Er, I'm rather an eternal newbie as for hardware issues. Sorry for not
having mentioned this information.
Well I may be wrong too, on second thought it may have 12.5X
multiplier, not 12X... but the point was to determine what
you'd been changing to achieve the 1.2GHz, since there are
two variables, FSB & multiplier.
Indeed, you're right. wcpuid shows 1261,23 Mhz. The purpose of this BIOS
setting was to prevent Boinc/seti@home from overheating the system and
shutting it down repeatedly, and that just works fine. As I mentioned
below, the purpose of my current question is slightly different.
If the system is meant to perform good at such tasks, the
best (overall system power used) vs performance would be to
keep the CPU running nearer it's spec'd speed- remembering
that the CPU power is only a fraction of the total system
powrer used. Essentially it would seem you need a better
heatsink and chassis cooling... but to keep costs low you
might just do some stability testing of lower voltages.
IN other words, cutting the voltage down some is the most
significant reduction in power & temps, then lower the
clockspeed as-needed to keep stability at the lower CPU
speed. For example, if the CPU started out using 1.65V, try
lowering it to 1.4V-1.5V, and the highest CPU frequency that
remains stable (in testing with that app, SETI or F@H or
Prime95, etc).
In general, you will get better performance from leaving the
FSB as high as possible, a sync'd memory bus, and ONLY
lowering the muliplier to achive the target CPU frequency.
I just did that: after saving changes and exiting the bios, the screen
enters sleep mode, and I have to turn off and then on the computer to
restart, even the reset button doesn't help.
(Changes I tried were 8.5; 9.0 and 1.0X, I didn't modify anything else
as I didn't know what to do)
I'd try others first, a smaller change like 10X. If you
take the numbers from your CPU's label, you may be able to
Google search for info on whether it is muliplier locked or
not. Some older CPUs did need their bridges connected to
allow changing the mutiplier, but I dont' recall which
specific models/families did.
Oops, jumpers are not good news to me. I'd like these changes to be
modified at will, if possible. And I'd rather avoid advanced manipulation.
What does "modified at will" mean? If you have the will to
change jumpers, you do, or don't. Advanced manipulation is
exactly what you're doing when you choose to not run at
stock speed. Lowering only the clock FSB speed is the worst
possible way to underclock a CPU because it has the least
impact on heat and the worst impact on performance.
Essentially, your (power & heat) vs (performance) is now
significantly lower than it was previously.
The reason why I didn't mention the purpose is probably because it's
almost silly: a friend wants to play a game with me on a LAN, and I'd
like to lower my computer below the minimum requirements in order to say
him "oh sh**, what a pity, I just can't run Dungeon Lords". I admit
that's not really fair
Lowering CPU speed also helps for some old games, and I'm curious, too.
It's your system, if you can justify (something) that's your
call to make. Getting the CPU speed lower than 1.25GHz will
require lowering the mulitplier. As mentioned above you
need to determine exactly what CPU you have by the markings
on it's label- which when input into a search engine will
provide the needed information on it's limitations- whether
multiplier locked or whether the bridges need painted (or
other wire mods). The same guides to overclocking by these
methods still apply, you'd simply choose a lower mutipler
based on the info in the guides - which some overclockers do
so that they can increase the FSB more, while you would
instead, not be raising the FSB.
