Anyone actually bother to undervolt anymore?

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun May 03, 2009 12:18 pm

Who does it?

Why??

I was thinking about doing it and noticing how unstable a system it can make if you game with 2007-2009 games or just windows on 24/7 in general.

I have noticed increasing voltages on things like ram make the system more stable when no one else could figure out why things ever crashed.

my e8400 on asus p45 chipset board has ability to change voltages but its a full mess of power saving features on it already I would have to deal with or turn off defeating the purpose and might be wasting my time.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sun May 03, 2009 12:59 pm

I do something even more interesting, undervolting AND overclocking at the same time. I think undervolting is great, but if you have a great CPU and can overclock at the same time then it is more respectable. I have a Core 2 Duo E6300 (very first Conroe with B2 stepping) and it is awesome.

Here are my settings and results:
vCore: 1.1V (1.064V caused by Vdroop)
Core fequency: 2800Mhz
Multiplier / FSB: 7 x 400Mhz
Idle temperature: 35C (22C ambient)
Load temperature: 47C
2x Prime95: 72 hours stable
CPU cooler: ZALMAN CNPS-7000C
Fan speed: 1500RPM @ 5.5V

At stock voltage the idle temperature raises by 10C. When not overclocking and using stock frequency as well, idle temperature is between 40C~42C. Performance boost which I gain through overclocking is awesome and multimedia encoding works nearly twice as fast.

edh · Post by **edh** » Sun May 03, 2009 1:22 pm

Poll options are mutually inexclusive.

I do undervolt but only a little.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun May 03, 2009 3:00 pm

I purposely excluded you.

PartEleven · Post by **PartEleven** » Sun May 03, 2009 3:47 pm

I agree the poll options suck. None of them apply to me. I have an older system I undervolt to reduce power comsumption and reduce heat. I don't game on it either.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Sun May 03, 2009 7:25 pm

I do, on my E6550 from just over a year ago (Christmas 2007, actually). I haven't spent hours dragging it down to minimum stable voltage or anything like that, but I dropped it far enough that I estimate CPU power is down to half. If I bought a newer 45nm chip, I might not bother, but I'd still consider it.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Sun May 03, 2009 8:38 pm

PartEleven wrote:I agree the poll options suck. None of them apply to me. I have an older system I undervolt to reduce power comsumption and reduce heat. I don't game on it either.

the word ANCIENT applies to your system

you would be option 1

1 is a number by the way just like ANCIENT is a word

alfhenrik · Post by **alfhenrik** » Sun May 03, 2009 11:40 pm

I undervolt my E6400 equipped file/bittorrent server...as it is on 24/7 I thought I'd save energy (even if just a bit) by undervolting the CPU at stock speeds...got it down to 0.95v with EIST enabled...(2.13Ghz at load, 1.6Ghz at idle)

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sun May 03, 2009 11:51 pm

somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning with a grudge:) Undervolting works like a charm for me and brings my power consumption down by a lot:) It is one of those tools I use to be able to run my system totally passive. Not a single moving part in that rig. (no issues with instability either)

alecmg · Post by **alecmg** » Mon May 04, 2009 3:55 am

I have a soc.939 opteron with undervolt and a newer p45 c2d e8600 without.
Reason1 - c2d has better power management already. There is room to undervolt idle state but watts and temperature difference is negligeable.
Reason2 - software undervolt is near impossible on linux. BIOS undervolt is not acceptable because I want to have max power available at my fingertips when needed.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon May 04, 2009 4:53 am

I don't need undervolting. My AMD C'n'Q is more thn effective for my needs and my rig is 98% with auto-undervolted by C'n'Q. My Intel is for gaming only so its not on 24/7 so no bother undervolting it either.

Lucky Luciano · Post by **Lucky Luciano** » Mon May 04, 2009 6:08 am

I undervolt my old Socket A Sempron 2600+ from 1.6 to 1.525. Not much and temperatures didn't drop with more than 5C but at least I can keep my CPU fan(Arctic Fan 3) at ??-1500 rpm. I have no idea how low it gets, under 1200 Speedfan stops giving any credible figure(think 30000 rpm). Normal usage temps are about 48C, load: 53C.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon May 04, 2009 10:36 am

alecmg wrote:I have a soc.939 opteron with undervolt and a newer p45 c2d e8600 without.
Reason1 - c2d has better power management already. There is room to undervolt idle state but watts and temperature difference is negligeable.
Reason2 - software undervolt is near impossible on linux. BIOS undervolt is not acceptable because I want to have max power available at my fingertips when needed.

Oh. hm. that's another wrench to throw in, Linux. one would think geeks + spare time = massive control software programs for such things. hm. I was planning on dual booting and keeping Linux as primary and flipping for games when needed. This adds a bad layer to the plan!

