Any reason not to run AMD Cool and Quiet?

AndyD2k

Senior member
Feb 3, 2003
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About to install drivers but wanted first to find out any negatives about running a system with AMD Cool and Quiet enabled.
 

theMan

Diamond Member
Mar 17, 2005
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all it does is reduces the multiplier by half, and reduces the vcore when the cpu is idle. i dont see why you shouldnt use it.
 

hsjC

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Aug 12, 2005
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I have my venice 3200+ @ 2600MHz with Cool n Quite on for a while.
It was disabled at first. To be honest I can't tell the difference.
Why shouldn't you have it on if you are OCing?
 

ZobarStyl

Senior member
Mar 3, 2004
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Don't use cool and quiet itself, it's not very good at changing around effectively, however I used RightMark CPU Clock Utility that lets me change the multipliers to what I want when I want, so when I'm just running overnight programs it runs at 4x250 vs my normal 10x250, plus reduced voltage. It really helps because you control it and I see a massive change in both temp and electrical bill. Here's a link.
 

Unkno

Golden Member
Jun 16, 2005
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well, you could try to use cool and quiet, if it doesn't work very well, you could always uninstall/disable it.
 

Bona Fide

Banned
Jun 21, 2005
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Originally posted by: hsjC
I have my venice 3200+ @ 2600MHz with Cool n Quite on for a while.
It was disabled at first. To be honest I can't tell the difference.
Why shouldn't you have it on if you are OCing?

If you start running too hot, it'll drop the voltage and multiplier down, but not the FSB.

Your setup:

10x260 @ 1.55vcore

With CnQ:

8x260 @ 1.45vcore

FSB is still pretty high and may need more voltage, causing the computer to crash/shut down.
 

coomar

Banned
Apr 4, 2005
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i'm trying this rmclock thing out right now

i remember the nf2/8rdvcore combination was crazy, waking up in the morning in summer with an idle cpu temp of 27 degrees
 

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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I would not use cool and quiet. When using it, your cpu will clock real low and have lower temps when it is at idle. This may seem good, but then when you try to run something intensive, or open an app, cnc is very slow in getting the clockspeed back up, making your system noticably sluggish.

Unless cnc makes your cpu fan quieter when running, there is no practical reason to use it. Running your cpu a bit cooler will do nothing for it(It does not lower temps enough to extend life by any significant margin) Running your cpu slower than what it was MEANT to run for it's 10 year lifespan does nothing.
 

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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It can be as short as a few ms, but will be as long as a few seconds depending on what you are doing. If the cpu is too busy to increase the clockspeed, then it won't increase the clock speed until it has a spare cycle.
 

jldash

Senior member
Mar 22, 2005
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CnC ran awesome with my MSI board and 3200+. I never felt the system was sluggish compared to running at full speed all the time.
I did, however, gain the ability to run a nearly silent system by slowing down all my system fans (manually). I only sped them up when I was gaming. That, and lower power draw made it a key feature for me.
 

dukdukgoos

Golden Member
Dec 1, 1999
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It allows me to feel more comfortable with a bigger overclock as well, because the system is only heavily OC'd when it needs to be. At idle, it's still running cool and within spec.
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
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I still haven't met anyone who used Cool 'n' Quiet when overclocking and had trouble. With my Winchester I had it overclocked and used Cool 'n' Quiet and never had a problem.
 

P0pinjay

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Feb 6, 2005
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Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I still haven't met anyone who used Cool 'n' Quiet when overclocking and had trouble. With my Winchester I had it overclocked and used Cool 'n' Quiet and never had a problem.

How did you use Cool 'n' Quiet and overclock? I've been under the impression that those two were mutually exclusive.

-P
 

ZobarStyl

Senior member
Mar 3, 2004
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See my above quote. I do not run Cool and Quiet itself because, as dguy stated, it's slugglish and doesn't always speed up as fast as I would like. Using RMClock you can change speed instantaneously. To answer your question, the overclock is typically on the FSB (or AMD equivalent name, I won't split hairs) and cool and quiet drops your multiplier, so the do not conflict. In my case I have a 3200 winny with a 250 mhz FSB, putting it normally at 2.5. However, at times when having an overclocked processor does little to nothing (like right now posting a message on the forums) I drop the multi to 4, running at 1 ghz and a much reduced voltage. This uses less power (bills are expensive) and cools the processor a lot (less heat to A/C). Also, since the FSB is still high, you notice no real lag on any non-intensive process, such as browsers/music. Only when you get to CPU intense actions like games and encoding do you bring the speed back up. And again, here's a link.
 

orangat

Golden Member
Jun 7, 2004
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Coolnquiet works well. I never felt any sluggish startup since CnQ changes the speed 30 times a sec I think. If you feel its going to affect any games, you coould disable it temporarily via power options.
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
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Originally posted by: P0pinjay
Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I still haven't met anyone who used Cool 'n' Quiet when overclocking and had trouble. With my Winchester I had it overclocked and used Cool 'n' Quiet and never had a problem.

