Ceewi1, is this normal :(

Jet

VIP Member
I'm overclocking my Pentium D 820 (thanks to my new ASUS P5B), and I have the voltage up to 1.5V. With Speedfan, it shows ~1.4V during idle, but then when it is under full load, it drops all the way down to ~1.275V :O. Reguardless, I'm not gonna keep it this high, as even my Zalman 9500 is having a hard time cooling it, and it is running at 76C load.

Off the subject, I did have it up to 3710, but it doesn't like going past 265FSB.
 
Your measured VCore will always be a little lower than what you set it to in the BIOS, and VCore will drop further under load. This is called voltage droop (VDroop). There's a very thorough explanation here: http://www.thetechrepository.com/showthread.php?t=126

If accurate, a drop from 1.4V to 1.275V is too much, though. Personally I don't like to see anything more than about 0.04V difference. Unfortunately the P5B is known for high VDroop.

Is it a problem? As you might imagine, it means that CPU receives a lower voltage under load, which is when it needs it most. This results in you having to set a higher VCore so that the CPU can receive the same voltage when loaded, which is far from ideal, and can limit your overclocking ability. The VDroop itself isn't dangerous, though.
 
Yep. I know the Vdroop, but with overclocking, it dropped another bit to 1.2 (with a Vcore of 1.425) after ~30 minutes of load when I was trying it at 3.5, and then crashed. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with my previous overclock :).
 
That's an enormous drop. Unfortunately, the only way to overcome this problem is to hardmod the board, which is probably not the solution you're after. Looks like you'll be stuck with the reduced overclock :(
 
It doesn't matter, I guess I just posted it here because I don't have ceewi's IM.
 
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