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon May 04, 2009 10:41 am

Lucky Luciano wrote:I undervolt my old Socket A Sempron 2600+ from 1.6 to 1.525. Not much and temperatures didn't drop with more than 5C but at least I can keep my CPU fan(Arctic Fan 3) at ??-1500 rpm. I have no idea how low it gets, under 1200 Speedfan stops giving any credible figure(think 30000 rpm). Normal usage temps are about 48C, load: 53C.

Hm. This is also an angle I have considered. Getting an old socket combo for cheap off of ebay and making it an undervolted comp for running my telnet mud, music listening, watching dvd's and web browsing. Lots of research it takes to see though if a particular combo is worth it over buying new.

If one were to buy brand new, I would want to have high end on board graphics for movie watching, and the cpu minimal. I would think you save more power having an advanced on board gfx chip and a lower clocked cpu that can be undervolted. Anyone ever try and u-volt a modern on board gfx chip and northbridge? I know MikeC had a board a year or two ago that you could do this with.

relitz · Post by **relitz** » Mon May 04, 2009 11:45 am

I have an E4300 which I've undervolted to the lowest setting avalible in my BIOS (only 1.15V) and then overclocked to 2.5GHz.

I use this rig for for everything, surfing the web and gaming, and I've undervolted to keep the heat down which allows me to reduce fan speeds.

PartEleven · Post by **PartEleven** » Mon May 04, 2009 11:49 am

~El~Jefe~ wrote:Hm. This is also an angle I have considered. Getting an old socket combo for cheap off of ebay and making it an undervolted comp for running my telnet mud, music listening, watching dvd's and web browsing. Lots of research it takes to see though if a particular combo is worth it over buying new.

This is pretty much what I did. Except I mainly use my older system as a basic NAS-like box. I also happened to have a few older parts lying around which made it cheaper for me to go this route. If you're buying everything off ebay, it's probably more cost effective to buy first generation low end Allendales (or an equivalent AMD chip) rather than ancient components. Then again, something like the e2140 is probably stone-age for you already

I didn't like your poll because the options reflect your highly opinionated view, which I don't always agree with.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon May 04, 2009 5:31 pm

You will be assimilated shortly.

I have a red laser eye thing for you ready and waiting.

resistance is, of course, futile.

It's a toss up I guess, I might buy brand new. the e series amd's look really nice. I havent seen a nvidia on board video 1080p hd ready system that also has voltage control for lowering it yet (or at least havent read about it) Then I could go for intel's lowest voltage dual core 45nm jobbie

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Mon May 04, 2009 7:25 pm

I mostly just let things get handled auto-magically now. AMD CnQ is good enough for me, and I have setting for an overclock in the Asus profile with CnQ off and things ramped up. I reboot a lot anyway between Vista and XP anyway so it doesn't matter--and the system is off ever night as well. So I can pick when I abandon all savings.

arckuk · Post by **arckuk** » Tue May 05, 2009 5:45 am

~El~Jefe~ wrote:
alecmg wrote:I have a soc.939 opteron with undervolt and a newer p45 c2d e8600 without.
Reason1 - c2d has better power management already. There is room to undervolt idle state but watts and temperature difference is negligeable.
Reason2 - software undervolt is near impossible on linux. BIOS undervolt is not acceptable because I want to have max power available at my fingertips when needed.
Oh. hm. that's another wrench to throw in, Linux. one would think geeks + spare time = massive control software programs for such things. hm. I was planning on dual booting and keeping Linux as primary and flipping for games when needed. This adds a bad layer to the plan!

The undervolting options for linux are not widely publicised. There is a really useful tool known as cpupowerd for AMD processors, developed by smax3 on these forums that I have used in the past. See my posts here: viewtopic.php?t=49724&start=0&postdays= ... highlight= for my experience and a mini tutorial. I only ended up saving about 3 watts with my BE2350, but it was nice to know I was wasting as little energy and generating as little heat as possible.

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Tue May 05, 2009 10:50 am

I undervolt where I can and this includes old and new systems. The most recent was an C2D E8400 on a gigabyte nVidia 9400 motherboard. My disappointment with Intel continued as software tools for undervolting (RMClock, CPUID) are locked at the default idle voltage as the lowest. For this CPU, that was 1.1V which it ran perfectly stable from 1.6Ghz-3.0Ghz. So it should have been able to run much lower at idle. The other option then being BIOS undervolting but then you loose EIST. The saving grace was that the gigabyte board had it's built in DES which had the ability to underclock and undervolt. I believe it dropped it down to 0.95V and 1.2GHz at idle. Power for the system went from 56W to 50W AC idle. It uses software to configure but then it sounded like the actual control for it was in the motherboard. If so, that's nice as it shouldn't be software dependant. But of course you loose the fine controls to tweak as you want and can only use their pre-defined presets.

