- Joined
- Aug 4, 2005
- Location
- Philadelphia, PA
Just curious.
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What's the purpose of Underclocking?
- Thread starter sulretal
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
There is no point.
Some might arguee power conservation, and heat reduction. I don't buy it.
Make it faster, not slower.
Some might arguee power conservation, and heat reduction. I don't buy it.
Make it faster, not slower.
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2005
- Location
- Vancouver, Canada
Ditto Fishy. It just doesn't make sense to me. Its like makeing a car slower by doing something too it... lol
btw. @fishy: nice avatar.
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2005
- Location
- Chicago, IL
Yeah, it'll lower your temps, use less power, and all that stuff. Kinda useless, another example would be going 40mph in a 55mph zone where theres no cars at 3am.
Some may say the 100-200mhz drop is barely noticeable in regular usage, and it drops your temps by 2-3 degrees. Having everything run like one second slower will add up.
Some may say the 100-200mhz drop is barely noticeable in regular usage, and it drops your temps by 2-3 degrees. Having everything run like one second slower will add up.
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2003
- Location
- Phoenix. YOUR HAIR IS GOOD TO EAT
{PMS}fishy said:
That's because instead of listening you choose to speak.
As noted in the post above mine, if you underclock you can effective silence your computer because case fans are less necessary. For a while I was running my 2500+ with an SP-94 and no fan and only one exhaust fan thanks to an underclocked machine, it was damn near silent.
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2005
- Location
- Chicago, IL
Take a stab at it then, depends on your system. I can turn off all my case fans and only have a little heatsink fan running and it'll still stay at good temps without needing to underclock it.
If you really need to have it quiet, there should be some other alternatives to consider before underclocking. Try to find ways to silence your case/computer before having a performance hit.
If you really need to have it quiet, there should be some other alternatives to consider before underclocking. Try to find ways to silence your case/computer before having a performance hit.
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2004
- Location
- Madison, WI
only real reason, imo, would be if you are having cooling issues- at least you can have a mostly working system while you get the cooling worked out- this should obviously only be a temporary thing, though. Silence is another thing, but as mentioned, there are better ways to achieve that, so if you do underclock for sound, that should only be temporary, too.
- Joined
- May 23, 2001
- Location
- Asteroid B-612
Why? Because there are plenty of applications that don't require alot of processing power.
Setups (like HTPCs) that use hardware encoding devices for most the calculation only use the processor for transcoding. And when underclocked some processors reach heat output levels as low as C3s, but with much more processing power and memory bandwidth.
Setups (like HTPCs) that use hardware encoding devices for most the calculation only use the processor for transcoding. And when underclocked some processors reach heat output levels as low as C3s, but with much more processing power and memory bandwidth.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2003
darksparkz said:
that costs money and time. underclocking is free and easy. with much less trial and error invested. i would say it is just the opposite of what you said. underclocking would be my first course of action. if i wasn't pleased, then i would look into other silencing methods.
scenario: joe wants a silent computer. he can buy all his normal computer stuff and underclock it to run it silent OR he can buy special heatsinks and fans, modify his case, and then still probably deal with higher temps.
the analogy to driving slow is a very poor one. it would be more like modifying your engine so it got more MPG, despite a slight acceleration hit.
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2004
- Location
- Hillbillyville
zip22 said:
Thats pretty much it.. For people who need the savings (be it for sound, heat, stability) can use it.. its senseless to do for no reason...
My dually xeon system. It ran at 3.2ghz perfectly fine (OC'd of course). Come summer time, however, it was very hot. I was rarely in my room (full time summer internship) so the 'rents wouldnt let me keep the A/C on.
It got hot. My temps were going up. Yes, I could have gotten good heatsinks (instead of stock) or better fans (instead of ultra quiet) or A/C (instead of not being yelled at ;- ] ). But.. since I was barely using it anyways (all it was doing was playing music), dual 2.8ghz Hyperthreading Xeons were plenty. Drop the multi, and the temps dropped quick. It was enough that I didn't ever have to worry..
So, in that case, although its not quite the same as underclocking, it kinda was..
- Joined
- May 22, 2005
- Location
- NY
The purpose of underclocking is to decrease heat dissipation and/or decrease power consumption. Most of the times this is done to allow the system to run while being passivly cooled, thus making your PC a lot quieter.
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2001
- Location
- Vancouver, WA
In the case of laptops, underclocking/undervolting is definatly useful. The two main reasons for doing them (reduced temps and power consumption) are all the more important in laptops. Having a 60C chunk of plastic on your lap is no fun, nor is having uber poor battery life. Sure there are other solutions, but none as simple usually. In a desktop environment the use is less, though specific applications like media centers or closet file-servers can prove to benifit from the resuced temps and noise.
/me undervolts and dynamically underclocks (450MHz - 2.8GHz) his lappy. The result is a 5C cooler CPU under load (which is enough to keep the fan at "medium" instead of "high" or "turbo"), almost fanless operation when webbrowsing (...if only P4s could go lower than 1.150V...), and an extra 30 minutes of battery life (which is REALLY nice when stock gives only 2 hours).
JigPu
/me undervolts and dynamically underclocks (450MHz - 2.8GHz) his lappy. The result is a 5C cooler CPU under load (which is enough to keep the fan at "medium" instead of "high" or "turbo"), almost fanless operation when webbrowsing (...if only P4s could go lower than 1.150V...), and an extra 30 minutes of battery life (which is REALLY nice when stock gives only 2 hours).
JigPu
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2001
- Location
- Shasta Lake, California
In my home town everybody has a swamp cooler. On the few humid days in the summer, when it's uusally between 95F and 110F, it is very hot. If I have to use a computer, underclocking and undervolting it helps a great deal.
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2003
- Location
- Cleveland OHIO
Only purpose i see is troubleshooting to eliminate heat and voltage as a problem, thats it.
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2005
- Location
- Indianapolis
Like others have said, for solving heat problems. The only way I could get my main comp (which has a serious heat problem) to run SETI 24/7 w/o crashing was to lower the FSB a full 13 mhz (for a 1500 mhz cpu clock speed), which resulted in a 4C temperature drop (enough to keep the system stable).
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2003
- Location
- Phoenix. YOUR HAIR IS GOOD TO EAT
MadSkillzMan said:
If you need more reasons try reading this thread.
