Undervolting Athlon II X4 630

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doveman
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Location: London

Undervolting Athlon II X4 630

Post by doveman » Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:59 pm

Having failed miserably to overclock this CPU on my Asrock 880GMH/U3S3 board viewtopic.php?f=28&t=62817&p=577294#p577294 I've now decided to undervolt it instead. As it will be only serving media files to a RPi sometimes, it seems to make sense to have it run at as low-power as possible when idle.

Using PhenomMSRTweaker, I've tested with it locked to 4x (800Mhz) which is the lowest multiplier available and set it to 1.0v (down from 1.1v) and that seems stable and also tested at 8x (1600Mhz) at 1.1v (down from 1.2v) and that seems OK too. I haven't properly stability tested yet though and was wondering whether tools like IntelBurnTest are still valid for testing when locked to lower frequencies or if they're only any use at full speed?

At full 2.8Ghz, what voltage am I likely to be able to lower the VID to, from the default 1.4v (1.368v Vcore) and what am I likely to be able to get down to at 800Mhz and 1600Mhz?

Is there any scope for lowering the NB VID from the default 1.175v and is that likely to confer any significant power savings or is that rather minor compared to the CPU v?

flemeister
Posts: 346
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Location: Australia

Re: Undervolting Athlon II X4 630

Post by flemeister » Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:23 pm

I just use Catalyst Control Centre.

noee
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Re: Undervolting Athlon II X4 630

Post by noee » Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:27 am

fwiw, I have everything in BIOS at "default" and use K10Stat for all settings. At my P3 state in K10Stat, I have:

CPU Volt: .75
NB Volt: 1.0125

I could probably go lower with the NB, but I've been running this config for years and it's just rock solid.

I've used PMSRT also, works the same, I just like interface for K10Stat better. You can also try TurionPowerControl (on AMDZone.com), it's amazingly flexible, but all command line.

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: Undervolting Athlon II X4 630

Post by doveman » Sat Aug 31, 2013 11:24 am

noee wrote:fwiw, I have everything in BIOS at "default" and use K10Stat for all settings. At my P3 state in K10Stat, I have:

CPU Volt: .75
NB Volt: 1.0125

I could probably go lower with the NB, but I've been running this config for years and it's just rock solid.

I've used PMSRT also, works the same, I just like interface for K10Stat better. You can also try TurionPowerControl (on AMDZone.com), it's amazingly flexible, but all command line.
Thanks. I'll leave everything at default in BIOS then and just use PMSRT to adjust.

At the moment I'm using 0.95v (down from 1.1v) for the CPU at P3 (800Mhz) but I'm sure it can go lower. For P0 (2800Mhz) I've tested

Idle: CPU 37, Core 26, MB 41

at VID 1.40 (default)
IntelBurnTest (Standard, 5 runs): CPU 55, Core 45, MB 43

at VID 1.35
IBT (Standard): CPU 52, Core 44, MB 44

at VID 1.30
IBT (Standard): CPU 51, Core 41, MB 43

at VID 1.25
IBT (Standard): CPU 49, Core 40, MB 42

So there's a nice reduction in temps (and of course energy) with each decrease.

P2 (1600Mhz) and P1 (2400Mhz) are still at 1.1v and 1.2v (1.2v and 1.3v default) so I need to work out what I can get those down to as well.

I'm not so sure about undervolting the CPU-NB as I'm running 1333Mhz DDR3 and I don't really know what depends on the CPU-NB.

EDIT: At 1.25v it BSOD within seconds of starting OCCT Linpack test, even though it passed IBT (Standard), so I increased it to 1.30v and it seems stable with that.

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