NHC or RMClock for C2D?

Since intel has locked out the lower VIDs on CD and C2D, I'm wondering if there's any benefit to using NHC these days. I won't be gaining much/any battery life, and even if I wanted voltage/multiplier control, RMClock is smaller, uses less RAM, and doesn't need .Net 2.0 installed on the machine.

What do you guys think? Is it worth ditching NHC, switching to RMClock, or just using Windows power management?

 

I'm happy with RMclock. It is worth noting that while we don't see the gain in battery life which used to be achievable with the Pentium M CPUs, undervolting can still provide a significant reduction in heat generated by the CPU when under load. I reckon that this is at least 10W reduction on my Q35 (T5600 stable at maximum voltage 1V).

John

 

Why not just use Vista power management? I have my T7200 run at 1ghz on battery and 2ghz (full speed) on AC.

Works great and I get great battery life.

What does RMClock let you do on top of this with the C2D? I don't think I want my T7200 running slower than 1Ghz.

 

I use NHC.

RM Clock and NHC allow you to undervolt your CPU. This sends less voltage to it and thereby reduces heat and battery consumption. So your computer runs cooler and you get more battery life without sacrificing performance

 

I use RM Clock, but I vote NHC for its all-in-one solution capabilities. RMClock has a slightly steeper learning curve, and does not offer "the complete solution", aka, HDD/FAN settings as well.

EDIT: The funny thing is, while I use RMClock to set the max VID (.975 for my T7200), I let Lenovo's Power Manager take care of things. If I use Performance on Demand in RMClock insetad of Power Manager, I actually get 1/2 an hour LESS battery life. I'm not sure why. /shrug.

 

I too voted for NHC for its all-in-one solution capabilities. Under-volting my C2D has increased my battery life more than 45 mins on both my XPS and Vaio.

 

I'm not familiar with this under-volting thing...so doesn't this cause problems for the CPU if it's not receiving enough power esp for high load stuff?

How much could I undervolt a 2ghz T7200 C2D?

 

My T7200 can be undervolted to run @ .9750V @ the 12x multiplier. Yours probably will do the same. If it crashes then try the next step up.

 

It sounds like you don't understand undervolting that well. It's a kinda hard concept unless you've been through some physics and taken some electronics classes. For anyone else that might be curious:

Voltage is not the same as the frequency. It is somewhat linked to it, though. Your battery can only hold a certain mAh (milliamp-hour) charge, and after that, it supplies no more electricity. Watts are calculated by multiplying amps*volts. So, if you lower the voltage, you use fewer amps, so the supply in the battery will last longer. Make sense? It doesn't matter what the frequency is, just the voltage.

Here's the rub: if you don't have ENOUGH voltage, the CPU's instructions will fail, and it'll crash. So the factory sets the voltages high enough to make sure everything always works. Higher frequencies need higher voltages to make sure the connections and processing completes, hence the voltage steps you see in NHC/RMClock for each frequency. What people do is they lower the stock voltages to the tolerance of their individual machine, because each CPU is slightly different, so they can save battery life.

 

Ouch! I installed NHC and patched it for Core2Duo..it BSOD'd Vista and annoyingly put itself in the startup so on reboot it BSOD'd again.

I had to go into safe mode, uninstall it to get back to normal. Stupid piece of crap...I can deal with my "over-volting"

 

As far as I've been able to tell Vista and NHC dont work together. I couldnt get it to work when I tried Vista. Endless blue screening.

 

Well, NHC hasn't been approved for Vista as far as I know. Vista uses some different hardware access permissions, and probably a different hardware driver, so that's probably the problem.