What leads the clock to stop?
What leads the clock to stop?
FX temperatures are straightforward to grasp, provided you ignore any fixed ideas about temperature as a strict figure. The actual maximum temperature of the FX cores, as determined by specially altered AMD samples, is 63°C. These adjustments weren't included in the final production chips, which means FX units can't display real-time readings.
This led AMD to create Overdrive as a solution. It's not a temperature measurement but a metric indicating how close the CPU is to its maximum capacity. It's calculated from factors like load, voltage, socket temperature, current draw, and more—processed through an algorithm. A value of 40 signifies proximity to the limit; adding load can lower it, while exceeding certain thresholds signals overheating. If it drops below 10, the CPU is running hot, and hitting zero means it's at thermal saturation. So the acceptable range is typically around 40 to 0 degrees.
In past discussions, people often reported idle temperatures of 18°C, but under full load they'd be around -20°C. This suggests their idle performance would match an Intel chip near 60°C and full load near 115°C. Many ask why throttling occurs, but with FX, temperature isn't a fixed number—it's a range that reflects performance limits.