hamei writes:
> ... your "engineers" were never that good anyway, not like these whip-sharp young kids that grew up with computers ...
Even those of us who grew up in the 80s home-computer boom (who no doubt thought of themselves for many years
as being tech savvy) are now pretty much old-timers & out of date compared to current trends.
> ... If it were under the voltage at which the cpu operates, then the cpu would not function. "Undervolt" is neither a noun nor a verb. Using it any other
> way than describing a failure to function is incorrect.
Wrong.
Modern PC CPUs don't have a fixed voltage at which they operate. Surely you know this? At stock settings
there's a baseline VID value which shows up as whatever setting in CPU-Z, but even that is derived from a range of
possible values for each chip type (varies slightly for each individual CPU). In normal practice the actual voltage a chip
receives is constantly changing. If the system is idle, numerous functions shut down and the voltage drops. On relevant
i3/i5/i7 CPUs, if one or more cores are active then Turbo increases the clock and increases the voltage to match. Watch
the details in Core Temp and it's plain to see. AMD now has an equivalent though less effective mechanism. Your
description assumes there's some fixed voltage for a CPU and that's just not true these days at all.
And then there's Vdroop, which causes Vcore to fluctuate under load anyway, especially when a load halts.
Undervolting, as those who use the term would say, is deliberately forcing the BIOS Vcore to be lower than normal in
order to achieve power consumption below that possible with the supplied C-State mechanism (or equivalent function
in AMD chips). Plus, quite often, the BIOS is too generous with the voltage supplied even for default settings. Many
users find they can reduce Vcore somewhat and still operate with default settings, again reducing power consumption,
also referred to as undervolting. One can sometimes do the same for the RAM. Depends on the mbd as to how flexible
one can be - some don't have a particularly wide BIOS range for Vcore/Bclk. Enthusiast boards are obviously better.
My
i7 870
has a VID range of 0.65 to 1.4V. At stock settings, the Vcore varies between about 0.9V for the chip running
at 1.1GHz up to about 1.35V for the Max Turbo setting of 3.6GHz. I have it set to 1.41V in the BIOS for 4.27GHz (no
Turbo or C-States) which shows up as 1.36V in CPU-Z, but this changes under load because of vdroop. It'll be a lot
more complex for my 875K which allows one to individually control each Turbo setting for 1, 2 or 4 cores active (ie. no
C-States, but Turbo active); when it's all setup, the Vcore will vary much more than the 870 depending on load. Ditto I
suspect for my 990X, though I've not examined it yet.
> But what the heck, we live in the world of NewSpeak so why not ? ...
People invent or adopt terms all the time, eg. where did "modding" come from?
> When "democracies" really mean "puppet governments run by friendly dictators who willingly take our bribes to distribute
Or just blame the voters, half of whom don't bother voting, while those that do choose for person X because they like their
smile, or that's how their parents have always voted, or some other dumb reason. :\ A true democracy makes decisions
based on rationale and reason; very few nations operate this way. Poor old Epicuras...
> no, it's ....
Undervolt !!
Sounds about right given some of the oc'ing rows I've seen on forums.
Ian.
). But lots of people run it because it is just plain simple fun:
(230L) (230L)
