Overclockaholics Forums

Overclockaholics Forums (http://www.overclockaholics.com/forums/index.php)
-   Overclocking Utilities/Benches (http://www.overclockaholics.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=84)
-   -   Must Have Overclocking Tools (http://www.overclockaholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=160)

Chuchnit 03-18-2009 04:41 AM

Must Have Overclocking Tools
 
Here is my little list of must have overclocking utilities. I'm sure I'll miss a few so put 'em up if I missed it.

Monitoring:

CPU-Z
GPUZ
Real Temp
Core Temp
Everest Ultimate


Tweaking:

Rivatuner
ATI Tray Tools
Setfsb
Clockgen
EVGA Precision
CPU Tweaker
Memset

Testing:

Furmark
Prime95
OCCT
Intel Burn Test (Warning: this really stresses your system)
Memtest


Favorite Sites to visit for tools and benchmarks:

Guru3D
Techpowerup
Majorgeeks

Kal-EL 03-18-2009 04:42 AM

Nice collection, thx chuchnit :D

DrNip 03-18-2009 04:57 AM

sign6

DrNip 04-03-2009 04:16 PM

Here's a couple that might come in handy for you Intel chipset mobo's.

CPU Tweaker Final v1.0

MemSet 4.0 Final

Chuchnit 04-03-2009 04:18 PM

Thanks drnip for the additions :toast:

Chuchnit 04-03-2009 04:20 PM

drnip do you have just links to the proggies instead of the files? I tried to make my links as to where it goes to the website? I did this so I don't have to keep going back and updating this whenever a new version comes out.

DrNip 04-03-2009 04:31 PM

Yeah I changed it. Took me a minute to find them.

Chuchnit 04-03-2009 05:48 PM

Thanks ;)


New tweaking tools added...

hellcamino 06-26-2009 04:40 AM

http://pinouts.ru/Power/atx_v2_pinout.shtml

A simple pinout for testing your psu. I prefer to do this under a load like linpack or memtest.

Neuromancer 06-26-2009 05:41 AM

I use HWMonitor instead of coretemp/realtemp/everest anymore. Nice and small and you can get it the same place you grab CPUz :) Monitors temps AND voltages of mobo, CPU, PSU video cards and just temps on harddrive :)


For DAAMIT users

AMD Overdrive, and I see lots of sickos running k10stat.

hellcamino 06-26-2009 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neuromancer (Post 6331)
I use HWMonitor instead of coretemp/realtemp/everest anymore. Nice and small and you can get it the same place you grab CPUz :) Monitors temps AND voltages of mobo, CPU, PSU video cards and just temps on harddrive :)


For DAAMIT users

AMD Overdrive, and I see lots of sickos running k10stat.

Software voltage monitors are unreliable, hwmonitor is great for the temps it displays and a few of it's voltage readings as long as the volt readings aren't very important.

Neuromancer 06-26-2009 02:41 PM

Software voltage monitors have come a long ways. And everytime I see someone say they are bad, someone pulls out a DMM and measuers within a few hundreths of a volt what the SW is reading.

Software temperature monitors on the other hand. WILDLY unreliable. Especially with 45nm Intel and AMD chips. 2 different softwares will show readings 20C different. Granted not many people have the equipment or patience to accurately record the temperatures of their CPUs, so seeing someone comapre them to a SW reading... I have never seen it.


The idea of software monitoring, is not to stake your life on the results. But to give you a general idea of what is actually going on in your system.

For example, seeing your gcore voltage move from 1.05 to 1.15 when you load it, you have an indication that your card has moved to 3d mode.


I have more faith in SW voltage measurements than SW temperature monitoring software anyday of the week.

