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Being an overclocker, I skipped the part about C'N'Q when I bought the Athlon 64 as a meaningless extra like car airbags. At the moment its 3:20 AM, I'm in the mood for some bedtime movie watching, and the aircon is on the fritz. It is 42C in the room without the computer on. I fire it up, knowing its about to get that little bit worse. It heats up the room. Not a massive amount, but you can tell when its on. And the sound isn't fun.
So just for giggles, I install the AMD C'N'Q driver and the AMD Power Meter application.
Ok, my voltage is down to 1.1V and my CPU speed is at 1Ghz. Was it going to make any difference?
Well... to my surprise, it did!
Temperature dropped about 10C. Thats nice, but not all that impressive. So I turn my CPU fan (120mm Sunnon) down to its absolute bottom speed of 1200RPM. A mouse making hand puppets makes more noise than that.
CPU temp increases 3C. Thats it. I gave CSS a go. I'm sure it was running slower. I couldn't tell visually but I was sure it must, given I was running at my stock 2000Mhz. But I got thinking, this whole power when you need it, quiet when you don't think isn't half bad!
So now, I have my fanspeeds set up to correspond with opening certain games, or with certain CPU temps, so that the motherboard will not speed them up unless they need to be. Its starting to rain, though now its getting sticky as well as hot. Mabe it will get better. 42C at 3:30AM now, means a hot day tommorow. Makes me happier that I don't own a Prescott. Thoughts? Comments? Tell us in the forums!
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