Does it make sense to lower core voltage?

[Wolfcastle]

My Athlon XP 1800+ on my KT7A-RAID kept crashing on me especially when playing games. I would continually get IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL during Win XP bootup or General Protection Error when playing UT.

Then I lowered the core voltage to 1.70v and everything's working fine now. I upped it to 1.8v and I got the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD 100% of the time during OS bootup.

The stock 1.75v crashes on me less frequently but still does. I have yet to try even lower voltage, but I wanna get some feedback from anybody who had to lower their core voltage to get their CPU running stable at stock speed.

 

[corkyg]

Lowering core voltage usually results in underclocking - - - slightly lower speeds in benchmarks, but often no perceptible difference in apps. It can result in increased stability and coolr running temps. Sometimes raw speed is not always the answer to overall stable and reliable performance.

 

[Wolfcastle]

I was under the impression that core voltage has nothing to do with overall speed, but only stability issues.

 

[Wolfcastle]

Really curious now. I've gotten my core voltage down to 1.6v and it's stable. I plan to keep going down to find the lowest it can be stable at. How low should I expect this thing to go since it's spec was at 1.75v?

 

[SirEnity]

If that's the case and you are not getting any errors when you lower your core voltage, then I would suspect that it is a problem with heat when the processor is heavily utilized. Are you using a stock heat sink from a retail package or just a basic cooling system in your machine? If this is the case then perhaps you would look into purchasing a more substantial cooling system for your machine.

Regards

 

[Wolfcastle]

You might be right, but I have a Thermaltake A1138 (VOLCANO 6 Cu+) that's rated for XP 1900+. I will be getting the Thermalright SK6 to see if that's any better. However, I do find that anything past 41C or so and it begins to misbehave. Right now, I have it at 1.7v and open case at 35-38C and it's been stable all night with UT running.

 

[AA0]

in NT, the only time I got that error message was when a stick of RAM went bad. Have you checked yours? Actually,on this board, the actually RAM slot went bad, not the RAM.