DrNip 06-26-2009 04:30 PM

EVGA's Eleet is pretty much spot on except for its VTT readings.

punx223 06-26-2009 04:38 PM

very nice chuch

hellcamino 06-27-2009 05:40 PM

[QUOTE=Neuromancer;6405]Software voltage monitors have come a long ways. And everytime I see someone say they are bad, someone pulls out a DMM and measuers within a few hundreths of a volt what the SW is reading.
QUOTE]

Pick one you like and I'll tell you whether or not my PSU even passes muster...So far they all tell me it's crap and needs to be replaced as the voltages are often wrong by 50% or greater. Oddly the DVM still says it's alright but then maybe it's biased...As a matter of fact I don't have any PSU's that pass muster except when I consult my meter.

Neuromancer 06-27-2009 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neuromancer (Post 6405)
Software voltage monitors have come a long ways. And everytime I see someone say they are bad, someone pulls out a DMM and measuers within a few hundreths of a volt what the SW is reading.

Software temperature monitors on the other hand. WILDLY unreliable. Especially with 45nm Intel and AMD chips. 2 different softwares will show readings 20C different. Granted not many people have the equipment or patience to accurately record the temperatures of their CPUs, so seeing someone comapre them to a SW reading... I have never seen it.


The idea of software monitoring, is not to stake your life on the results. But to give you a general idea of what is actually going on in your system.

For example, seeing your gcore voltage move from 1.05 to 1.15 when you load it, you have an indication that your card has moved to 3d mode.


I have more faith in SW voltage measurements than SW temperature monitoring software anyday of the week.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hellcamino (Post 6601)
Quote:

Originally Posted by Neuromancer (Post 6405)
Software voltage monitors have come a long ways. And everytime I see someone say they are bad, someone pulls out a DMM and measuers within a few hundreths of a volt what the SW is reading.

Pick one you like and I'll tell you whether or not my PSU even passes muster...So far they all tell me it's crap and needs to be replaced as the voltages are often wrong by 50% or greater. Oddly the DVM still says it's alright but then maybe it's biased...As a matter of fact I don't have any PSU's that pass muster except when I consult my meter.

For everyone elses sake I will quote myself since you seemed vexed on one point of my post, rather than the entirety. Make your own assumptions there.

Unfortunately I tried very hard not to get annoyed by your comments (coming from a great OCer such as yourself, compared to a n00b like me) and spent a long time writing a civillized response. Only to loss power. ARGH!!!!


Damn why havent I gotten UPS by now!!!

Anywho...

Before I disagree with you further, I do want to say one thing.. your OC prowess is amazing. If I need advice on OCing or extreme cooling I will definitely assume you know what you are talking about :) I say what follows only to keep people from perpetuating fallacies and because, well, I am right.


You said pick one.

I pick vcore. You really actually measuring your 1.3 sw set vcore at .65 or 2volts??? 50% offset...

Now I assume what you really where talking about was PSU rail sw tools. Which I agree, can be VERY wrong. Those are not what I was talking about but lets entertain that thought... So by 50% your motherboard reads.. 12v and your dmm reads 6 or 18 volts? thats a 50% difference. Or you mean that your 12v SW reads 11.8 and your HW reads 11.9? (technically that is less than a 1% difference. pretty freaking sweet)

But lets compare that to temperature readings....

My software tells me my 550BE CPU idles at -256C and loads at 0C. Since it is actually running at 30C and 45C.. thats more than 1300% off.

Okay lets talk average which is what I was talking about anyway...

There are many people that quote coretemp at 25C only to find out they are really running at 35C with those damn e8XXX cpus, (only a 40% difference, which 10 degrees is pretty standard on adding to your SW temp readings actually), oops that would mean SW temp readings are not accurate :p) Sorry my house is running at 24C .. what fucking air cooler is so good it will take an OCed CPU and run it at ambient?

So your 50%? If real idle temp was 37.5.. you hit 50% right there. A difference of 2 degrees. (since people with temp probes are much more lacking than dmm types.. you gotta now that Sw temp readers are SO far off the mark.. its a marketing scheme (oh... not like Intel and nVidia don't play those games ;) ;) nudge nudge say no more)

Okay one last thing..

