Undervolting the AMD A64 X2 4200+ AM2 Processor

[Apoptosis]

Undervolting the AMD A64 X2 4200+ AM2 Processor

Today Legit Reviews takes the same processor we overvolted to reach an amazing 3.1GHz thanks to water cooling and go the other direction. We undervolt the AMD A64 X2 4200+ AM2 processor and try to find the lowest possible voltage the processor can run still stable at with the hopes of lowering power consumption and system temperatures.

Undervolting proved susscessful as we were able to reduced temperatures and lower the total power consumption on our test platform. It almost makes you wonder why more people aren't doing this!

Article Title: Undervolting the AMD A64 X2 4200+ AM2 Processor
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/375/1/

[HONkUS]

itll be interesting to see how much lower you can go when the 35w version comes out lol.

[DMB2000uk]

Would have been interesting to have the overclocked temperature/power readings on the graph as well...

and sorry to go so off topic so soon, but do you think you could do a similar undervolting review with a core 2 duo, and see how much it saves then. Personally i don,t think the savings will be as much, but it would be nice to have a comparison.

Dan

[Apoptosis]

Dan,

You seem to be reading my mind... if you read the post in the country club I am going to and just got in the E6300 that I ordered (Intel doesn't sample many of their low end CPU's).

In terms of overclocking data.... let me see if I can throw something together for you.

[jolx75]

Hello,
Thanks for this review i thought i was on my own trying to underclock its
CPU
I own a X2 3800 on an asrock dual 939 Sata Mobo and 2 Gb
I found i could overclock it to 2.5Ghz but it runs safer at 2.4.(I can't go higher than 1.4V on the asrock).

I have underclocked it for quite a while as low as 560Mhz @1.125V and testing with CPU-Z.
HOWEVER, if values reported by CPU-Z are right, when I enable COOL'n QUIET :CPU freq is adjusting dynamically (both amd driver and laptop configuration power saving ),at idle CPU frequency is divided by 2 but according to CPU-Z, the voltage on my mobo defaults back to 1.35 overriding the 1.125;It means Cool n' quiet rules out Bios voltage
when I disabled cool n' quiet ,i get back my 1.125 v

I wish i could keep cool n' quiet and the low voltage but it doesn't seem to work (at least not with my configuration).

For the time being i have decided to keep cool n' quiet available most of the time because i think the frequency /2 at idle is more interesting than
having max frequency with lower voltage