Strange voltage readings from E8400

cokenbeer

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Jun 28, 2008
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I put together a basic comp for my brother a few weeks ago and figured I'd have a shot at overclocking it today. I went into the Bios and changed all the settings to where I wanted and booted it up.

In the Bios I had the voltage set at 1.3v, however, in CPU-Z it's reading less than 1.15v... seems strange.

So I upped the FSB to 422 and it wouldn't boot. I upped the voltage a little more 1.35 and it boots. Now however, the voltage is still reading LESS than 1.3 in CPU-z.

So my question is, which one is real? Can I risk bumping up the voltage to increase my clock speed?

Also, temps after running various stress tests don't go above 40C at load with each core reading approx 48C.

What are the thoughts? Up the voltage and push for more? Stay where it's at?

Thanks for your input!
 

dagger

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Mar 23, 2008
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Both vcore readings are real. Most motherboards get a drop when entering Windows, and another vdroop when in full load. It depends on the abilities of your motherboard. Better ones create less drop. Some high end ones, with loadline calibration enabled, produce 0 drop.

As for temperature, it's possible if you have very good cooling. More likely, you just didn't use the right programs/settings when stressing.
 

cokenbeer

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Jun 28, 2008
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Well for temp monitoring I'm using Speedfan. First time I turned my cpu fan on Max, Zalman 9700, and it didn't go above 40... then I turned it down to near silent and I hit 50C and up to 58 on either core.

I'm thinking I may leave it at 3.8 GHZ for now and work on my memory timings and Graphics OC'ing.

What's the best way to test whether or not the OC is stable?

Thanks
 

dagger

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Mar 23, 2008
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Prime95 for cpu
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103

FurRender for gpu
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/