Suggestions for CPU upgrade

[erev_84]

Hello,

I want to upgrade my AMD Turion MK-36 CPU (1 core - 2ghz - 31 watt) and I would appreciaye it if you could advise me on which of the two CPUs below makes sense to choose.

AMD Tyler TL-66 TMDTL66HAX5DC (2 core - 2.3ghz - 35 watt)
AMD Tyler TL-60 TMDTL60HAX5DC (2 core - 2.0ghz - 31 watt)

- The advantage of TL-60 is that it consumes 4 Watt less energy than TL-66 (less heat will be released)

- On the other hand, the advantage of the TL-66 is that it is 300 MHz faster.

I am waiting for your suggestions

Thanks in advance

[Sml6397]

Hello again erev_84,

I would personally recommend going with the higher TDP (35 watt) CPU and then undervolting it.

Undervolting (unlike overclocking and overvolting) is a safe method of accomplishing a long list of gains: increased multicore performance at max load, less heat produced on average, longer CPU lifetime (due to lower temperatures), increased battery life (as the CPU is using less power).

You can use the program called ThrottleStop to undervolt your CPU. Before you upgrade the CPU though, I would confirm that this works on your current CPU. If it does, then your BIOS allows you to undervolt your CPU and you can do this on your new CPU.

Basically, when CPU's are manufactured at Intel/AMD/etc., there are billions of transistors that must be placed in the tiny area of the chip. The machines that handle the placement of all of these micro components is not perfect and the silicon used to create the chips settles differently each time - both resulting in physically different chips even for CPUs of the exact same model. These different chips have different voltage requirements to run without crashing. In order to compensate for this, CPU manufacturers dramatically oversupply voltage to the CPU to ensure that every single chip - no matter how it varies from the others - will run perfectly without ever crashing due to not enough voltage.

We consumers have the ability to test these voltage levels to see how far we can lower them without getting a Blue Screen of Death (the only possible negative consequence I have read about regarding undervolting).

I was able to reduce my notebook's CPU's voltage levels by 140 mV while still having a stable system. Due to the decreased heat production, the CPU can run all 6 cores at 100% at 3.35GHz-3.4GHz now instead of running them all at 3GHz. For reference, the CPU can run 1 single core at 4.5GHz for a short amount of time and just over 4GHz for a long amount of time. .4GHz * 6 cores = 2.4GHz more!

Here's a guide for using ThrottleStop: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/31385-th...top-guide/ . There are also some really good YouTube videos on it. You can also look up people's experience undervolting that particular model of CPU.