How do you set your voltages when you overclock?

You use the software (ahem... firmware) that comes with your mobo? Or do you have some machine that clamps down on it and you use dials and switches to set vcore, vdimm etc?

nuff said.

(PS that asus pod... does not count as HW ;) )


EDIT: yeah I am not good at arguing, because my mind is faster than my fingers so if I left too many incomplete thoughts I will try and expound them later.

EDIT EDIT: For that matter.. HW monitor (except on vgpu) lists sensors as specs. So PEBKAC comes into play???

Deux 06-28-2009 03:10 AM

Eleet + Nhancer seem to be the only big ones missing from the list.

There is a nifty little program written by Tiborr (IIRC) called Prioaif that is really helpful for AM3 and wPrime. It is posted in the first 2K1 tweaking thread over at XS. I'll try to dig it up later today.

OCX Spi Tweaker can be helpful for 32M especially. It requires some serious trial and error to get the most out of it but in the end it's worth it.

hellcamino 06-28-2009 04:34 AM

Neuromancer I have absolutely nothing to prove to you! When I said pick one it was intended that you pick a voltage monitor specifically for monitoring psu voltage and I would test my own with it and then give you an actual reading from a multimeter unless you prefer that I use my ossciloscope...

If you are basing your observations off of a single utility and/or a single motherboard or cpu then you have some catching up to do. AMD doesn't even use a core sensor so if you are basing your reading off of that then you are setting yourself up for failure.

Math games? Why would I actually mess around like that? Seriously...what exactly would be the point?

I have seen my 12v rail as low as 2.2v recently, my 5v at 9v and my 3.3v at 1.9v all according to software! The reason they are inaccurate is due to the way they sense voltage...err don't. All of the voltage readings that you see in monitors are simply relayed from the sm bus via bios and so they reflect what is set in bios. When you see changes in windows from what you set in the bios it is due to fluctuations in system load.



Now I say again: pick a software utility for me to test PSU voltage that is accurate. When I say accurate I mean the exact same reading I get with a meter in real time.

As far as temp monitors go I'm honestly not sure, I've been told that an i7 will throttle at exactly 100c but haven't made the experiment (2Chesapeakes did though), I was also told that 100c was threshold temp for the majority of LGA775 socket quad cores and that they would shut down when they reached this temp. The highest I ever saw on my Q6600 was IIRC 119c and on my X3360 xeon I saw it at 123c, the xeon shut down immediately afterward but the Q6600 lasted a few more seconds as I was trying to kill the load and crashed in the proccess. Well I would think that the temp sensors for these cpu's would be tighter than that so I am guessing that those temp readings were higher than actual. The utility in use was core temp and it reads lower than Real temp, hwmonitor or Everest. That doesn't render them entirely useless though as the reported temps can still be used as a guide.

Kal-EL 06-28-2009 04:58 AM

Both of you can remove the f-bombs during intelligent discussions and err on the side of understanding during these intelligent discussions. You might give people the wrong idea or something.

thx- Supes

Neuromancer 06-28-2009 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kal-EL (Post 6642)
Both of you can remove the f-bombs during intelligent discussions and err on the side of understanding during these intelligent discussions. You might give people the wrong idea or something.

thx- Supes

Sorry Supes,

Edited for content, inflammatory comments and spelling :) :confused1:


HC.

Post whatever you like. I see you are still on about PSU rails. Which is fine, I specifically said HWmonitor in my first post and that it gives you an idea about voltage on your video card.

How about OCCT? Run the bench test it gives you a nice graphical display of your 12v rail.

Also out of curiosity, do your rails read from SW) that far off at stock? If not, how long do they stay "accurate" before instability kicks in? Extreme OCes or just any OC at all?


