Looking 4 underclocking/undervolting options by EDITING BIOS

Lope · Post by **Lope** » Fri May 14, 2010 4:16 am

I just thought I would throw this concept out there. Underclocking/Undervolting is not popular and so motherboard manufacturers don't advertise motherboard's underclocking abilities.
Also they are just crap at documenting their BIOS options in their manuals.

I wanted to see if the MSI G31TM-P25 (gigabit lan) motherboard has underclocking/undervolting options. Because the manual doesn't go into detail.

I had an idea to edit the BIOS. It uses an AMI BIOS. There are various utilities for editing different kinds of BIOSes.
The old AMI BIOS editors allow you to emulate the BIOS (actually simulate it inside windows) But unfortunately the current BIOS for the MSI board will only open on the 3.x AMI editors.

I could not find any details by looking at any of the stuff presented.

Anyone have anything to add?

KayDat · Post by **KayDat** » Fri May 14, 2010 8:41 am

Most modern CPUs automatically underclock themselves when under light loads. What are you running atm?

Lope · Post by **Lope** » Sat May 15, 2010 1:30 am

still deciding what to buy...
/viewtopic.php?t=58799&start=0&postdays ... highlight=

KayDat · Post by **KayDat** » Sun May 16, 2010 5:06 am

Also, what OS will you be running? I know in Win7, you can actually limit your processor speed (depending on hardware support of course). You can see your processors maximum frequency in percentage under Resource Monitor, and you can limit the maximum frequency in power profiles under Power Options->Advanced settings->Processor power management. Of course, this is just a percentage out of 100, with 100 running at stock and minimum would be however low your CPU can underclock itself. The underclocks probably won't be a smoth line/curve either; mine jumps in ~20-30% steps.

theycallmebruce · Post by **theycallmebruce** » Sun May 16, 2010 9:59 pm

Lope, I'm very interested to find out what you learn about editing the BIOS.

However, I would recommend looking at Gigabyte motherboards, which commonly allow you to undervolt your components. IMHO it's worth paying a few extra dollars for the features you want.