Thread: voltage & frequency alteration on my desktop pc

anyone know some good software that will allow me to fine tune my desktop pc (winxp) - i'm looking for one with advanced options.

I would want to lower the voltage at times for powersaving or up it for overclocking.

Big thing is - I would like to be able to change the frequency that my components operate at and lower their speed this way (so i can use high/normal voltage but at a lower/higher frequency then OEM) - in the world of electric motor control it is more efficient to change the frequency the unit operates at then the voltage - is it the same for a PC?

can a PC run safely (any hardware issues I might need to be aware of) at lower frequencies (could i get my dual cores to run @ 8 hz each????? - is this physically impossible??)..................

if anyone can offer any input on this or suggest any software it would be most appreciated!!!!

as far as I am aware it is the PSU that gives out a near linear DC current.

Is there a further unit on the motherboard that changes this so the processor runs at say 2.5 GHz?????

Excuse the ignorance on this issue but I have little experience with hardware in this sense most of what I have done to date is servicing and other theory.........

It's up to the motherboard... and "BIOS" of the motherboard. Determine your brand and model, then go to the company site and download whatever utilities they offer.

Your modern dual core processor is "smart" and doing what you describe already. Under demand it will overclock/overvolt until temperature reaches a factory-set threshold... it will also "throttle back" when appropriate. You might be missing a hardware driver to optimize this. Check the AMD or Intel site.

thanks - I was looking into if its possible to push the envelope a little further. In this respect will the BIOS simply not be up to it so without changing my BIOS there is no way of doing it?

Depends on your motherboard/BIOS/drivers. Some manufacturers idiotproof their products (for trouble-free user experience) while other manufacturers pander to "power users". Lately a lot of BS "overclocking" software has been made available... so we may have the pleasure of turning a performance knob graphic up to eleven. A software solution may eat more resources than it gives back.

Modern chips are factory-set to basically overclock normally (that's how we made them faster) and then reduce the load as the chip overheats. They are constantly tweaking themselves as ...well, games... demand. So they push the envelope better than a user can.

You could look into BIOS. Usually that's accessed by hammering DELETE during power-up.

thanks - mostly i'm thinking about idle and times of low priority work - if i could get my pc to go REAL SLOW after a period of idle rather than hybernate after a while it might be more efficient - going to full/moderate speed/power when i move the mouse or touch a key on the keyboard.

just for experimentation really - good point that software to address this issue could eat more than its worth!!!

currently got an ASUS which allows a little overclocking but not full access to whatever i want!! Has an amazing power saving feature - when running linux my power consuption halves at idle, a little more on winxp - i never notice a performance drop (AMD dual core 4GB ram) - big thumbs up form me!!!