Hi everyone,
This article is long overdue and finally I have found the time post it.
A few months back, I had written an article on undervolting the Athlon64 using RMClock, the advantage being power savings which you get and also the lower temperatures of operation. Also, you can lower your fan speed and keep the system quieter using a tool which reduces fan speeds.
The power savings are significant because the power consumed by a chip varies in proportion with the square of the voltage at which chip runs.
Now, this article will explain how to do the same for the Core 2 Duo, which is the more popular CPU nowadays.
The Intel Core 2 Duo has the speed step function which steps down the clock speed to 1.6 Ghz and also reduces the voltage from the default value which is between 1.225 V to 1.325V, to 1.163V.
But the problem with Intel Speedstep is that the system runs at lower clock speed only when it is absolutely idle. Sometimes, even when playing MP3 or having lots of tabs open in Firefox, the cpu can run at its original clock speed instead of the 1.6 Ghz stepped down clock.
Also, with Intel Speedstep, there is no control on the voltage during load condition. If the motherboard sets a voltage of 1.325V and the CPU clock speed is 1.8 Ghz to 2.2 Ghz, then power is wasted because the CPU does not need that much voltage to function properly.
In this article, I will also explain how to set the CPU voltage for each multiplier so that a voltage value will correspond to each clock speed.
Step 1
-------
Download RMClock from the official website.
Step 2
-------
On running RMClock, you will get a screen similar to below. I am having a Core 2 Duo E6300. The values will vary depending on the processor you have.
There is nothing to be changed here.
Next is the monitoring pages which shows the current cpu load, clock, voltage, multiple and temperature. Here also, there is nothing to be changed.
Step 3
-------
Click on Management page and you get a page similar to below.
Set the settings according to the screenshot.
RMClock can be loaded during windows startup depending on user preference. So you can uncheck it if you don't want RMClock to start with Windows.
This might be useful, because sometimes if you set the voltage too low for a particular clock, Windows will freeze and having RMClock load up on startup will cause trouble. In such a case, you will have to go to Safe mode and remove RMClock from the startup list by running Start -> Run -> msconfig.
Step 4
------
Now comes the profiles page.
Here, you will see the list of multipliers available for your CPU and voltage settings for each multiplier. In my case, since I have a Core 2 Duo E6300, I have only 6.0 and 7.0 multipliers.
An owner of an E6600 will have multipliers till 9.0.
Now, to set a voltage for each multiplier, click on the multiplier in the "Master Performance States table" and the "VID Select" combo box at the bottom will get enabled.
Set a voltage for each multiplier. You should be confident that the CPU will run at the voltage which you select for each multiplier. In my case, the E6300 runs at 1.2000 V at 1.86 Ghz and 1.175V at 1.6 Ghz quite fine. I had it at 1.163V, but one day, some random freezes occured and so I set it to 1.175 for stability's sake.
Step 5
------
Now that voltages for each multiplier has been set, click on "No Management" under profiles and you will get a page with all the settings except one check box disabled.
You can override the windows power management settings by checking that check box and setting the values to your preference. I have not done that in the above screenshot.
Step 6
------
Click on "Power Saving" to configure the Power Saving profile.
You will notice from the screenshot that I have checked only the 6.0x multiplier. This means that if RMClock is set to Power Saving profile, the CPU will run at 6.0X multiplier irrespective of the load on it. This can be useful when you are putting the pc for download at night or when you are playing some old game which doesn't require high CPU power, but still consumes 100% CPU (example : UT2004). This will enable you to save power and run the CPU at lower temperature while playing / running apps which load the CPU to 100%.
The advantage of RMClock here is that the CPU would have worked at maximum multiplier in case of such apps and not have offered a noticable performance boost. If the case of UT2004 is taken, there is not much FPS boost from 1.6 Ghz to 1.86 Ghz, because I have a LCD monitor and play with Vsync on which caps the frame rate at 60 fps anyway.
Loading times increase, but only marginally. If you are playing the game for hours on end, this setting will save you on electricity bills.
