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Undervolting Merom chips - worthwhile?

post #1 of 17
9/5/06 at 6:48pm
Thread Starter 
I've just bought a Core 2 notebook and would like to know if I could - and should - undervolt my cpu in much the same way as I did with my old Dothan notebook. This used to save me about 20 mins battery life......

From the looks of it RM Clock doesn't yet support it and I've no experience of NHC. Any thoughts?
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post #2 of 17
9/5/06 at 8:25pm
I dont think you can undervolt them yet, but when you can, why not?
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post #3 of 17
9/6/06 at 2:44pm
U cant undervolt Merom/Yonah below lowest VID, but on higher clocks undervolting is recommended to prevent heating...
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post #4 of 17
9/6/06 at 10:58pm
I've been waiting to mess with this until NHC was running stable for me which it now is with this current release (04). The best I could do with my T2600 tonight at 13x was 1.0500v. One setting lower and I wasn't stable one setting lower yet and instant bsod with reboot. I'm going to work through the other clocks just for fun. In all honestly I've not seen this processor get "hot" yet. Even when testing with Orthos stress cpu I didn't see it get past like 47c (only ran for 5-6 minutes however).
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post #5 of 17
9/7/06 at 12:15am
1.05V seems pretty good for me considering the speed. I am definitely stable at 1.0V with my T2250 and I'm going to try to go down to 0.95 V tonight.
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post #6 of 17
9/7/06 at 10:09pm
good luck to ya, its kinda late now but maybe this weekend I'll tweak the inbetween clock steps. I run dynamic switching when on AC so my temps are usually idle around 35 +/- maybe 2 degrees when surfing and running IM.
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post #7 of 17
9/9/06 at 1:05am
Well I went through all my other mulipliers tonight and lowered the voltage:

13x at 1.05
12x at 1.00

11x all the way down to 6x all tested stable at the lowest voltage of .9500 Previously with my PM 1.86 processor I only tweaked the 6x and 13x multiplier so I'm not sure if its normal or not to have nearly all the inbetween clocks test stable at the same voltage. I used a combination of NHC's stability test and Orthos which works both cores. I haven't done anything intensive tonight to see how stable the settings are in "real world" situations but my general web, IM, idle temp is still right at 35c.
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post #8 of 17
9/9/06 at 1:10am
I dont see the point in having more than 2 multipliers, especially on a core duo chip, wich has a high lower voltage (0.950)
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post #9 of 17
9/9/06 at 9:45am
high compared to what? People need to quit comparing these chips to others, Yonah and Merom are in their own classes as is the pentium M. ANY under volting is a bonus, and not something that should be expected of processors. While the ammount of time spent inbetween the min and max multiplier may be much less why wouldn't you want to conserve power and heat throughout the range?

Its like having an intercooler installed on your car but only wanting it to be cooling your turbo system under the highest and lowest load and not at all inbetween...that's just silly!
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post #10 of 17
9/10/06 at 1:26am
Which laptops can and can't be undervolted? Is this being done threw the bios or using pin mods? Seems to me that undervolting is a great idea if you have the option. More battery life and less heat.
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post #11 of 17
9/10/06 at 10:41am
do a search for it for more info programs being used are notebook hardware control and rm clock.
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post #12 of 17
11/8/06 at 3:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by sk79
From the looks of it RM Clock doesn't yet support it and I've no experience of NHC. Any thoughts?

I've used nhc on my Dothan I6000D and it works well, so I'm using the newest version on my new Dell E1505 T7200.

I've got one of those "Kill-a-Watt" power meters connected up to the laptop power brick and here are the numbers while running at 12x multiplier (2GHz) both cores chewing on Seti-at-home. Note that the wattage reading cycles back and forth within the ranges specified.

12x multiplier nhc voltages, system power consumption:
1.05 V, 44-45 Watts
1.1 V, 46-48 Watts
1.15 V, 50-52 Watts
1.2 V, 53-55 Watts
1.225 V, 53-56 Watts (Default Voltage)

For comparison 6x multiplier (1GHz) with both processors chewing on Seti-at-home:
0.95 V, 33-35 Watts (Default Voltage)
1.0 V, 34-36 Watts
1.05 V, 36-38 Watts
1.225 V, 42-44 Watts (Just for giggles)
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post #13 of 17
6/10/07 at 3:33pm
I've been using NHC on both my d620 and d420 for about a week now and honestly I don't know how I did without it for so long. I do find it highly annoying that I cant go below 0.95v though. Is there a pin mode to drop voltage down even lower? I know a sure as I'm alive the chip can run stable at lower then 0.95v. I find this to be even more annoying on my D420 because it is suppose to be an "Ultra Low Voltage" cpu. But its really not as low voltage as I would have thought. It runs too dang hot, idles around 65c and loads all the way up to 80c. Stupid thing gets so hot its hard to use it on my lap. I would like to pin mod or do something to get the voltage down as low as possible.
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post #14 of 17
8/22/08 at 12:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sk79 View Post
I've just bought a Core 2 notebook and would like to know if I could - and should - undervolt my cpu in much the same way as I did with my old Dothan notebook. This used to save me about 20 mins battery life......

From the looks of it RM Clock doesn't yet support it and I've no experience of NHC. Any thoughts?
RMClock works perfectly on my Merom (T5750). Undervolting is good for two basic things: heat control and battery life. In my case, my Fujitsu A6120 has a poor cooling system from the BIOS on down to the fan power and setpoints. If you don't run hot, don't bother, unless a few extra minutes of battery is really important to you. Just select a battery profile in Power panel and you will automatically run at low CPU speed=low power consumption.
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post #15 of 17
8/30/08 at 12:20am
You realize that you answered a 2y old question, don't you?
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post #16 of 17
8/30/08 at 1:20am
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post #17 of 17
8/30/08 at 2:03am
"necromancer" is being wrongly used, defined and applied!

. numero uno forum (my classification) rule - stick with the OP theme
. as long as the OP theme is being observed, all informative inputs are welcome, old and news
. themes dont die, they recycle through the years and are mostly applicable
. information can be irrelevant, in the tech world, with different machines, with newer machines.
. as long as they have "old" machines floating out there, there are no "dead" threads
. and we always appreciate that forum users use the search function to find info related to their issues before littering the forum with "new but already discussesd" threads/posts

please - stick with the OP theme

cheers ...
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