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Old June 1st 11, 02:34 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.arch,nl.comp.hardware,sci.electronics.design
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Default Another startling discovery: AMD's cool & quiet doesn't workand does exactly the opposite ?!?

Skybuck Flying wrote:
Hello,

I was watching ASRock's OC tuner tool and also ASRock's Intelligent Energy
Saver tool which I think uses AMD's Cool & Quiet CPU technology and I
noticed the following odd behaviour:

1. When "IES" (intelligent energy saver") was ON the "CPU Power Watt"
indicator fluctuates wildly between 2 to 5 to 130 watts !!! (The processor
is supposed to only be 90 watts).

2. When "IES" is off the "CPU Power Watt" indicator is very stable around
21.9 watts !!!

Now comes the quicker:

Under situation 1 the CPU temperature is 35 degrees celcius according to
the OC tool.

Under situation 2 the CPU temperature is 30 (86F) to even 29 degrees
celcius
(80F) according to the OC tool.

Also when switching from situation 1 to situation 2 the CPU temperature
immediately drops 4 to 5 degrees celcius !

What a big difference !

First I thought this difference may be caused by the tool's animations but
this appears not to be the case. (Tools where exited).

The same behaviour as described above stayed. (Web browser open and a
little
bit of flash activity was used during the described situations).

Also when IES is on the power voltages fluctuate a lot that's probably
not a
good thing.

I have now eanble IES again and showing the webbrowser not doing much and
temperatures rise up again to 34 celcius (93 fahrenheit) !

What an odd situation, one would expect "cool & quiet" and "power
saving" to
make the system more cool and efficient, but according to these tools,

The opposite happen at least when it comes to "temperature" it doesn't
become cooler it becomes hotter !

How much energy it actually saves is doubtfull though the tool claims some
energy is saved, how much this how save on the electricity bill I don't
know...

And I don't really care, because if my PC dies again it will cost a whole
lot of time to rebuild and a new motherboard so all that energy saving is
useless if it dies !

Another effect of "IES" is probably "stable high temperatures" for CPU...
but this also increases motherboard temperature.

I'd much rather have low temperatures when my system is not doing
anything... 4 degrees probably don't matter that much for CPU but a few
degrees hotter for motherboard might matter, also what if system is more
active like game or so... what does it do then ?!? These HUGE watt/power
fluctuations do not look healthy to me and might even be the cause of
motherboard death.

Therefore I am now going into the bios and disable "cool n quiet" just in
case.

Strange as it may sound but this will probably make the motherboard more
cool too, a few degrees perhaps... because this heat might build up over
time if it's not disabled.

I noticed how the motherboard already quickly dropped at least one degree
when "IES" was off.

So over a period of time it might drop even further which might be a good
thing.

Very strange don't you think ?!? Perhaps this is a known issue with these
AMD X2 3800+ processors ?!?!?

I'm going stable voltages all the way, since that's why all my other
computers probably had and they still living !

Bye,
Skybuck.

(re-posting, so other newsgroups "hear" it too ! LOL)


Interesting project S. F.
Keep up the good work. :-)