Another issue I had was with my work PC. It's an AMD X2 4200+ on a gigabyte 690G motherboard. RMClock worked great on it with Windows XP x64 and I was running 0.85V @800MHz - 1.1V @ 2.2GHz. But then I installed Vista and now any attempt to use RMClock or CPUID causes instability even when using stock voltages I believe. Not sure what Vista would be doing differently there. So no undervolting here.

My home PC is a Pentium M 725 and it undervolts like a dream. 0.7V@600MHz and [email protected] using RMClock. Of course it's a little behind in performance. But at idle with onboard video, I'm in the low 20's Watt range.

I think undervolting is a great tool. I just wish it was possible to undervolt at the BIOS level but still have EIST/CnQ and the tweaking abilities of software tools. The Gigabyte DES tool actually impressed me pretty much as it's the closest I've seen to this.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Tue May 05, 2009 11:23 am

what is the best software unvolting thing for intel boards?

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Tue May 05, 2009 2:58 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:what is the best software unvolting thing for intel boards?

Iâ€™ve found RMClock to be solid for under-volting or setting available multipliers but itâ€™s limited to the â€˜natural rangeâ€™ of the CPU so donâ€™t expect very low voltages.

Gigabyte boards can typically use their own tweaking software which allows you to change VCore and other settings over a very wide range directly from within Windows. Thatâ€™s useful when hunting for the lowest stable settings as you donâ€™t have to reboot every time you need to tweak a voltage.

CrystalCPUID is also worth investigating although I havenâ€™t used it since I moved from AMD to Intel as RMClock seems more user friendly and offers more functions; not sure what itâ€™s like 3 years later!

yuu · Post by **yuu** » Wed May 06, 2009 3:29 pm

with e8400/ p45 there is no benefit to undervolting at all

as this intel cpu takes as much as it needs, 2.98 watts idle as everest doesnt show data below 2.98 and it is unlikely that any game/software will be more than half of whatever intelburn is, that is average 15-20 watts, why go any lower than that, it is already insanely low, well i have played the latest assasin velvet game at only 3 watts load Cpu 0.8V and 1.8Ghz, and 90 watts Gpu, but that was a crasy idea to begin with, i am one of a kind i guess.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:08 pm

Interesting poll choices

I both undervolt and overclock both my CPU and GPU. While they are not the latest, they certainly don't qualify as ancient.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed May 06, 2009 6:54 pm

CPUs generally have a lot of room for undervolting. I'll admit that I don't play the latest and greatest games, but when finding the minimum voltage for my CPU I stressed it plenty (used Prime95 and a few other programs to be absolutely sure). I'm 100% confident it could handle anything that could be thrown at it, even with the ~20% undervolt I'm using. I wonder why you seem to think that undervolting a CPU implies that you must live with some instability. This most certainly is not the case if you do things right.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Fri May 08, 2009 5:48 am

Hm. What is the consensus for measuring total system wattage? The power angel isnt sold anymore it seems. I should test this as the above poster explained I should be at a very low level of watts already. My goal was also to be at lower watts for when cpu is maxing out. my system gets a bit hot.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Fri May 08, 2009 8:49 am

yuu wrote:with e8400/ p45 there is no benefit to undervolting at all.

I know what you mean as my E8400 (E0)/P45 set-up from my limited testing doesn't gain much. It's so easy to cool and very low power that after brief testing showed little gains I havenâ€™t bothered to check it out fully yet. I think Iâ€™ll run it at 400MHz FSB for 3.6GHz at stock voltage as so far it seems stable at 3.8GHz after brief testing.

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:01 am

Ya no kidding poll choices bizarre. Hell yes I undervolt. Also I overclock. In fact I undervolt and overclock everything I can and it's FULLY stable. And I absolutely love the temperatures of my chips due to this. Undervolting also helps in a situation that other power saving stuff does not....Load power and temps. Load power and temps will still be normal without undervolting.

I'm actually wary of intel boards just because of the lack of undervolting/overclocking features. Which is sad because I would rather like a mini-itx G45 board, although now I want a mini-itx P55 with westmere instead.

Stability is supereasy if you don't overclock. Only overclocking makes stability harder..and still that only took 1 day to get right...and a few days of sillyness trying to undervolt/overclock more just...because.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:52 pm

You would fit the last option as your video card is not a gaming card anymore.

Undervolt and oc sounds like a nice plan. Are nvidia boards much easier to adjust??

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Fri May 08, 2009 4:11 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:You would fit the last option as your video card is not a gaming card anymore.

Undervolt and oc sounds like a nice plan. Are nvidia boards much easier to adjust??

Funny since I've been playing plenty of left 4 dead and fallout 3 recently

Also I mean intel branded boards, not intel chipsets. Intel chipsets are awesome assuming a mobo with the right bios options :p