3d03), even then it was artifacting like hell and the fps was not this high.

Now it's just smooth.



The heat reduction is negligible. Mobmeter shows 47c.