Max OC with Toshiba Satellite 2410: Geforce4 420 Go

[hazart]

:( Overclocking is not supported; do it at your own risk!

Just overclocked my Geforce4 420 Go and benchmarked using 3DMark2001 SE Pro. Wanting to share the results with you all, especially the good old Geforce4 420 Go users! :)

Laptop Hardware Spec

Toshiba Satellite 2410 (bought in Dec. 2002)

Pentium 4 M 1.70 GHz

Geforce4 420 Go (0175, 32 MB DDR)

1 GB DDR266 DRAM

Software Environment

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

ForceWare 71.84 with the 'Toshiba Black Bar Fixed' INF

DirectX 9.0c

3DMark2001 SE Pro - Build 330

RivaTuner v2.0 RC 15.4 controls the video clock frequency

Benchmark Results (Screenshots attached below.)

Default (200 MHz/400 MHz Core/Memory)

Score: 3935 3D marks

Observation: mediocre performance... :)

EXTREME OC (300 MHz/620 MHz Core/Memory :P )

Score: 4791 3D marks

Observation: much faster, no display errors seen (STABLE - system successfully accomplished my later 'endurance test' with 20 loops of benchmark :) If the system is not running any benchmark, the fan blows as usual, i.e. does not blow for most of the time :P Don't know how to read the card's temperature though.)

Discussion/Conclusion

1. 300/620 is the maximum RivaTuner normally allows for my card (registry tweaks needed to go higher)

2. Toshiba Satellite 2410's Geforce4 420 Go has a superb overclock potential

3. Overclocking does stably improve the graphic performance significantly

4. It is fairly safe to overclock your Geforce4 420 Go, not to this extreme extent though :thumbsup:

5. I'll use 300/620 from now on; it's fast and stable. I don't care about my laptop's 'longevity' - a new one is needed anyway as soon as Longhorn goes RTM next year! :thumbsup:

Uploading screenshots...

Screenshots too big to upload (single file size>100k) :P

EDIT: Screenshots up. Thanks, tomvanallen! :(

The first screenshot is the DEFAULT and the second, OVERCLOCKED.

[LSudlow]

Excellent report! Thanks!

:)

[hazart]

Thanks! :)

Any idea how I can post the screenshots? Two PNG's, 257 kB and 249 kB respectively. :P I tried to convert them to JPEG using maximum compression, but the resulting files were still some 160 kB each. They have to be smaller than 100 kB each to be posted here. :)

[Guest tomvanallen]

No, problem... just upload your screens here:

http://imageshack.us/

I wish I had the 32 MB edition of the GeForce4 420 Go...

[hazart]

Got it! :)

Many thanks.

Which card do you have at the moment? :)

EDIT: I see, you have the 16 MB edition. BTW, how high does its clock go until it becomes unstable?

[®®®]

:) hazart. :)

[Guest tomvanallen]

I see, you have the 16 MB edition. BTW, how high does its clock go until it becomes unstable?

Actually I just installed RivaTuner myself, and was about to do some testing. You see, I got some what inspired by your extreme overclocking!!! :) However, I'm a bit unsure about which clock speeds to aim for since I don't wanna ruin my laptop. I'm far too dependant of it! :)

[®®®]

i would start with 25MHz(Core)/50MHz(Mem)

[Guest tomvanallen]

Alright, that was a good suggestion since I started out real carefully with increments of only 5 MHz, and besides from being tedious, I know now for a fact that that was unnecessary.

I used a ordinary digital thermometer to have some indication of the temperature of the fan air flow, and hence the insides. I used 3DMark2001 SE with non default settings to be enable to benchmark my 16 MB edition of the GF4 420 Go. That is only 16 bit color depth, textures and Z-buffer. (This is the default settings in 3DMark2000 by the way.)

The standard core / memory clock is as you may know 200 / 400 MHz. The room temperature was 24 °C, and I had to overclock to 260 / 520 before the air flow temperature would even reach 50 °C during a benchmark run. I then tried 280 / 560 and Windows BSODed and rebooted before I even had the chance to read the stop error.

With the standard clock settings I got a score of 4375. At 260 / 520 I got 4603. Comparing the individual results for each game test I noticed little gain and even a couple of decreases in FPS. I came to the conclusion that overclocking just isn't worth it in this case.

[hazart]

:) hazart.  :P

Thank you!! :)

I have been using 300/600 (MHz) Geforce4 420 Go for a day and everything is smooth as normal!

[hazart]

I used a ordinary digital thermometer to have some indication of the temperature of the fan air flow, and hence the insides.

Professional! :)

FYI, below are my 3DMark2001 SE scores under Windows XP SP1a a long time ago: :(

Using ForceWare 52.16 with Pieter's INF 11.65

DirectX 9.0 maybe? Forgot (didn't note down).

RivaTuner used to control the clock frequency.

Same system spec except that there was only 512 MB DDR266 DRAM.

Core/Mem Score

200/400 4010

210/432 4110

210/459 4222

220/432 4143

220/459 4230

220/486 4318

230/486 4329

240/486 4360

240/513 4427

250/513 4453

As shown above, I used to increment 10/25 (MHz) on average at a time and the score increased steadily with the clock frequency. I was very cautious and stopped half way, but there was no need really. :P

Geforce4 420 Go (0175, 32 MB DDR) is a great card with Toshiba Satellite 2410! :)

[®®®]

rebooted before I even had the chance to read the stop error.

Here's a REG file for stopping autoreboot (now you have ability to read the BSOD message).

stop_autoreboot.reg

[hazart]

rebooted before I even had the chance to read the stop error.

Here's a REG file for stopping autoreboot (now you have ability to read the BSOD message).

An alternative is to uncheck a box (see the screenshot attached) :)

[®®®]

Exactly :)

[sylvain5_0]

Hi hazart,

I know I am late with my questions but I would like to have some answers if you (or someone else can...) :

I have quite the same laptop (satellite 2410) with differents spec :

Pentium 4 2.2 Mhz

512 MB RAM

The same video card GEforce 4 420 Go 32 MB

Windows XP SP2

Directx 9.0c

I use 71.89 drivers with anti black bar inf and I would like to know if I should change my drivers in order to make some o/c to improve performances. perhaps 84.25 as recommended in faq topics...

Thanks for your help !

Edited January 21, 2007 by sylvain5_0

[hazart]

Hi sylvain5_0,

71.89 with the 'black bar' fix is one of the best drivers I've ever used! To overclock the card, you don't need to modify your drivers. Just download RivaTuner here: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner and install, easy to use, very reliable.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

hazart :)

[Guest the-smith]

hi !

This comment is a lil late but maybe of interest. I have a HP Pavillion zv5000 laptop:

AMD Athlon 3000+

512mb Ram

Geforce 4 420 Go 32 MB

Windows XP SP2

Directx 9.0c

Driver: 47.16 by HP

I tried to overclock like you guys did and i was able to reach like 4400 Benachmarks with 3DMark2001 at 245/550 (i still cant afford a new laptop and this was my try to keep it a lil longer). Then i found out that my card was running in PCI mode which had to be wrong, so after some research i found the new nforce3 drivers for my mainboard and it worked like a charm! the Card now runs in 4x AGP mode with fast writes. Im at 5962 Benchmarks now and itz stable. so if you have a board with nforce3 chip and you want to try it out, here is your link:

nforce3 Driver 5.11