Actual Mobo Voltages

[BoboKatt]

Hi all,

I have been pulling my hair out for weeks now (it's almost all gone) trying to get my system to do better at OC'ing. I currently have a great MSI Neo2 Plat mobo (939 with AGP) running an AMD64 X2 3800+ with 2X1024 OCZ plat RAM and a BFG 6800GT AGP card. It's powered by a new Antec NeoHe 550Watt power supply. Anyhow my issue is that I have been oc'ing the system and upping the voltage in the bios for my CPU slowly bit by bit as I increase the actual cpu speed. However it fell flat past 2400 (10X240). What I noticed is that increasing the CPU voltage was NOT ACTUALLY increasing it or by much. I had my voltage set to like 1.55 in the BIOS and when I run CPU-Z or Speedfan or whatnot it shows my voltage at 1.41. Heck so I started going back and running it through the voltage settings one by one and sure enough the actual reading from CPU-Z was always WAY WAY lower than what I thought. In fact the only thing that actually increases the voltage dead on is the other option in the BIOS that gives me up 3.3% or up 5% or up 8% to up 10%> These work well but obviously the jumps I find are too large.

My question is... is this normal? Is this my MSI mobo and are they known for this? i am using the latest official BIOS. Now that I discovered this I am very happy in the sense that at least now I figured out why my OC would not work as the voltage was simply too low. By using the other feature I can up 5% and now 2500 is stable. Just as a side note anyone know just how high you can go with voltage with an AMD64 X2 3800+..? Is it no more than 1.55V?

thanks

 

[Wentelteefje]

If you're using a decent cooler (and even the stock one isn't bad), you can go up to 1.5V without risking too much... Beyond that, things get a lot trickier, and I would only do so when you're having serious air cooling or something better...

Don't trust CPU-Z too much... It could well be a tiny incompatibility with your mobo or so... Do you have the newest BIOS?

I believe almost all of the MSI mobos work with the percentage settings, but they aren't too big IMO... If upping the VCore by 5% (should be around 1.365V actual voltage) gives you a stable 2.5GHz, then I'd say Hail to the percentages...

Don't worry too much, when not exaggerating, everything should be fine... Even 10% (some 1.43V) wouldn't be too extreme... Maybe 8% is the sweet spot for a decent OC with your hardware?

 

[BoboKatt]

Sounds good.. will try that --- was just scared that the "over x.x%" option was gona blow my CPU away. As you stated the +8% should not put me too much in the danger zone. Even with my up 5% I dont really go too much over 33c when playing... at times 35 but then again this is based on SpeedFan and another program... so depends what I trust really.

Thanks

 

[Wentelteefje]

Those are great temps... :thumbsup: Nothing to worry about then...

 

[eljaye925]

Mine acts the same way and I have recently discovered that the newer bios' are capped @ 1.5v.

cpu vid

cpu vid + 3.3 or 5 or 8 or 10 over

Actual setting ie. 1.3 + 3.3 or 5 etc

Those are the kinds of combos you have to work with.

On my Oppy 170, 1.35 + 10 over equals 1.5v which is the max I can set