guide to undervolting a laptop.

aMoistmuffin
aMoistmuffin
in CrossFire Guides
First of all, undervolting does not affect your laptops performance, it cannot damage hardware either, in fact in most cases it can increase your laptops lifetime by reducing the amount of heat stress, and fan usage needed to keep your laptop cooled.

Now let's explain undervolting. Each piece of hardware uses a certain amount of power, but the way processors work is a throttling multiplier system. Let me explain it this way. To run Microsoft Word you don't need a lot of power, so the multiplier is kept low and the core clock lowers, reducing heat and the amount of power being used. But when you open up Crossfire, the processor needs more power, so the multiplier increases, and at the same time the core clock rises to make up for performance needs.

Multiplier 4x core clock 599 mhz - Microsoft Word.

Multiplier 16x core clock 1600 mhz - Crossfire

But in order to get more performance the processor needs more power, generally 3-4 volts maximum for the 16x (usually the highest multiplier).

But laptops over estimate the amount of power needed creating a "safety net"

16x multipliers allotted voltage - 4V
16x multipiers needed voltage - 2.5V

Luckily for us all, there are tools to reduce the voltage allotted to the processor. So let's have a look at how to do it.

First your going to need a few tools.
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_235_bin.rar
http://www.overclock.net/attachments/downloads/36840d1165737486-orthos-v20060420-orthos_exe_20060420.zip
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

First things first, execute Orthos, and HW monitor, Orthos is going to stress your processor to the maximum heat, the HW monitor is going to tell you the temperature. Run the stresser for about 20 minutes, check the maximum temperature.

Now, clear the maximum temperature and disable the stresser.

Write down the Maximum temperature you achieved and put it off to the side.
Now run RM clock and do the following steps.

-click advanced CPU settings
-check use these settings on startup
-if your using an AMD processor check P-state transistors
-double check that the processor is the correct one

-click the Profile tab
-go the the Performance on Demand tab
-check use PST on both boxes
-check every index box, remember to get ALL of them, there is a scroll bar there.

-Return to the Profile tab
-change the Profiles in both "current" drop down menus to "performance on demand"
-Make sure all "normal" indexes are checked
-Now uncheck auto-adjust immediate state VIDS


NOW to get to the actual undervolting, I'm going to warn you, you may get a BSOD (Blue screen of death) DO NOT BE CONCERNED. It will not damage your pc.

-Find the highest "normal" index voltage on the profile page.
-Lower the voltage by 2 settings to start with.
-Now apply the changes, open up HW monitor, and orthos, rerun them, and after another 15 minutes, check your temperature change. you should notice a drop of 2-3 celsius.

-Continue to decrease the voltage by 1 setting, testing it 10-15 minutes each time, and checking and recording your temperature and voltage changes.

-ONCE YOU GET A BSOD, turn the voltage up TWO settings above where you got the BSOD, this is to recreate the safety net.

check your final temperature and compare it to the start temperature, not only is your temperature going to be much lower, which will increase performance, increase computer and battery life, and save your lap from being melted. But it was free. And can you honestly beat free?
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