what determins BIOS vcore voltages?

[\(\) |V| 3 G A]

hi,

what determins BIOS vcore voltage settings?
i HAD a 1.75v palomino core AMD chip on an asus a7v333 board which would go
upto 1.85/1.9v in the bios.

i have now moved to a thoroughbred-B 1.5v core AMD chip on another asus
a7n8x board. the most i can get is 1.75v. (0.25v upper limit)

now forgive if i`m worng, but wouldnt the bios give me some upper voltage
limit for if i was running a 1.75v chip? (possibly giving me 2.0v, if there
is a 0.25v addition for upper limit)

tim

 

[kony]

hi,

what determins BIOS vcore voltage settings?
i HAD a 1.75v palomino core AMD chip on an asus a7v333 board which would go
upto 1.85/1.9v in the bios.

i have now moved to a thoroughbred-B 1.5v core AMD chip on another asus
a7n8x board. the most i can get is 1.75v. (0.25v upper limit)

now forgive if i`m worng, but wouldnt the bios give me some upper voltage
limit for if i was running a 1.75v chip? (possibly giving me 2.0v, if there
is a 0.25v addition for upper limit)

tim

BIOS vcore settings are limited by what the manufacturer decides to
allow, with the maximum range being determined by the voltage
regulator controller. Your A7V333, as with many older Asus boards,
should have a jumpered mode that would allow up to 2.0V, IIRC, or you
could use a combination of jumpers and bios settings, having the
jumpers simply offset the "default", and the bios fine-tuning more
voltage.

Now as for the A7N8X, IIRC it's max vcore is 1.85V. To get up to
that, you may want to paint the CPU bridges together. Maybe it's not
that easy though, I seem to remember that some of the T'Bred-B 1.5V
had different contacts, harder to paint. Another option is
wire-wrapping some pins. A Google search should turn up a guide for
that. Any voltage over 1.85V may be possible by hacking at the
voltage regulator controller chip, you'd need to download that
datasheet from (ST Microelectronics?) so see which pins are default
for the CPU and which need pulled low to increase vcore futher....
it's a job requiring steady hands and a motherboard pulled out of the
case, a good soldering iron, etc.

BTW, "most" T'Bred-B 1.5V chips have very diminishing return beyond
1.8-1.85V, and not that much past 1.75V. If you're hitting near
~2.4GHz already, an increased voltage may not be worth the bother and
heat/noise. I do think it's a waste of time to shoot for excess of
1.85V unless you have a very good water-cooler.


Dave