HWMonitor and CPU count question...

[Snacko]

I just OC'd my cpu to 3.7 and was using CPUID HWMonitor for the first time.

[Falconise]

Good questions! Nice clock, 3.7GHz is pretty decent and must be very fast!

The Core i7 CPUs only have 4 cores, the 8 cores comes from Hyperthreading (which Intel has revived from back in the old days of P4). Essentially, they are virtual cores. It didn't help much in the old days, but with the Core i7 there is significant performance increases in some tests.

One thing to note: with high overclcoks this feature may not work. So, you are doing good if it does work at 3.7GHz!

There should be five temperatures, and you have them all. One for the overall CPU temp, and one for each of the 4 cores. It is normal for them to have a 10 degree difference.

The discrepency comes from two things (I am guessing here):

1) The sensors are not exactly accurate

2) Heat comes from electrical leakage of the microscopic curcuits, the smaller the manufacturing process, the more leakage there is. Intel has recovered most of this by using new materials in the process, but there is still a lot of heat generated by the Core i7, especially the 965. When they make a wafer of CPU's, there is a fair amount of variability in how well each CPU works. Some will run hot, some cool, some with little voltage and some need more, some will run faster, some not. Intel bins (sorts) the chips after testing them for various traits, some will be 965's, some only 920's. So, it therefore stands to reason that even individual cores will vary in how much heat they will produce, as well as overclockability and responsiveness to voltage.

The cores are a lot closer than 1cm away from each other. They are all on the same die with the Core i7, not two dual core dies under the same hood like the Core2Quad chips. So, I would say they are a fraction of a millimeter away from each other. You'd think that they would affect each other being so close, eh?

Hope this helps!

[Perfesser]

Just speculating here ... How well would the OS evenly space all tasks among the cores?

[Snacko]

There should be five temperatures, and you have them all. One for the overall CPU temp, and one for each of the 4 cores. It is normal for them to have a 10 degree difference.

Where is the overall cpu temp?

[Snacko]

Bump...

[Falconise]

Just above the fans, in the Temperature section, CPUTIN.

If P95 errored, then the overclock is not stable. There is nothing wrong with the cpu, with an overclock like that!

Usually, if the system is really unstable, P95 will error pretty fast. 45 minutes means that it is close to being stable. You really want an 8 hour run without errors, but if you get past 45 minutes it may easily go forever. You can also run a bunch of 3D benchmarks, to see if it is 3D stable. And, of course, play some IL2!

But what exactly is failing in P95, the cpu or ram? To find out, run P95 again but with the Small FFTs setting -- this tests only the CPU and not the ram much at all. If it passes that, then you can safely assume it is a ram tweak you need. If it fails that, then you can safely assume it is a CPU problem and maybe try increasing your CPU volts a bit.

Failing this, you can only back off on the speed a bit.

What heatsink are you running? Stock? Your CPU Vcore is running at 1.37V according to HWmonitor. You can safely increase that to about 1.45V with the stock HSF, but temps are going to go up (especially under load with P95). The stock HSF will severly limit the overclock, and you may already be near the limit.

Where is the overall cpu temp?

[Snacko]

1) Why are the overall CPUTIN temps so much lower than all of the cores??

[Snacko]

I just ran Prime95 with those Small FFTs for just about 5mins and the 4 core temps quickly went up to about 86-90c.

[Falconise]

That discrepency comes from the location of the sensor for the overall temperature. I dunno where they put it, but obviously it isn't as close to the cores as the others are. Also, as before, the sensors are not as accurate as we would like. The only way to get an accurate real temp reading is to plant a thermal diode on the CPU integrated heatsink, and even that will not read the individual cores. Yet, this is what review testers will do when monitoring temps for things like HSFs etc. It isn't a huge issue though, as what you only need to monitor is how much the temps are climbing, not how accurate they are. The system will eventually become unstable at a certain temperature, no matter what you do in the BIOS. This becomes obvious when you see some HSFs getting higher overclocks than others.

HWmonitor is a fairly new program, and may have some bugs in it. For this reason, it would be a good idea to try another temperature sensor reading program and see if it has the same problem. It could be a stability issue, it could also be an issue with the Winbound sensor. If it is the sensor, it stands to reason that it would also happen at stock speeds. You can try Everest Ultimate or Speedfan to verify the temp readings. Core Temp is another that is highly regarded as the most accurate.

I almost got a Cosmos myself, and decided on a HAF932 because of some issues I had with the drive bays in the Cosmos. I remember reading about the side panel fan and some taller coolers. The model of Cosmos you have has better intake airflow than the older one. Removing the side panel fan will have little effect on CPU temps, and only the vid card and NB temp should rise a bit. Not an issue though, unless you want to close the side panel all the way.

1) Why are the overall CPUTIN temps so much lower than all of the cores??

[Falconise]

I agree that 90C is approaching or past a safe limit for even the 965 extreme. To be safest, I would go by the highest temperature reading. That is not a cheap CPU, and would be disaster if it was damaged.

Small FFTs will generate the most heat possible.

