Undervolting Turion x2 - GREAT!

I felt really frustrated not being able to find any undervolting tutorials up-to-date enough to talk about Turion x2. Also, a lot of the links were bad, since a lot has changed in the last 3 years and some of the websites are gone. Nevertheless I followed through with http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=80394 and guessed as to how to work the new version of RMClock. I have Turion X2 TL-52 (1.6 GHz) on Vista, and I was at first afraid that I would completely destroy my laptop and have to reinstall the OS. Although it did crash several times (I learned the hard way that Turion X2 does not support half-FID's), Vista remained operational, although clicking the arrow next to Computer in Explorer took about 10 seconds to open. I'm still not sure why that happened, but I suspect it has something to do with several power-out shutdowns and disabled the advanced disk caching features to reduce likelihood of losing data. Here are my final results:

Multiplier 4.0x from 0.800 to 0.738 V
Multiplier 8.0x from 1.125 to 0.925 V

CPU Temperature (average of the 2) - Prime95 torture test: ~65 C to ~47 C (significant drop)
CPU Temperature (average of the 2) - idle: ~45 C to ~38 C

I didn't have time to test with battery life before the tweaking, although I suspect that (in addition to other software that I installed) I can eke out another 15 minutes if not more if I left the laptop on battery full performance the entire time, and much more after I restrict the battery settings to power saving lowest performance. Right now I'm running at 2.5 hours on minimal. Still horrible, I know, but that's Vista for you.

All in all, I am very happy that RMClock exists and that Turion x2 can be significantly undervolted. Now, the computer is stable, cooler, quiet, and more battery-efficient. What more can I ask?

 

I also posted a similar thread here about the Turion 64x2 Tl-50 if anyone has that processor 1.6ghz and are looking for the stable clock numbers and an in depth tutorial.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2013012 post #15

 

I have the hpdv2125nr with the TL 50 1.6Ghz and for some reason I have not being able to use Rmclock to either undervolt or even if I try to run it with the default VID and multiplier it still crash.

 

Actually, I had to bump up the voltage for 4.0x to 0.738; I got the lovely BSOD while on idle (strangely enough, the computer was stable during Prime95 torture testing).

 

You are lucky to have gotten a pretty good undervolter, my TL50 isn't stable at anything other than the stock .8V@4x but it still does .95V@8x which is pretty good. It looks like AMD did all the undervolting to get the low power consumption for these chips.

 

Hi strategist333, can you tell if the cpu temp you are talking about in idle is after the fan stopped?
Because no matter how lowered the voltage is, eventually it must always cycle within the fan thresholds. Or does the fan never start in idle?

 

The fan on my laptop almost never stops. See http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=101286

I measured CPU temperature when the average temperature of the cores remained within 1 C for a minute. I do have to point out, though, that Core 0 on my laptop is consistently 10 C higher than Core 1 when seen through RMClock; AMD Power Monitor reverses the labeling of the two cores.

I think it's a combination of Vista and faulty design that keeps the fan running. The only time I got the fan to stop was when the CPU cooled to an average 35.8 C and I didn't access the hard drive at all for 20 minutes. Then when I started accessing the hard drive and CPU hit 39 C the fan kicked in again. Western Digital hard drives dont' have SMART feature, so I can't tell you what the hard drive temperature is. The left hand rest (where the hard drives usually are) is always warm though.

 

Actually, I've noticed now that the CPU fan usually turns on when the average CPU temperature hits 40.6 C and off when the average temperature gets below 36 C. The temperature then fluctuates between the two extremes, although I do occasionally get lower temperatures. In this respect I suppose the 38 C is accurate.