The Vector Kid

Overclockers far and wide were plagued in their youth by the phenomenon of setting a particular speed in their respective BIOSes, only to boot into windows and discover that their processors were running much, much slower than intended. They were subsequently told about the features of EIST, C1E and SpeedStep, and promptly instructed to disable them.

Being an overclocker for over a year, I've had plenty of time to experiment with these various settings. EIST I can live without, it just adds unnecessary multipliers and extra steps into the process. However, C1E is a feature that I've become quite attached to.

For those of you who don't really know what it does, C1E detects when your processor isn't under a whole lot of stress and lowers its multiplier (it probably touches the voltage as well, but my board's vDroop is so bad, I wouldn't notice). This means that if I set my machine to run at 450 x 8 = 3.6 GHz in the BIOS, then it will do so under load. When it's idle, however, my system will drop down to 450 x 6 = 2.7 GHz.

Why would I do this? Why would I ever want my rig to run slower than it possibly could? Simply because, it only happens when I'm not doing anything. I don't need 3.6 GHz to post on OCN or check my email, but I do need it when I'm benching. It helps keep my temperatures down, my power consumption lower, and my processor's life just a little longer.

So I ask of the OCN community, why all the hate for C1E? Why is it almost considered a requirement to disable it when you're overclocking? Does it affect stability for some, or do people just want their system to be running all-out, all the time? I'm interested to see the opinions on this one.

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afzsom

Hm?

In my experience, I was unable to maintain stability with these features enabled.

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Watercooling Loop: MCP655 Vario -> Black Ice GTX360 -> Stinger Diamond Max -> Heatkiller GPU-X² -> MicroRes

Best. Thread. Ever. || C1E/EIST/SpeedStep Fix || Undervolt and Overclock your CPU! || GPU-Z Benchmark Settings || GPU-Z Stock Settings || Lian Li Owner's Showcase || Lian Li Group

BountyHead

Well W/O disabling C1E my board doesn't like to boot when im OC'ed

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This is a portion of the conversation with my buddy about the PCI-Express power cable on his 1950PRO

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The Vector Kid

That's a great FAQ, but my results are backwards. EIST lowers vCore, and C1E lowers the multiplier on mine. Is this some kind of a mistake?

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jasoncho92

First of all, you live in Ithaca . Do you go to cornell or something? And for c1e and speedstep, people disable all of that just in case of instability. It can make a stable overclock unstable by lowering the multiplier and voltage. It automatically lowers it to a predetermined clock speed, and as you probably know, even the lower clocks could take some tweaking in order to get stable. So its just a precaution and people just dont like the idea of a low speed at any time

The Vector Kid

Yup, I go back to campus on Sunday. Now I'm confused though, with the exception of the 7x0i chipsets and their occasional FSB holes, I've never seen a lower clock cause more trouble than a higher one. Are you talking about a lower multiplier, or an actual lower FSB?

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vix

Once I have a stable overclock, I always re-enable C1E/EIST.

kpo6969

Same here

G|F.E.A.D|Killa

i keep that crap disabled cause i like to see my overclock without putting load on it lol

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I heard Ford is coming out with heated bumpers in 2010 so your hands don not get cold while pushing it.

spacegoast

Same here. I do initially so I know exactly what settings are being used. Sometimes it would throw me off when I would set it to 400x9 for 3.6ghz, then I check CPU-Z and I am idling at 2.1ghz or some thing like that. So I just disable it until it becomes more useful.

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