AS for my experience with PCs. No it is not based on a single system. I have 5 PCs running in my house now and I "rent" new ones every few months. (I call it renting, flip HW so often I never really "own it" lol) Benn doing this for the last 5 years, and my experience with PCs goes back to learning how to program on a TRS-80 around 1979


And if "none" of your PSUs will past muster on your board based on SW measurements. Well that could be an issue with your board then, not SW voltage monitoring as a whole. It could also be an indicator that your mobo has been damaged in some way. If for instance when it was brand new it read everything fine)

Kal-EL 06-28-2009 06:42 AM

Thank you Neuromance, its much appreciated.

hellcamino 06-28-2009 01:44 PM

I actually have never seen a software voltage measurement be accurate on any of the systems I have built but you believe what you like! As for instability...maye you are right and I don't know what I am doing here? That must be why I game at 4.3ghz daily as well as anything else I do on my PC as it's triple tested stable there ?

For the record my first pc was a TRS-80 from Radio Shack as well, I don't remember what brand of tape deck I used for it's hard drive though.


The reason I keep on about psu voltage readings is due to the fact that motherboards don't have sensors for it, measure actual live voltage against OCCT if you like with an actual meter.

http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/q...mino/volts.jpg

Dig those volt readings! If those readings were even close to the truth this pc wouldn't even turn on much less overclock or do antything...

Neuromancer 06-28-2009 05:53 PM

heh heh

HC I was not doubting your ability nor competence in the OC arts, quite the opposite really, kind of why I was so annoyed (although really it was the losing power thing that just flipped my switches)

When I first posted up in this thread I was not even considering PSU sw voltage measurements, although I have seen numerous time its dmm'ed pretty accurately.

I have seen software PSU voltages like yours, reading completely wrong. This is usually caused by inconsistencies between the computation formulas and the motherboard. Everest probably reads the 12v rail much more accurately I take it? What does your BIOS report? I have not seen a BIOS report off like that in years, so its just a matter of finding the right software. When you run the latest hardware software also needs a chance to catch up, if the manufacturer does not send them a prerelease sample, than the software author needs to get the board on his own to find the proper measurements to read from. Everest is from a large corporation and offers paid versions of their software so their accuracy is probably going to be a lot higher.

Others (without a firm grasp of Celsius and Fahrenheit) have no problem quoting Coretemp readings as their "idle/load" temps. Though they are notorious for being 10-15C off "real" temps. Yet I see coretemp listed in useful tools.


Couple of Q's...

Does it read this far off when running stock?

I am getting a DMM soon I hope, going to use it to test vcore and such though. Would be surprised if it read that incorrectly, since I use the BIOS software to adjust voltages...

With multi rail PSUs you measure from the 24pin connector or the CPU connector for accurate 12v readings?




To anyone else reading this thread.


The point I am trying to make is this, if you use software to monitor your temps, you can use software to monitor your voltages. Find the one that is most accurate of course (different software uses different formulas for calculating these figures, for instance, Coretemp does not read a temp sensor it reads delta to tjmax IIRC, which is why it became so unreliable when Intel went 45nm (Intel was very hush hush about what the tjmax is) whether this has changed or not, I am not sure. They had to love all the people posting their coretemp screenies with these ridiculously low idle temps)

The idea of using any temp or voltage sensor is not to report the actual data, but to have a quick reference guide for you to notice changes that occur. As I mentioned previously about 3d clock mode on my card. Obviously if your 12v reading software is reading 12v, and all of sudden is reading 11.2v you should bust out a multimeter and recreate the situation. This is indicative of a problem. If however like HC is saying it is reading 2v, then it is completely useless to you, much like AOD temps sensors are useless to me on my CPU when I unlock the third and fourth cores.

HWmonitor however reads much closer to my "real" temps.

