Speedstep&Speedfan stuff

[Javno]

Hi. I OC'ed my E6600 to 3.2 at 1.335v on a P5W DH Mobo. It seems pretty stable in games, and I wll be running dual Stress Prime 2004 in torture mode for both Cores tonight, to see if its stable under pressure.

My question is: I have read that a lot of people think speedstep should not be turned on when you OC your PC as it may interfere with the OC. But I have turned this function on (by switching to laptop/portable in power managment), and when I quickly exit a game, I can see on Asus Ai Booster and CPUZ, the clockrate drops from 3.2 (x9) to 2.15 (x6) and the voltage drops as well.

That surely is a good thing isn't it? As it means in games, etc, my CPU works to full capacity but when I'm on something like Word, it falls so as to save power and lessen heat? Is it safe for me to be using my CPU like this? Is it going to screw up my computer or something?

Also, I've noticed when I OC'ed that my CPU fan is working at full capacity (2700rpm) and its really annoying me as the CPU rarely gets too hot. Thus its quite useless to have the fan on max like this. But when I change BIOS settings, and try to adjust fan speed, etc, it makes no difference.

Is it normal for OCing to mess up BIOS Fan control?

Would it be safe for me to disable everything to do with Q-Fan (chassis Q-fan, CPU Q-fan, etc) and just let 'Speedfan' manage fan speeds automatically? Would that be safe to do?

Btw I'm sorry for the torrent of dumb questions that I've been asking on the forums lately. Its just I get worried about things too easily

Cheers for any help

 

[emissary]

I believe the problem with Speedstep and overclocking comes up if you're running at higher than stock vcore. Speedstep is designed to run with processors set at stock, so it assumes that the voltage it supplies for the 6x multiplier is enough to run the processor at that speed. However, because you've overclocked it, 6x is faster than Speedstep expects, and therefore the voltage it supplies may not be enough for it to run in a stable manner. That is what I understand of what I've read.

So it would follow that if the processor is not overclocked too much, and is running at close to stock vcore, it may be fine.

I'm running my e6600 at 3.1 Ghz and I actually use Rightmark CPU Utility to control the multiplier and voltage of my processor. Essentially, you can create your own customized version of speedstep. I have it set to drop down to 6x when utilization is low, and I've set my own vcore for it, so I know it's stable. This seemed to be a good solution to me for keeping the overclock, but reducing heat and power use.

As for speedfan, before I got fans with manual controllers, I was using speedfan to manage the fan speed. I disabled all the bios control for the fans. It gives you more control that way.

 

[Javno]

I believe the problem with Speedstep and overclocking comes up if you're running at higher than stock vcore. Speedstep is designed to run with processors set at stock, so it assumes that the voltage it supplies for the 6x multiplier is enough to run the processor at that speed. However, because you've overclocked it, 6x is faster than Speedstep expects, and therefore the voltage it supplies may not be enough for it to run in a stable manner. That is what I understand of what I've read.

So it would follow that if the processor is not overclocked too much, and is running at close to stock vcore, it may be fine.

I'm running my e6600 at 3.1 Ghz and I actually use Rightmark CPU Utility to control the multiplier and voltage of my processor. Essentially, you can create your own customized version of speedstep. I have it set to drop down to 6x when utilization is low, and I've set my own vcore for it, so I know it's stable. This seemed to be a good solution to me for keeping the overclock, but reducing heat and power use.

As for speedfan, before I got fans with manual controllers, I was using speedfan to manage the fan speed. I disabled all the bios control for the fans. It gives you more control that way.

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with Speedfan. I can lower by CPU Fan speed from 2700RTM to 2100RTM, which makes a hell of a difference to the noise level I don't mind taking the 5 seconds too lower it myself once in Windows hehe

But for Speedstep... I may disable it. It seems a bit bumpy on some of my games, and I'm not sure if thats got anything to do with the CPU revving up and down, etc.

My last question is: disabling speedstep and keeping my CPU constantly running at 3.2 Ghz won't damage my computer or anything like that will it? Will there be any adverse effects? Will it ensure better system stability?

Thanks for any answers on these points

 

[emissary]

As long as your temperatures are fine, running at 3.2 GHz shouldn't cause any problems.

 

[jjohan35]

I believe the problem with Speedstep and overclocking comes up if you're running at higher than stock vcore. Speedstep is designed to run with processors set at stock, so it assumes that the voltage it supplies for the 6x multiplier is enough to run the processor at that speed. However, because you've overclocked it, 6x is faster than Speedstep expects, and therefore the voltage it supplies may not be enough for it to run in a stable manner. That is what I understand of what I've read.

On the contrary, from what I've read, you need to disable speedstep when you're overclocking and staying at vcore. This is because the stock voltage supplied for the lowest multiplier (with OC settings) will not be enough. However if you increase the vcore, there will be enough voltage at the lowest multiplier with speedstep. This is what I've gathered, but am unclear about as well.

Emissary, since you are using RM clock to control your speedstep, is your speedstep in bios ENABLED or DISABLED?

 

[graysky]

Has anyone enabled speedstep with an overclock and successfully ran the machine with that setting for period of time, say several days or weeks?