Things are looking on the up and up!

[GV2NIX]

As some of you may know, I finally got my Expert to function properly. It turns out that I had a bad stick or RAM, and my "blank screens" were owing to a, well, stupid mistake on my part, haha! I won't post it because it's too embarassing. :p

So, I primed my cores for about an hour and 25 minutes without errors. I can't go any faster on 1.4V and until I figure out exactly how much the CPU temperature is understated, I don't want to put the Vcore any higher. Any thoughts on that? Is the CPU temp the only temp that is underestimated, or is the PWM and chipset temps higher than they seem also?

Anyways, this chip seems pretty awesome. 2.65GHz at 1.4V isn't bad at all, and I bet I can get much more out of it if I can kick up the voltage while keeping the chip cool. I'm psyched! 8)

[fps justin]

what temps are you running at? an opty 170 should be able to clock higher.

[gvblake22]

Well, what are your temps like at 1.4v? What are you using to monitor your temps? If it is smart guardian, then I would say it is fairly accurate. You should really invest in one of those little external temp probes (the CompuNurse or somthing like that). I'm SOO glad I did; much more reliable temperature readings! :thup:

[fps justin]

and 1.4 volts is real good. My venice runs 1.525 volts.

[GV2NIX]

Yeah, believe me, I'm no complaining. Running a dual core Opty at 2.65GHz @ 1.4V is great! And I know it can do more if I feed it more power. This stepping and week is supposed to be excellent. I wouldn't be surprised if I got close to 2.9GHz with the proper voltage.

After priming for the hour and 25 minutes, the CPU was reading 45C. Yes, I'm using Guardian. I know it was pretty accurate with my Ultra-D, but I've been reading threads where people were getting erroneous readings even with Guardian on the Expert. I'm ready to give it more power, but I really need to know if the Guardian temps are accurate, and if they're not, approximately how much it's underestimating them.

Am I being too paranoid? I dunno, I just get really antsy when I think temps are running too high. I know my 148 was pretty temp sensitive. Anything above 54C pretty much equaled crashes. I'm just not sure if I'm the temps I'm seeing here are the actual temps or not. I've seen threads where people claim that the Guardian readings were as much as 10C or 15C off. :shock:

[fps justin]

i'd say your a little paranoid. If what you said was true and high temps will make your computer crash, then just step it down a little. One crash isn't gonna fry your cpu. I must have crashed my cpu 30 times in past 2 weeks.

[GV2NIX]

Yeah, I guess having my computer crash from too much heat is what I'm really worried about. I've done it before, and nothing bad has ever happened, but I could never shake the feeling that I was causing significant damage to my CPU by making it crash from getting too hot, know what I mean? So, if you were me, you wouldn't worry about it too much if that should happen occasionally?

[fps justin]

yeah. For you it prolly hurtz more cause you have a real nice cpu where as if i break mine, i'll prolly just get a new better one. LOL

[gvblake22]

LOL, well a frozen and/or crashed computer is definatly not a good thing ;) It can corrupt windows system files and ruin your OS, rendering it unable to boot (and retrieve your data). So I wouldn't take a crashing computer too lightly there justin.

Anyway, as far as software temperature monitoring programs go, there is always going to be a margin of error. Some read hot, some read cold. For safety sake, I always add 10-15 degrees onto whatever it reads. If that adjusted value is still within my acceptable temperature range, then I feel comfortable. Otherwise, I'll be backing it off until temps are under control (regardless if it is stable or not).
It's just a fact that you are never going to get very accurate readings from any software program... :(

[fps justin]

well. For a student. corrupted os just mean reformate and its not any real large loss. Sure might take another 2 hours to download cs source again and all my other apps but meh.