Step 7
------
Next, we move onto the "Maximal Performance" profile, a profile which I rarely use.
Suppose you are running a CPU intensive task like video encoding or testing your overclock stability, you don't want RMClock to keep monitoring the CPU Load for throttling the clocks up and down. In that case, you can select "Maximal Performance" profile.
Here, I have checked only the 7.0x multiplier, so that the CPU runs at max speed all the time.
Step 8
-------
Next comes the "Performance on Demand" profile, which I use the most.
Here, I have checked both 6.0x and 7.0x. So basically, all multipliers can be checked in this case.
The CPU clock will be varied according to the CPU load and OS load. The beauty here is that in case an application doesn't use 100% CPU all the time, the processor can be run in an intermediate state, which you will have configured with a lower voltage, and this will result in power savings. So instead of running at 2.4 Ghz for a light task, your E6600 can run at 1.86 Ghz or 2.13 Ghz and step up to 2.4 Ghz only when the task is demanding that much performance from the CPU.
RMClock automatically manages this and the weightage can be set by using the combo box "Performance / Power Saving Preference". If this setting is set to one of the Power Saving levels, the CPU will tend to run at lower clock speeds during partial load conditions, while setting it to Performance levels, will make the CPU run at higher clocks speeds during variable load conditions.
An example here is hard disk limited applications. During loading of winamp, the CPU hits 100% only for a short time. During the other time, the clock speed can be reduced by RMClock to save power, while the hard disk fetches the data to be processed by the CPU.
And since most of the applications are hard drive limited while launching / exiting, this profile is particularly useful.
Step 9
------
The battery info tab is useful only for laptops and since I don't have a laptop and am unable to see it in enabled state, I am skipping that page.
Moving onto the Advanced CPU Settings tab, check what I have done in the screenshot below.
I have enabled all the CXE (C1E to C4E) states which are by default disabled. These states make your processor run in low power modes, which save power.
Since I don't have the registered version of RMClock, the Updates and Professional features page cannot be used.
Thats all I guess. Please reply and notify me of any issues so that I can enhance the article.
This article is long overdue and finally I have found the time post it.
A few months back, I had written an article on undervolting the Athlon64 using RMClock, the advantage being power savings which you get and also the lower temperatures of operation. Also, you can lower your fan speed and keep the system quieter using a tool which reduces fan speeds.
The power savings are significant because the power consumed by a chip varies in proportion with the square of the voltage at which chip runs.
Now, this article will explain how to do the same for the Core 2 Duo, which is the more popular CPU nowadays.
The Intel Core 2 Duo has the speed step function which steps down the clock speed to 1.6 Ghz and also reduces the voltage from the default value which is between 1.225 V to 1.325V, to 1.163V.
But the problem with Intel Speedstep is that the system runs at lower clock speed only when it is absolutely idle. Sometimes, even when playing MP3 or having lots of tabs open in Firefox, the cpu can run at its original clock speed instead of the 1.6 Ghz stepped down clock.
Also, with Intel Speedstep, there is no control on the voltage during load condition. If the motherboard sets a voltage of 1.325V and the CPU clock speed is 1.8 Ghz to 2.2 Ghz, then power is wasted because the CPU does not need that much voltage to function properly.
In this article, I will also explain how to set the CPU voltage for each multiplier so that a voltage value will correspond to each clock speed.
Step 1
-------
Download RMClock from the official website.
Step 2
-------
On running RMClock, you will get a screen similar to below. I am having a Core 2 Duo E6300. The values will vary depending on the processor you have.
There is nothing to be changed here.
Next is the monitoring pages which shows the current cpu load, clock, voltage, multiple and temperature. Here also, there is nothing to be changed.
Step 3
-------
Click on Management page and you get a page similar to below.
Set the settings according to the screenshot.
RMClock can be loaded during windows startup depending on user preference. So you can uncheck it if you don't want RMClock to start with Windows.
This might be useful, because sometimes if you set the voltage too low for a particular clock, Windows will freeze and having RMClock load up on startup will cause trouble. In such a case, you will have to go to Safe mode and remove RMClock from the startup list by running Start -> Run -> msconfig.
