Trust BIOS or HWMonitor?

[RadeonHDx]

I've been overclocking today mostly just to see what kind of heat my water loop can handle and it seems to be able to cope with high volts pretty well.

Anyway the question I wanted to ask, should I take the voltage in my BIOS as the voltage I use as a wall, i.e. 1.5v-1.55v, or should I use the readout in HWMonitor. I've got my 8320 up to 4.4GHz at 1.5v in the BIOS (bad, I know) however I run Prime95 and check HWMonitor and it reads that I have the voltage at about 1.35v?

Anyone know which I should look at?

 

[shambles1980]

depends a lot really.
but if we take in to account v-droop and actuall power draw when in use.
i would go from the software's report.
that does not mean that you are only supplying 1.35 though but at that load and time then thats all that the cpu is using.
if you run IBT im sure it will go higher than the 1.35 that is stated to be in use when you run prime for example.
but if the board has a high vdrop then it may never actually get to the 1.5 you set in the bios.
and if you set it to 1.35 you may never see that either even though the cpu needs it..

A system can be stable for bench tests and ibt and prime all that stuff. but some games.. asseto corsa, crysis 3.. and so on. will make you bsod pretty fast due to not having enough power.

 

[RadeonHDx]

depends a lot really.
but if we take in to account v-droop and actuall power draw when in use.
i would go from the software's report.
that does not mean that you are only supplying 1.35 though but at that load and time then thats all that the cpu is using.
if you run IBT im sure it will go higher than the 1.35 that is stated to be in use when you run prime for example.
but if the board has a high vdrop then it may never actually get to the 1.5 you set in the bios.

Thanks man, I have the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 (forgot that's in my sig), and I know it's not the best board but it was okay for the price, downside though is that it only has 4+1 power phase but it says on the spec sheet that it only supports upto 140w CPU's but mine pulls about 200w at 1.5v full load.

Would you say that I actually have the overclocking voltage headroom to push it further if I can keep temps down? As in, do you think that I could push it until it says I am pulling 1.5 in software?

 

[shambles1980]

No idea what the voltages on a amd chip are. but i know they tend to be happy with a bit more voltages than a intel cpu..


as for the 4+1
you may want to slap a fan on the heat sink of the mosfets. it will probably start to throttle you down if it gets hot which it will when you start pumping the voltages..

i would run IBT for like 10 mins.
see what hwmonitor says the power draw is and if your throttling due to over heating vrm's like i said slap a fan on or near the vrm heat sink. (if it dosent have a heat sink you may want to think about getting one)

edit
had a quick check and seems people think the 8320 is safe up to a max of 1.5..
no idea how accurate that is though as i have no experience over clocking that chip.

p.s

i would also want atleast 2 programs reporting the same voltages to trust the results.
aida 64
occt
hwmonitor
they are my 3 faves.

 

[RadeonHDx]

No idea what the voltages on a amd chip are. but i know they tend to be happy with a bit more voltages than a intel cpu..


as for the 4+1
you may want to slap a fan on the heat sink of the mosfets. it will probably start to throttle you down if it gets hot which it will when you start pumping the voltages..

i would run IBT for like 10 mins.
see what hwmonitor says the power draw is and if your throttling due to over heating vrm's like i said slap a fan on or near the vrm heat sink. (if it dosent have a heat sink you may want to think about getting one)

edit
had a quick check and seems people think the 8320 is safe up to a max of 1.5..
no idea how accurate that is though as i have no experience over clocking that chip.

Well, it looks like I'm sitting at 1.428v under load but oddly enough, the voltage goes up to 1.5v at idle (I have the voltage set to 1.525 in the BIOS, I think)?

 

[shambles1980]

well id say that you have pushed the voltages about as far as its safe to do then..
you may need to have a look around in the bios to get the idle voltages normal.

maybe some one els can help with that though. like i said not to expirienced with amd chips. i had a 8120 it was junk so i got a i5 2500k instead. (not saying the 83xx are junk btw. but the 81xx are.)

 

[Wraith]

The FX Vishera chips top out at 1.55v I wouldn't go any higher. HWMonitor is not that accurate when it comes to AMD FX chips, you'll get a much more accurate reading from something like Sandra, but in all honesty you should be taking your Bios readings as the true readings.

 

[barnsley]

Bios readings. my 8320 runs at 4ghz @1.36 but pretty much every program reads that as 1.4.

 

[RadeonHDx]

Thanks guys, I think I'm stable at 4.5GHZ on 1.55v in the bios (about 1.44 in OCCT and HWMonitor). I will try Sandra and see what kind of results I'm getting. I should probably note, if I haven't already, that I'm running with load line calibration off so that might be the difference between my and your readings Barnsley.

 

[RizeAllard]

Use a multimeter at mesurement points if your board have ones. Thats the best way. But I always use the bios setting as a basic vallue and compare it with the softwear given values (then i can calculate if theres vdrop). I mainly use AIDA64 for mesurements and CPUz as a control.