improving the idle power consumption of the CPU with Gigabyte motherboards

Yesterday I found a new option in the BIOS of my Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 motherboard that I my eyes had not caught before. It's called Dynamic VID. This option was greyed out for the entire time (maybe that was why I didn't bothered about it) and yesterday I found out what it does. Then I wanted to make use of it.

What you specify by DVID is an offset voltage value. But it works only when you set the CPU Vcore to "Normal". When you set the Vcore to "Normal", the BIOS will set the default VID of the CPU as the Vcore.   But if you use DVID, the BIOS will use the stock VID when the CPU is idle, and the VID + DVID offset when the CPU is loaded. This is beneficial only when you have overclocked your CPU (with all the power saving features turned ON) or when you want to undervolt your CPU.

For example, if the VID of your CPU under load is 1.200V, if you set a +0.100V of DVID offset, the Vcore when your CPU is under load will be 1.300V. 

Before enabling this setting in the BIOS, the Vcore was at 1.25V all the time, regardless of whether the CPU is at idle or loaded up. After using DVID option, now the voltage hovers between 0.98 ~ 1.25V. Victory!

Upgrading the fans for better airflow and silent operation

I bought three more fans for the PC, replacing the two Antec Tricool fans that came with the Antec 300 case + the Thermalright X-Silent fan that came with the Thermalright Mux-120 CPU cooler which was mounted on the side panel of the case as I installed a couple of Enermax T.B.Silence fans on the heatsink.

I experimented with the fan plan before I put the order for the new fans. I removed everything except the 4 Enermax T.B.Silence 120mm fans I already had.

1. One front in-take (the lower fan slot)

2. One read exhaust

3. One on the side panel pulling air in

4. One fan pulling air onto the CPU heatsink from the front

These are the temps of the CPU and Video card. (Ambient 24.7C)

Figure 1: idle temps of CPU and GPU.

AMD Video Converter missing in Catalyst 11.4?

I was looking for the video converter in the Catalyst Control Center with 11.4 driver, and could not find it. There was only one option to check or uncheck. “Enable Acceleration”. it said,

Your system includes a video converter that automatically converts video files when they are dragged and dropped onto a portable media player. You graphic hardware can be used to accelerate the conversion process.

That’s all. But I remember that there used to be a button to start the video converter. There was an application built into the CCC. But it looks like, it doesn’t come with the main driver package any longer. I do not know from which version onwards though.

So I went into the ATI driver download page and found out that, under optional downloads, it listed a something called “AMD Media Codec Package”. The description was this.

Previously known as the Avivo(TM) Package

  Package Includes:

  AMD Video Converter*

  Media codecs for transcoding applications

  *AMD Video Converter will only work with ATI Radeon HD 2000 and above