How do you know you have reached the perfect voltage?

[HeXploiT]

If I can overclock and lower voltages on the cpu, fsb, spp & mcp across the board and achieve 100% stability does this mean I have a perfect overclock?
I'm thinking about temperatures and efficiency. I know that if you aren't providing some hardware with enough voltage this can actually reduce efficiency and cause excess heat.
How does one know when they have achieved the perfect voltage?
If the machine is running 100% stable under load is this a satisfactory indicator or are there other signs that may indicate more voltage is needed?

 

[krnmastersgt]

Firstly find the overclock you want or as close as you can get stably, then you lower the cpu voltage little by little until you get a BSoD or something and you know the minimum requirement for the cpu voltage, do that for all your components and you should have the lowest possible voltages for your OC.

 

[PolymerTim]

But the question is whether it is possible to have a reduced power efficiency at lower voltages where the system is still 100% stable. To be honest, I've never heard of that so, unless someone more knowledgeable can say otherwise, I assume that lower voltage is always better within the limit of 100% stability. Keep in mind that systems change with time though and stress testing is not perfect so I think its best to find the absolute lowest voltage for stability and then jack it up one notch.

 

[Insomniator]

Bsod's are a sign of low voltage? My 5000+ gave a bsod at 3.2ghz/1.375... 1.4 mighta helped?

 

[HeXploiT]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
Bsod's are a sign of low voltage? My 5000+ gave a bsod at 3.2ghz/1.375... 1.4 mighta helped?

Yes bsods & shutdowns/reboots are all a sign of low voltage. They might also be a sign that you've reached your ceiling or that your temps are too high.

 

[DSF]

BSODs can also be RAM related.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Yes but assuming you know the ram is from a good company, Corsair, G.Skill etc. and its PC6400, it should be enough to get you to 450 fsb, higher FSBs are going to need better ram, like DSF said.

 

[Goldfish4209]

Push FSB to 1600 with 6750 @ 3.2Ghz, leave RAM at 800Mhz, set voltages to 1.25 and raise until it'll run P95 overnight. I doubt this is a rock solid method, but this thing won't be running SETI@home or anything.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Hoo boy, SETI@home and those other BOINC projects are really tolling, my 3.6 stable has to be lowered to 3 or 3.2 to run BOINC without crashing.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
Hoo boy, SETI@home and those other BOINC projects are really tolling, my 3.6 stable has to be lowered to 3 or 3.2 to run BOINC without crashing.

Then I don't think you can call it 3.6GHz stable.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Well BOINC is more stressful that P95, I had a 16+ hour run with P95 at 3.6 and it was stable as heck, running F@H it was stable, but BOINC pushes it too far so I lower it to about 3.2 when I just run BOINC, light gaming on the side too, BOINC would probably be the best way to find out if its stable but a lot of games and apps won't push it further than P95, so if I'm just gaming I run my system at 3.6.

 

[Big Lar]

Until we get Power Supplies that are 100% efficient, nothing will be rock stable. However, from an overclockers point of view, proper amounts of voltage is achieved when; Benchmarks pass with flying colors, absolutely no issues with the Boot and Shutdown process. As to backing down on the voltage once you have found a stable clock, that's all well and good, however, we need to keep in mind that Starving an electronic component from the voltage it needs, is just as harmfull as giving it too much.

Also, I think, IMHO, that a properly tuned system, upon pushing the button for the cd/dvd rom, upon opening, a cool can of Budwieser should come out in the tray

Larry

edit; Also, you will know when you are on the border of the correct voltage, when you try to OC the chip by 1 or 2 fsb more, and you get instability.

 

[GundamF91]

Perfect OC? there's no Perfect OC. There's just another level of performance with trade off for additional voltage and heat.

I think of it as having 3 overclock settings you can reach. First, if you want the "default" OC, then get the highest FSBxmultiplier using the factory stock voltage. That'll get you the best speed without burdening the system with more heat and voltage.

After that point, you're basically asking for incremental performance gains, I call it "incremental" OC, you can keep upping vCore and other settings, and watch your heat. After a certain point, you'll need drastically more vCore and see more heat to gain a small increase. That means you've hit the point where the trade off is not too taxing on the system.

Then finally, you can go for the final frontier, or "ultimate" OC. That's basically as high as you can go without frying the motherboard and processor, and you still have stability. It's hard to know what point that is, basically when you don't feel like you can safely risk it any longer. So you back off a knotch or two, and call it the day.

Personally, unless your application and data crunching or games need the absolute speed, I"d go with "default" OC for as long as it meets your needs. Then if you feel the need, go with "incremental" OC. That'll probably buy you at least 2-3 years on the life of processor. Then after that, the next generation processor/mobo/ram will make your system pretty obsolete, at that point you won't care about hardware as much and then go for "ultimate" OC level on your system. This will buy you the max time on the system until you have to upgrade to a brand new system.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Or you could just back it down from the overclock you want/can achieve until you get a BSoD, either way it works and 100% efficiency is an enthusiast's dream and a power companies worst nightmare ^^ Also there should be a minor's version of the Budweiser cd drive, I like soda just fine