cpu voltage

[gorbs]

i ran cpuz and noticed that my cup voltage was varying between 1.564 and 1.648. is it normal for your voltage to vary like that. now don't laugh as i have not updated my gaming rig yet but i am running a 2.4c on an asus p4p800 using the on board bios auto overclock utility.

HEY, you said you wouldn't laugh !! giva an old man a break here guys i got two daughters in college and that isnt cheap.

anyway just trying to learn more before the next build and become smarter about these things. thanks

 

[myocardia]

No, it isn't normal to have that much variation. BTW, you need to overclock through your BIOS. Unless you want to be the next victim of Northwood Sudden Death Syndrome, you need to set your vcore no higher than 1.575v in the BIOS.

 

[gorbs]

thanks. NSDS??? thats a new one i have not heard before and as to manual overclocking i am going to need a link to a guide as to what is good or right and what is not. i have been using the auto or one click overclock since i put this together back in early 04. so any help getting pointed in the right direction would be great. i could spend a lot of time reading useless info and not know it lol.

i have not noticed anything problematic until i started playing titan quest and oblivion i started to try to debug a problem with the game crashing and some graphics probs. while i am not experiencing anything different than many other people from those forums i wondered if my overclocking utility also took care of voltage management and thats what led me to run cpuz. then i noticed the voltage variations. i did not think that was normal. i will return it to stock settings and see what it does from there before making any changes. thanks again for your response and info on northwood sudden death syndrome.

 

[j0j081]

my voltage varies to but not nearly as much. I always wondered if it was normal or something wrong with the power supply perhaps.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: myocardia
No, it isn't normal to have that much variation. BTW, you need to overclock through your BIOS. Unless you want to be the next victim of Northwood Sudden Death Syndrome, you need to set your vcore no higher than 1.575v in the BIOS.

LOL I ran my P4 2.6C @ 3.3GHz @ 1.65V for 3 years... no problems.

I think only the earlier Northwoods suffered from SNDS.

As for the OP, Asus boards are notorious for Vdroop (voltage dropping under CPU load), but even that variance is too much for an Asus board. Does it fluctuate that much all the time or only when the CPU is under load?

 

[gorbs]

i never thought to look at it before yesterday so who knows how long its been doing this. i will monitor it though and see where it leads me. i never updated the bios either. being my first build and a REAL novice at it i considered myself lucky that it even turned on lol, let alone to still be running.

i will set the voltage and see what shakes out. might be time to do some voltage checks with a multimeter on the psu. with any luck i might be able to parley this into a Christmas shopping spree at the Egg !!! but i still want to nail this down.

 

[WildHorse]

There are a very few vcore settings where "YES," my cpu-z voltage readout varies in that same manner, but not over such a wide range as you report between the two values.

Most don't, but just a few settings do that for me.

It seems to snap back & forth between two definite values, and does not report all the voltages in between those two points.

For example, for me, when I set vcore to 1.350 X 110% the cpu-z readout will dither back & forth between 1.424 to 1.440 v.


edit: important typo fixed

 

[gorbs]

i turned off the overclock function and it is now running between 1.536, 1.568, 1.584 just logged onto this site. i guess that is acceptable limits. going to run the game and see what happens.