And sorry about the typing. I am on my aunts laptop with some busted keys. Should be home in another day or so though.

hellcamino 06-28-2009 08:02 PM

The voltages read all over the place with various monitors on every board I've used I think but on this one in particular the PSU volts read no differently at stock speeds. Multimeters are the only way to go when putting your system under maximum strain (benchmarking with high volts) when accuracy counts the most, I even use an IR thermometer to check all my component temps while stability testing or benching with untested settings.

Last time I checked there weren't any monitors that were anywhere near accurate for this board or any of the others in my house currently or previously.

Neuromancer 06-29-2009 05:07 AM

Damn shame that.

I will get a mulit soon and post upresults of my current collection with the next couple of weeks

Chuchnit 06-29-2009 05:23 AM

Frank, two things. First can you please resize your pics for those who don't have 26 inch monitors :D, and second could it have something to do with the fact that you run vista 64?

hellcamino 06-29-2009 03:47 PM

No it has nothing to do with os, I have similar screenshots dating back for several years on multiple pc's and platforms using XP32, XP64, vista 32, vista 64 and now Windows 7 64 bit.

dinos22 06-29-2009 04:19 PM

nice list of tools
i use SetLOD a bit these days

also there is a new tool on XS for GPU voltage increase called GPU voltage tuner which is pretty nice to use :)

Chuchnit 06-29-2009 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dinos22 (Post 7121)
nice list of tools
i use SetLOD a bit these days

also there is a new tool on XS for GPU voltage increase called GPU voltage tuner which is pretty nice to use :)

Thanks Dinos. I actually found setLOD after you mentioned it in your thread during the last LLC. Nice app. I'll add that there. Can you link me to the voltage tuner?

dinos22 06-29-2009 04:44 PM

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=227628

Mean Machine 06-29-2009 10:13 PM

Isn't Voltage Tuner basically VoltageFactory, just a little different? I haven't tried Voltage Tuner, but it looks pretty similar to VoltageFactory... Or is there a real point in using Voltage Tuner instead of VoltageFactory? (damn, this post became messy)

Crysis 07-01-2009 03:01 AM

Decent list mate, I'm new to this whole thing so I just want to know something quickly. Is there any program that can quickly stress test your PC? I find Prime95 a little tedious having to wait 8-7 hours sometimes :)...

Kal-EL 07-01-2009 03:04 AM

Intel Burn Test it supposed to be pretty intense according to other users experiences. I've never used it as I believe that if its good enough to bench wprime32 and 1024m and 3d06, then its prolly good enough to game.

Everyone is different but IBT supposed to be good and tough on the cpu.

Crysis 07-01-2009 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kal-EL (Post 7607)
Intel Burn Test it supposed to be pretty intense according to other users experiences. I've never used it as I believe that if its good enough to bench wprime32 and 1024m and 3d06, then its prolly good enough to game.

Everyone is different but IBT supposed to be good and tough on the cpu.

Hmm, well I'll look into it. Thanks for the help :)...

Neuromancer 07-01-2009 06:25 AM

Intel Burn Test is LinPack? or a derivative? (or vica versa)

How do they compare to Core Damage?

Chuchnit 07-01-2009 06:31 AM

Never heard of core damage. I do need to update this list a little.

Shahryar_NEO 07-02-2009 12:03 AM

nice collection .

but there is another Must have GPU tools : ATI GPU Tools by techpowerup . it's good for overclocking , increase voltages and ... .

DrNip 07-14-2009 05:53 AM

Prime95v.25.11 build 2(32bit)
Prime95v.25.11 build 2(64bit)

CPU-Z 1.52 beta

DrNip 07-16-2009 08:17 AM

techPowerUp! SuperPi 1.6 version.

SuperPi 1.6 Download

Validator

DrNip 08-04-2009 04:58 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Here is a very nice lil utility. It gives you oodles of info. Ya'll try it and let me know if you like it.

HWiNFO32

http://www.overclockaholics.com/foru...1&d=1249398137


All times are GMT -10. The time now is 09:02 PM.


Copyright ©2009 Overclockaholics.com