Are temp monitor programs wrong?

[Merlin5]

Someone told me that temperature monitor programs like cpuid, hwmonitor, etc are largely inaccurate, and that there's apparently an article somewhere showing the massive inaccuracies of burntest and CPUID when they thermoprobed the cpu directly. It showed it was around 10-20C lower than the monitoring software was reporting.

Could this be true or is it rubbish? With maximum load on IBT, I get about 45c, so if this was right about monitor programs, that would put my max load at about 25 to 35c. Even with my TRUE and lots of fans, is that a feasible load temperature?

 

[Merlin5]

Measuring the case of the CPU is completely different to measuring the temp inside the core, there's usually around 15 degC difference

With HWMonitor, my TMPIN 0 is 26c, (I believe that's the motherboard temp), TMPIN 1 (CPU) is 35c and my core temp is 38c. If by case of the CPU you mean my TMPIN 1, then I never get more than about 3c difference.

 

[Merlin5]

Yes, I've always had weird readings from my core temp but it seems to be something to do with my phenom sensor. In my screenshot, you'll see that my idle temps show core at 18c whiile TMPIN 1 is 32c.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7290/tempsxh.jpg


At load with orthos, say when I had my overclock a while back at 3.8GH, my TMPIN 1 was 42c and core was 26c.



I was told that adding about 20c to whatever the core number makes it about right. So at idle, that would make my core temp 38c not 18c, and at load, 26c becomes 46c. That puts the core temp always slightly above the cpu temp. So, would you say that's the correct way I should read my strange core temps readings, by adding about 20c?

 

[Merlin5]

I would suggest you download core temp and real temp, run these alongside hwmonitor. Post the results here so we can take a look

Just took this screenshot. Realtemp only works with my laptop cos it's intel. Doesn't work with AMD.