Step 4
------
Now comes the profiles page.
Here, you will see the list of multipliers available for your CPU and voltage settings for each multiplier. In my case, since I have a Core 2 Duo E6300, I have only 6.0 and 7.0 multipliers.
An owner of an E6600 will have multipliers till 9.0.
Now, to set a voltage for each multiplier, click on the multiplier in the "Master Performance States table" and the "VID Select" combo box at the bottom will get enabled.
Set a voltage for each multiplier. You should be confident that the CPU will run at the voltage which you select for each multiplier. In my case, the E6300 runs at 1.2000 V at 1.86 Ghz and 1.175V at 1.6 Ghz quite fine. I had it at 1.163V, but one day, some random freezes occured and so I set it to 1.175 for stability's sake.
Step 5
------
Now that voltages for each multiplier has been set, click on "No Management" under profiles and you will get a page with all the settings except one check box disabled.
You can override the windows power management settings by checking that check box and setting the values to your preference. I have not done that in the above screenshot.
Step 6
------
Click on "Power Saving" to configure the Power Saving profile.
You will notice from the screenshot that I have checked only the 6.0x multiplier. This means that if RMClock is set to Power Saving profile, the CPU will run at 6.0X multiplier irrespective of the load on it. This can be useful when you are putting the pc for download at night or when you are playing some old game which doesn't require high CPU power, but still consumes 100% CPU (example : UT2004). This will enable you to save power and run the CPU at lower temperature while playing / running apps which load the CPU to 100%.
The advantage of RMClock here is that the CPU would have worked at maximum multiplier in case of such apps and not have offered a noticable performance boost. If the case of UT2004 is taken, there is not much FPS boost from 1.6 Ghz to 1.86 Ghz, because I have a LCD monitor and play with Vsync on which caps the frame rate at 60 fps anyway.
Loading times increase, but only marginally. If you are playing the game for hours on end, this setting will save you on electricity bills.
Step 7
------
Next, we move onto the "Maximal Performance" profile, a profile which I rarely use.
Suppose you are running a CPU intensive task like video encoding or testing your overclock stability, you don't want RMClock to keep monitoring the CPU Load for throttling the clocks up and down. In that case, you can select "Maximal Performance" profile.
Here, I have checked only the 7.0x multiplier, so that the CPU runs at max speed all the time.
Step 8
-------
Next comes the "Performance on Demand" profile, which I use the most.
Here, I have checked both 6.0x and 7.0x. So basically, all multipliers can be checked in this case.
The CPU clock will be varied according to the CPU load and OS load. The beauty here is that in case an application doesn't use 100% CPU all the time, the processor can be run in an intermediate state, which you will have configured with a lower voltage, and this will result in power savings. So instead of running at 2.4 Ghz for a light task, your E6600 can run at 1.86 Ghz or 2.13 Ghz and step up to 2.4 Ghz only when the task is demanding that much performance from the CPU.
RMClock automatically manages this and the weightage can be set by using the combo box "Performance / Power Saving Preference". If this setting is set to one of the Power Saving levels, the CPU will tend to run at lower clock speeds during partial load conditions, while setting it to Performance levels, will make the CPU run at higher clocks speeds during variable load conditions.
An example here is hard disk limited applications. During loading of winamp, the CPU hits 100% only for a short time. During the other time, the clock speed can be reduced by RMClock to save power, while the hard disk fetches the data to be processed by the CPU.
And since most of the applications are hard drive limited while launching / exiting, this profile is particularly useful.
Step 9
------
The battery info tab is useful only for laptops and since I don't have a laptop and am unable to see it in enabled state, I am skipping that page.
Moving onto the Advanced CPU Settings tab, check what I have done in the screenshot below.
I have enabled all the CXE (C1E to C4E) states which are by default disabled. These states make your processor run in low power modes, which save power.
Since I don't have the registered version of RMClock, the Updates and Professional features page cannot be used.
Thats all I guess. Please reply and notify me of any issues so that I can enhance the article.
