Switching between "overclock" and "power saving" profiles

S

sethk

2[H]4U
Joined
May 3, 2005
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I'm looking for a motherboard - either a P45 or X48 - that can be easily switched on the fly, in windows, between a cool running, lower power 24/7 mode and a high performance overclocked mode for gaming and / or video editing / rendering.

I know that Gigabyte and ASUS both have power saving features, but I'm looking for something that will easily let me switch between fully tweaked OC modes with the best voltages (nothing so high that its unsafe for extended use), GTL, performance level settings, RAM timings and voltages, etc. and then be able to switch to low voltage, underclocked, cool running modes. CPU will probably be a Q9450 for now, but I may switch if I can't get the clocks I want, and once the Q9550 / 9650 drop in price a bit.

Budget is anywhere from 200-300. DDR2 is much preferred, mainly because I'll buy a triple channel kit when Nehalem launches towards the end of the year.

Suggestions?
 
I have a Q9450 and my Asus P5Q Pro can do mostly what you require. I run the EPU-Six Engine application which enables simple OCing through increasing only the FSB (stock vCore) as well as underclocking with a single button click. You can configure a few settings. I tweaked the turbo mode up 20% (slider bar) and it provides 3.2GHz (stock vCore) rock stable. I can’t go much farther with it before it crashes. I also tweaked the underclock way down (6x multiplier, 0.94 vCore, 1.7Ghz). Actually it’s kinda fun application to play around with.
 
Doesn't Speedstep work for you? My Q6600 runs either 2.2Ghz or 3.3Ghz depending on the load.
 
kirbyrj said:
Doesn't Speedstep work for you? My Q6600 runs either 2.2Ghz or 3.3Ghz depending on the load.
Click to expand...

Yes, it does by dropping the multiplier. But via the method I described above, it actually works in conjuction with SpeedStep. In OC, 8 multiplier and FSB at 400 = 3.2Ghz . At idle, SpeedStep drops the multiplier to 6 and with FSB at 400 = 2.4Ghz. Pretty cool.
 
Anyone with a Gigabyte board have any comments? I'd heard their software was pretty good with profiles - can it do what I want?
 
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