Wear and Tear??

[frostybrad]

Hay guys... me again, here with a few questions for you pro's out there....

First - Does running Orthos put unnecessary stress on the CPU which inturn will eventually wreck or decrease its life span? I Guess what I am trying to say is this.... seems now, somehow, I have become addictided to overclocking or atleast to a point where if the system is sitting still doing nothing, I get the urge to bump the FSB and then test for aslong as I can until I use the computer for something.... I understand Orthos is hard on the CPU, put to do it day in and day out, for at least a few hours at a time..... is it kiilling the CPU's, becasue I'll try and get some help for my OC'ing addiction if it is putting undue stress of my system........

Second - Why when I run 3DMark, I will get various scores? If I leave the system where it is and un it, 15137 (i believe) is the final result. I Powered down and ran again, same score resulted...exact score. But lastnight I powered up, ran the bench test and I recieved a score of 15167...WTF??????

Third and Last - this V-droop, which I believe is the difference between the volts you set for the CPU and the actual volts its running at... How close should the 2 values be to each other?? If I set in Bios 1.45Volts, and CPUZ shows 1.424volts..... is that alot of V-droop??


thanks guys....

[OCNoob]

1) Stressing your CPU shouldn't mess with its lifespan. At least, it shouldn't. I'll bet there are many, many Xeon's out there that have been running 24/7 at 100% on server duty and haven't failed yet. The desktop equivalent chip should have just about the same durability - ask any longtime folder.
What DOES eventually kill a CPU is extra voltage. Ask anyone who has put 1.75V (that's a .35V bump) on an A64 and they'll tell you that the average lifespan is about 1 year for that kind of voltage. There are some who have gotten away with 1.6V to this day on air cooling, so the danger of voltage becomes more extreme as you go up.

2) 30 points on a 15000 scale is negligible. It's a .002 or 0.2% difference between the scores.

3) I think it's fairly typical to have a .03V Vdroop. Can't remember any motherboard that had exactly the same amount of voltage as you set in the BIOS.

[Telexen]

It does have the potential to shorten the lifespan without voltage increases, but it's probably never going to be something you can measure. CPUs will last years and years all on their own anyway, overclocking even with reasonable voltage increases won't drop that to only a few short years - unless you get careless.

If it makes you feel better, I've had a motherboard that had an 0.1v difference between set and exact vcore ;)

[polobunny]

The lifespan of a processor is probably longer than yours. ;)
Stress it all you want, as long as you keep it cool and don't overvolt it, it's all good.

As for 3DMark, it can vary a bit. Your variations are normal, happens to everyone. Be happy when you get more and run another one when it's not high enough. :P

[frostybrad]

thanks guys appreciate the comments!!!! Back to testing then :)