What are various symptoms of not enough Vcore?

[Hulk]

Assuming cooling is adequate, good power supply, memory, etc.. everything else is solid, when you don't have enough Vcore what is the order of symptoms?

Is it something like this? From seriously lacking required voltage (1) to just barely being under what is required (5).

1. Won't post
2. Will post but not get into Windows
3. Gets into Windows but will restart after 10 or 15 minutes even when not running strenuous programs
4. Restarts when running Orthos (or other cpu intensive apps)
5. Throws errors in Orthos but no restarts.


I'm just curious to what you guys see in your systems. I've been running at 1.35V and 3.2GHz since November and decided to try to back down the voltage, just to see how low it would go. I took it to 1.30 and after about 10 or 15 minutes of web browsing, e-mail, Word work it restarted on me.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

1-5. You'll need at least stock voltage to run at 3.2GHz. A good board will also allow you to run C1E and EIST regardless of Vcore setting. This will further drop Vcore and core speed when the CPU is idling or under low load.

 

[BoboKatt]

Nice post!

Yup interesting indeed. I had my system stable for months at 3.6Ghz (e6850) with close to 1.38-1.4 V. I decided that I really did not need to run that speed so I actually went back to stock which is 3.0Ghz. At that speed I started the work to find what my lowest voltage I could find.

Anyhow in regards to your order... I would totally agree.

In my case when I dropped the voltage too low, I would be able to play say a game for 25 min and then it would freeze. If as a test I lowered my voltage more (just for fun) the same game would reboot my system in 15 min. I then would up it to one more over what the last setting was and then I was able to play all day if I wanted.

I would run Orthos and I would get the following results:
if it actually make it to windows and run Orthos... it would just reboot my system
if I raised the volts a bit more I would run Orthos for say a 3 min and then it would freeze
if I raised the volts again Orthos might run for 10 min and then give errors but not freeze or reboot.

Etc

 

[dflynchimp]

do you get the blue screen mem dumps? That'd definitely signify undervolting

 

[Hulk]

I did some further testing and here are my results.

1.30 Restart while internet browsing
1.3125 Gets through about 15 seconds of Orthos then restart
1.325 About 2 minutes of Orthos then restart
1.3375 About 9 minutes
1.350 16 minutes
1.3625 2 hours 27 minutes and still running


Looks like at 3.2GHz my cpu needs 1.3625. I think I'll bump it up one notch from there and leave it. I remember over the winter when the house was cooler 1.35V was Orthos stable for 4+ hours.

 

[emilyek]

Rounding errors in Orthos, not the other error-- I forget what it is.

 

[sethkinast]

Originally posted by: emilyek
Rounding errors in Orthos, not the other error-- I forget what it is.

Checksum errors methinks. Those are memory-related.