underclocking, undervolting, instability, rmclock

I've read through a few of the threads here on RMclock, but I still have a few questions, if that's okay.

Right now my hp pavilion dv9207 with Vista, 2 GB RAM, core duo 1.73, is running at 93 degrees C- this is obviously without any management. I have it in an air conditioned room, sitting on top of a kind of cardboard thing that acts a little heat-sinky. If I let it rest on my desk or (ugh) on my lap, it would shut off from overheating.

Question 1: Can I both underclock and undervolt with RMclock? Or is it just for undervolting? And if it is, should I underclock with the BIOS?

I set up a performance on demand profile where FID 6 corresponds to .95 volts (the lowest it would go) and FID 13 to 1.05. Normally it uses 1.2 volts.

Using that profile, CPU temp fell to a wonderful 65 degrees C. I ran Prime95 and it was fine. (When I ran Prime95 at 1.2 V the temp shot up to 100+ and I got core overheat notifications- that was before I understood you were supposed to lower FID 13 as well as FID 6.)

What scares me a little, however, is that it doesn't run stably at FID 6 even when I'm not doing anything. It jumps around continually. So question 2 would be- is it okay that the voltage keeps changing, or is that even worse than running it at a high temperature continuously?

It also, even though no FID number corresponded to a voltage higher than 1.05, showed jumps up to 1.2 V for both processors. Is that a Vista thing?

And lastly, I actually used a lower voltage for FID 13, of 1 V, but it seemed to run hotter when I had it that low. Did I do something wrong, or was it maybe that it was jumping up past that upper limit more often?

And lastly for real, I should also note that I had throttling on for a bit and it seemed to affect all this, but I don't remember how- will it help with the heat?

Sorry if these six questions are stupid- I feel like I'm on the path to being on the verge of understanding this stuff. Thanks for your help.

 

A few comments but not a complete set of answers:

I would get the VID 6 as low as it will go (probably no lower than it is now), set the VID 13 to 1.05V and set RMclock to infill the intermediate values.

When time permits you can do further stress testing to see whether the VID 13 even lower.

I wouldn't bother about fixing the CPU to a lower clock speed. It will always try to speed up when there is work to be done and arguably it is better to let it do the work quickly and go back to its slowest mode rather than make it take longer to complete the task to be done.

John

 

To underclock using RMclock, simply go to the "power saving" profile. You will notice it will only let you check one of the multiplier boxes, as opposed to as many as you want in the other profiles. That is the multiplier at which your computer is capped. Pick one and change your profile to "power saving" in the main profile page.

Your cpu speed is determined by the bus speed (found by using CPU-Z) times the multiplier. For example, the bus speed of my t8300 is 200mhz so at the maximum 12x multiplier, it runs at the rated 2.4 gHz.

As John Ratsey said though, whether or not underclocking is useful is debatable.

 

Thanks for your help guys- I'm going to take your lack of a warning on the rapid voltage changes while using rmclock to indicate it's not that big a deal.

 

Yes. Those voltage spikes should correspond to temporary increases in CPU speed which happen when there is some work to be done. As soon as a task is finished the CPU then quickly drops back to a slower speed.

John