Still, I feel that your temps are excessive for a 3.7GHz clock setting. You should not be hitting 90C until 4GHz or beyond. I must say though, I have zero experience with the 965 or LGA1366. That is a very decent heatsink though, so if there is a problem with the cooler it must be a mounting issue or bad thermal paste application. If the heatsink is not tight enough, you will be able to move it by twisting it slightly -- it should not move. Otherwise, it will mean pulling the HSF off and checking the contact patch the paste has left on the surfaces. The patch should cover the entire surfaces with a little blotching here and there from when it was removed. If there are any areas without residue (even very thin) then the paste was not applied properly or the surface of the CPU is not perfectly true. The surface of the HSF is almost always true as they are machined to perfection where Intel doesn't pay enough attention to this. Advanced users will carefully polish (called lapping) the CPU to perfect the surface, there is a lot of info on this around the internet. If there are (relatively) deep scratches and marks on the surface of the HSF when you pull it off and clean it, then it is an indication that the CPU has high points that are making these marks. Other than lapping the CPU there is little else you can do about this.

I just ran Prime95 with those Small FFTs for just about 5mins and the 4 core temps quickly went up to about 86-90c.

[Snacko]

Lockon was crashing all last night when I tried to load it.

[Falconise]

Yes, you can load system defaults or optimal defaults on the last page in the BIOS. You should also have a section there that you can save your settings as a profile, which is very very handy. There should be two profiles that you can use.

CPU level up is cool, eh? I've read it works pretty well, but I'd suspect it is Intel's CPus that allow it to work so well as they have a lot of overhead these days in how much faster than stock they will run.

There is another setting new to Core i7 that does almost the same thing. That is probably why you see the CPU running faster than stock. It is called Turbo Mode:

from here: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/11390-intel-core-i7-nehalem-920-940-965-xe-processor-review-4.html

For the first time ever, Intel has included a feature that automatically overclocks a processor based on the workload demand. Basically, all Core i7 processors come with two additional speed bins, which is to say that they have to two higher multipliers that they can use under certain scenarios. For example, if you are using a single-threaded application, the PCU will down-clock or shut down three cores, thereby freeing up power and lowering heat output while "overclocking" that one core that is in use. If an application is multi-threaded and the processors are not running too hot, the PCU will overclock all the cores up one speed bin. The only limit to Turbo Mode is the power and thermal headroom, so keeping your processor cool should definitely be an even greater priority with the Core i7 series than it ever was.

I have always wondered about the BIOS sensor readings myself. They rarely reflect what you see in the OS, yet it is definately coming from the same sensor. Chaulk it up to how software reads and interprets the sensors data, where in the BIOS there is little room for software. I disregard the BIOS sensors completely, except for in the first boot of a new system or cooler, to initially check that temps are OK.

I recently ran into a shutdown issue myself, while overclocking the DFI and e2180. It turned out to be a heat issue and the alarm or auto shutdown. Once I increased the temp that the system would shutdown, everything was fine. This could be your problem too, because closing the game lets the system back into the OS, and then AI Suite shuts it down due to temperature?

The four core sensors are integrated right into the CPU, and the overall CPU temp may be derived from the mobo just under the CPU, or mounted just inside the CPU integrated heatsink. Regardless, that sensor is miles away (relatively) from the cores when compared to the core sensors. So it is logical that the core sensors will read higher than the overall temp.

I would personally go by the highest temp reading, that way you position yourself in the safest window of temps.

The core sensors are great for indicating individual core temps when say the app you are running is single threaded (only uses one core), you can see how much that single core is rising in temp, and how much it is affecting the other cores and overall temp. This comes into play even more with the new Core i7's Turbo mode.

Lockon was crashing all last night when I tried to load it.

[Snacko]

Thanks for your replies Falconise.

[Falconise]

I'm on an NV card, but have run into AA not working several times. For the most part, it seems some games like to have AA disabled within the game, and then use the NV control panel to force it on. This usually gives me the best performance too, because the AA ingame isn't as optomized. Also, other games do not like this and I have to use the game to enable AA, setting the NV control panel to auto or game controlled. It's a bit of a pain having to shuffle the settinsg back and forth depending on the game, and to be honest I sometimes run without AA because of it -- leaving the settings as is for the most played game.

So I feel your pain. I also do not like the ATI control panel much, it is slow to launch and requires netframework to be installed on the system. It can be hard to navigate because I am not used to it, and takes a bit of digging to get the right settings, and in your case, get them to work!

[Snacko]

I agree.

[Snacko]

I do have one question that has been bothering me.

?? What is the difference between Resetting the Bios to defaults, and Clearing CMOS?

[DD_Brando]

http://ask-leo.com/how_often_should_i_replace_my_cmos_battery_and_what_does_it_do_anyway.html

B

[Snacko]

So, it's just to keep the clock running now?

[DD_Brando]

It's always been my understanding that the changes one makes to the BIOS (when setting up the mobo functions) are written to the CMOS chip. So, when you power up the mobo, these instructions are the parameters that the mobo will execute. That is, the time and date followed by cpu speed, fsb, memory timings and so on. In other words, everything that needs to be functioning before the operating system kicks in.

Clearing CMOS removes all the instructions that you have written onto the chip and restores it to the last-installed (flashed) BIOS version, including the time & date settings. Restoring to default settings does almost as much - except that you have to be able to access BIOS to be able to default it. If your changes to the BIOS have made it unstable to the point of not being bootable, then clearing CMOS is your point of last resort.

B

[Snacko]

Ahh.. Ok that helps.

[Jabo]

It's always been my understanding that the changes one makes to the BIOS (when setting up the mobo functions) are written to the CMOS chip.

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You're spot on Brando, the CMOS is an EEPROM chip (Erasable Electronically Programmable ROM) and as such is non-volatile memory meaning that it does not need to have power applied to retain its code (memory if you prefer). Each time you make a change to the BIOS, those changes are stored in the CMOS.

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Jabo