Underclocking

krooton

krooton

krooton

Caporegime
Joined
9 May 2004
Posts
28,754
Location
Leafy outskirts of London
I'm inheriting the following, and thinking about making a wee media centre out of it:

Socket 478 P4 2.8Ghz
Asus p4v8x-x
1GB DDR400
Radeon 9550

Now the TDP for the cpu is 64w, but all this box will be doing is outputting video to a tv or playing mp3s, and I'd like to minimize the power draw.

Does anyone know if this cpu and mobo will allow for underclocking? And what sort of wattage saving could I look at running it at 1.6-2ghz (or less if it can still do video)?

Ta!
 
Almost certainly - but it's the volts you want to reduce!

Drop the voltage as far as you can on stock clock, then start dropping the clock and voltage as far as you can (just basically do a reverse of overclocking)

You may be able to get it down as low as 1gHz if you aren't running HD video - my Eee PC can output standard DVD quality stuff when running on low power (800mHz) mode, so it should manage it. The wattage is proportional to the square of the voltage, so dropping it as far as you can will help a lot.
 
very limited potential to drop the volts on P4 mobo - and any intel ones really
Clock and multi is easy but as Audigex said it's all about the volts.

Worth a look - but AMD's are the underclocking kings

Edit: just check the users guide 'auto' and 'over voltage' are only options :(
 
Last edited:
shadowscotland said:
very limited potential to drop the volts on P4 mobo - and any intel ones really
Clock and multi is easy but as Audigex said it's all about the volts.

Worth a look - but AMD's are the underclocking kings

Edit: just check the users guide 'auto' and 'over voltage' are only options :(
Click to expand...

Doh!

Well, free is free, can't really complain.

Maybe I will see if I can sell the mobo and cpu and get a cheapo socket A mobo/cpu, they undervolt pretty easily as I recall.

Thanks for the head's up!
 
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