Hey. I have a mobility radeon x1400 in my laptop...has anyone tried overclocking these? I installed an app I got through a pc magazine called Powerstrip that allows you to control your engine and memory clocks manually...anyone know of a safe amount of overclocking for these?

I would not recommend overclocking a video card on a laptop. There a a couple reason I say this.

First off the cooling capacity of a laptop is highly restricted. The cooler in a laptop has a hard enough time cooling the CPU and video card at stock speeds. The moment you start overclocking the video card it will start pumping out alot more heat than the heatsink is designed to handle. And in doing so you will dramatically increase the possibilty of killing the video card and possibly the CPU of you laptop.

The other reason is that the moment you start overclocking you will be shortening the amount of battery time you have. What I mean is that it takes more power to run an overclocked video card than it does to run one at stock speeds. Hence when you are running on battery you will have a shorter battery life available to you.

As I am employeed in the PC field and repair systems regularly I can recommend to you to not overclock your videocard in you laptop as it increases the likelyhood of frying your system and gives you less time on batteries.

-ouch1

You could try to use ATITool, but I'm not sure if it will work with your Mobility Radeon. I also would not recommend overclocking for the reasons listed above. Overheating can be a problem with laptops even if you keep it plugged in with all the fans running; overclocking anything produces significant amounts of extra heat.

My Inspiron e1505 has an X1400 in it and from personal experience I can say IT RUNS HOT!!! We're talking "oh crap, I think I've got a scar on my legs" hot. Now if I'm just doing basic desktop tasks, it's fine, but the moment I fire up WoW watch out!

I think overclocking a laptop's GPU (especially a regular, consumer-grade laptop) is a bad idea. What do you expect to accomplish? That X1400 has 4 pixel pipes... you really think overclocking is going to turn it into a gaming beast? I just don't get it.

I would weigh risk vs. reward here.

The m-x1400 is not an overly powerful video card and overclocking it really won't give you much gain, if any at all. So your potential reward is not very promising.

Most mobility radeons run pretty hot. Overclocking it will only make it run hotter which in turn will make your entire lappy run hotter as the cooling properties of a laptop are spread out through the entire case. Unless you're prepared to crack open your laptop and enhance the cooling properties of it (AC5, better airflow, more heat sinks, etc.) you will most likely start artifacting very early on, and possibly causing the entire system to throttle itself (cpu) as a result. As I said already, it's not just about your video card running hotter but your entire unit as a whole.

As a side, I've overclocked mobilitys before just for the heck of it... and I never saw more than a 1-2 fps difference in exchange for a lot of heat. And in some cases, the performance was worse than before.

As ouch said, this is a bad idea over all. Cooling inside a laptop is designed to accommodate OEM heat output.

If you have a dell or a gateway, DO NOT DO THIS period. They are terrible regarding heat related issues.

I rebuild laptops all the time and you would be surprised how dirty the insides get, and if you have pets, how much hair gets into the system.

If you do intend to do this and risk breaking/melting some little plastic tab, or w/e else, at least get a laptop cooler that is MADE for your laptop. It hardly does any good to have a fan pulling air from under the wireless card.

I have an 9600pro turbo in my Inspiron 8600 and I can say that the card gets hot. I would not recommend overclocking it, even though you can through ATITool. It's a good way to destroy the surrounding components with heat damage.

Didn't I say Dell and Gatway are automatic disqualifications for overclocking.

Heat isn't too much of an issue yet...mine is an inspiron 9400, and it runs pretty cool...and I'm already shopping for a cold-pad for it...I tend to get a 3 hour life out of the batteries, too...plus I keep it plugged in most of the time.

I did some research on other sites, and found people who had successfully OC'd the x1400...said it ran stable and acceptably cool by reducing voltage slightly and upping memory and clock speed up by about 50-100 MHz.

I've already ran Powerstrip and experimented with speeds a bit...only have it running at about +10MHz core and +20MHz memory so far, taking her slow

We're all anxiously awaiting your next post where you ask us if there's anything you can do for an out-of-warranty laptop that won't boot!

I would recommend overclocking your card if you know what you are doing. Heat wise, I bought some arctic silver and applied it to the GPU core and memory units (bought mini memory heatsinks) and it runs just fine.

Intel Core 2 Duo T7200
2GB DDR2-667
NVIDIA GeForce GO 7400 (oc'ed 580/820) 2200 3DMARK05
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook

hi n the subject of laptop graphics overclock, i have a mobility x700 and turion MT-37.

I built a stand for my laptop with a base all perforated holes. i take the base plate of my laptop and have a 12cm case fan blowing over the heatsinks. Oh and i put some arctic silver ceramique on.

Stock my temps were 60-70 C + at full load now i dont even break 50C at full load with my card overclocked to 400/380 from 350/300 stock. this gives me a healthy performance boost with a well need fps boost in fear!

Before you ask, i have a laptop as i am at uni just now and a desktop is a little restricting.

James

Too much effort for too little payback.