How are Load Temps Measured?

[Kent10]

Hi:

In overclocking my Q6600 I have been concerned with my high temperatures and am lowering the voltage slightly to take care of it. How is everyone listing their load temps? When I was testing my CPU at 1.375v my temps with Prime95 running ranged from the high 50's all the way to 70C for a brief time (using Core Temp). If someone wanted to know what my load temps are, what would I tell them?

Thanks, Kent

[Tyreal]

Run prime95 and then use coretemp to measure the temperature.

[Yellowhello]

Originally Posted by Tyreal

Run prime95 and then use coretemp to measure the temperature.

He has a quad-core, and Prime95 only stresses 1 core. He'll have to run 4 Prime95's to get full strain of the CPU. One thing to note about Prime95... You can't run 4 instances of it from one folder. You'll have to copy/paste so that you have 4 Prime95 folders and run one from each folder.

[polobunny]

Or you can run Orthos, too.

[Yellowhello]

Originally Posted by polobunny

Or you can run Orthos, too.

I thought that only stressed dual-core? You'd have to run two Orthos's to stress all 4 cores.

[Kent10]

Actually I am using Prime95 version 25.4 which does stress all 4 cores I believe. All four are at 100% in Windows Task Manager. I have measured the temps using Core Temp but there is such a wide range I was just wondering how people choose which temp to report. Sometimes I see others report a range but mostly I see a single temp for each core and that doesn't seem accurate if there is a range of temps. Perhaps it is the median. Or is it the high or maybe some are reporting the lowest so it looks better. I guess there is no standard so it is hard to tell what load temps a person is really getting.

[Yellowhello]

I never fully trust software-based temp monitors. They are never fully accurate, but they are really helpful when you are looking for a rough estimate of what your CPU is running at. It will never be accurate "to-the-degree" so to speak.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Kent10

Actually I am using Prime95 version 25.4 which does stress all 4 cores I believe. All four are at 100% in Windows Task Manager. I have measured the temps using Core Temp but there is such a wide range I was just wondering how people choose which temp to report. Sometimes I see others report a range but mostly I see a single temp for each core and that doesn't seem accurate if there is a range of temps. Perhaps it is the median. Or is it the high or maybe some are reporting the lowest so it looks better. I guess there is no standard so it is hard to tell what load temps a person is really getting.

Your temp should only rise... At some point you'll reach your max temp, normally.
Edit: By that I mean it shouldn't fluctuate.

[Kent10]

As I start Prime95, yes my temps do immediately rise but throughout the 24 hours of operation they varied from 59C-70C--at least at the times I looked--I wasn't watching it every minute. They kept going up and down. I wondered if this had to do with the specific test Prime95 was running except the CPU is still running at peak for each test so that didn't really make sense. The most frequent temps were around the low to mid-60's so I could report my load temp as 64C and that would also be about half way between the low and high.

[Yellowhello]

There's no problem reporting your temps as a range.