How did you use Cool 'n' Quiet and overclock? I've been under the impression that those two were mutually exclusive.

-P

They're not. You can turn it on or off whether anything is overclocked or not. For some reason people tell you you shouldn't... not that you can't. Frankly I don't see the problem. When I had my Winchester running 225x11 at 2.475 GHz on 1.5 volts I believe, Cool and Quiet would knock it down to 225x5 at 1.125 GHz on 1.2 volts. It was perfectly stable at that speed and voltage... that's the only reason you'd run into problems. But considering that it's guaranteed to run at 1.0 GHz on 1.1 volts, I'd say for another 125 MHz, the .1 voltage increase is more than enough to keep it stable.

As for what ZobarStyl says about it being sluggish, I NEVER experienced that. Even if it takes 100 clock cycles for it to kick into full speed, that's not something you'll ever notice. I suspect any sluggishness is either caused by other components and completely unrelated to Cool 'n' Quiet, or it's a mental thing. Since he knows the clock speed is halved, and then brought up to speed, he's convincing himself he notices it.

I'd still be running Cool 'n' Quiet if it worked with my Venice, but it doesn't for some reason. Still, I'm running 2.55 GHz on 1.5 volts and idling at about 30-33 C with the retail heatsink/fan only spinning about 2000 RPM.
 

ZobarStyl

Senior member
Mar 3, 2004
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No no Jeff, I wasn't saying that CnQ was sluggish in terms of performance (I constantly use a 250x4 multi and notice no difference in desktop usage) but that CnQ always seems slow on picking up back to full speed when it should. I had standard CnQ running with some encoding apps and it was taking 30 seconds to a minute to upclock itself back to full (checking CPU-Z). The performance is great, don't misunderstand, I was simply talking about the transitions between speeds. Plus, I like having control over it. If nothing else I'm a big lover of CnQ, so we're in the same boat. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
 

Jeff7181

Lifer
Aug 21, 2002
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Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
No no Jeff, I wasn't saying that CnQ was sluggish in terms of performance (I constantly use a 250x4 multi and notice no difference in desktop usage) but that CnQ always seems slow on picking up back to full speed when it should. I had standard CnQ running with some encoding apps and it was taking 30 seconds to a minute to upclock itself back to full (checking CPU-Z). The performance is great, don't misunderstand, I was simply talking about the transitions between speeds. Plus, I like having control over it. If nothing else I'm a big lover of CnQ, so we're in the same boat. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It shouldn't take 30 seconds... mine did it instantly. Something else was wrong... maybe a motherboard issue.
 

fleflikr

Member
Jan 7, 2004
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if you build your oc around a value that will allow the default multi to kick in when ramping into high speed, the lag is nill. i run a 3200 winnie at 10 times 250 with cool and quiet and it works flawless. gaming is my bag. there is no wait.
 

seanp789

Senior member
Oct 17, 2001
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Cool and quiet is a very good thing. It lso depends what you want to do with your CPU... If you OC a cpu powernow will lower your cpu temps when its not in use, extending the life of your oc'd cpu. That said, you may find that your OC will not be as high with powernow, especially with the new X2 processors with 1MB cache that are very Vcore sensitive. Power now will flux your vcore ~.3-.4 volts which isnt a problem until your computer is already pushing its limis and needing extra voltage jsut to stay stable. Another problem with powernow on X2 systems is if you do not set an affinity to one CPU or the other, the powernow will flux you cpu multiplier between 9x and 11x (for a X2 4400+). This goes for any singlethreaded 100% cpu app with no affinity. Powernow will not give you 100% cpu speed.

To test this I used the superpi benchmark to 1M. With powernow 41.135s without powernow or affinity set to cpu 0 only 35.65s. I ran this several times with the same basic results. I watched the cpu multiplier in CPU-Z change over and over again. now that was at 1M and for only 40 seconds. extend that to an hour and you are losing ~13% of your total CPU power