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Processor (CPU)

Supported CPUs

Argus Monitor supports monitoring CPU temperature, core frequencies, clock multipliers and power consumption for all modern Intel and AMD Desktop and Mobile processors:

Intel

  • Intel Core Ultra 200 Series
  • Intel Core Ultra 100 Series (Mobile)
  • Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 / i9 (1st Generation .. 14th Generation)
  • Intel Core / Core2 Series
  • Atom Series
  • Xeon Series
  • Pentium Dual-Core, Celeron Core, Celeron Dual-Core
  • Pentium 4, Pentium M, Pentium D, Celeron, Celeron D

AMD

  • Ryzen 1000 .. 9000 Series (Zen1 .. Zen5)
  • Ryzen Threadripper Series
  • Ryzen Epyc Series
  • Phenom, Phenom II
  • Athlon, Athlon II
  • Athlon XP / Athlon 64 / Duron / Sempron / Turion
  • Opteron Series
  • Fusion Series (APU)
  • FX Series

Turbo Boost / Turbo Core

With the introduction of Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs (the Intel Nehalem processor micro-architecture) Intel introduced a feature called Turbo Boost. With Turbo Boost the CPU is able to dynamically adjust its core frequency even beyond the normal base operating frequency, while observing power, temperature and current specification limits. Turbo Boost is activated, if the operating system requests the highest performance state of the processor. How many steps (multipliers) your processor can speed up depends on the exact type of the CPU and the number of processor cores active.

AMD has introduced a similar feature called Turbo Core beginning with the Phenom processor. There, the multipliers of the individual cores are also dynamically changed and frequencies above the standard frequency of the processor can be achieved when individual cores are loaded.

Another feature of modern processors is their ability to decrease the operating frequency of one or more of its cores to save power if there is 'nothing to do' for them.

Using Argus Monitor you are able to check if Turbo Boost is configured and working properly (it must be enabled in the BIOS settings of your mainboard). Additionally you can check if the power saving features enabling the processor to decrease the operating frequency of some of its cores are activated if one or more of the cores of your CPU are in an idle state.

Turboboost
Intel® Core i7-4790K processor running two cores in Turbo Boost mode

Temperature measurement on AMD CPUs

Temperature monitoring on current AMD processors differs from that on Intel CPUs in some ways:

  1. There is only one temperature sensor per CPU (not one per core), meaning there are no separate temperature measurement values available for each CPU core.
  2. CPUs before Ryzen: the temperature sensor does not read real physical CPU temperature, so that there can be a rather large temperature difference between the measured and real CPU temperature -- especially if the CPU is idle.
  3. Ryzen: The Ryzen Master software tool may interfere with the temperature measurements in Argus Monitor.

One temperature sensor per CPU (AMD CPUs before Ryzen)

Because of this limitation of AMD CPUs Argus Monitor only displays one temperature graph for all CPU cores; the overview tab shows all CPU cores having the same temperature.

Some other programs show separate graphs, one for each core. They might even differ by one or two degrees, but this is caused by different times these measurements were taken (sampled).

AMD Ryzen CPUs do have temperature sensors per core, but these can only be accessed via a highly proprietary interface (Ryzen SMU), which is not documented in public.

No direct reading of physical CPU temperature (AMD CPUs before Ryzen)

The value for the CPU temperature of the (digital) on-chip sensor does not equal any real physical temperature but is measured on an AMD specific scale. This was done to be able to provide more accurate values when the temperature is close to the thermal design limit of the processor and is used to throttle the CPU to prevent damage by overheating. Therefore reliable measurements for CPU idle states is not possible.

If the CPU is idle a more reliable reading can be obtained using the analog temperature sensor located in the CPU socket, but its reading is only available if the the mainboard contains an supported Super IO chip.

For users with AMD processors Argus Monitor provides the temperature of this sensor in the CPU temperature graph in the default configuration as well. For users with other processors -- or in case the correct temperature channel could not be detected automatically -- the option to display this temperature can be found in Settings/Mainboard.

K15 CPU temperature

The image above shows the CPU temperature graph for an AMD Bulldozer FX-6100 processor (codename K15). The blue line is the temperature of the on-chip temperature sensor, the red one shows the reading of the mainboard sensor in the CPU socket. The case temperature at the time of measurement was about 25 °C. There is a noticeable difference between the CPU socket temperature and the on-chip CPU temperature of approx. 20 degrees when the processor is idle, where the socket temperature of 30 °C delivers a much more realistic and plausible value.

After the CPU was put under load both temperatures rise -- with the internal on-chip CPU temperature reacting more rapidly -- and when temperatures reach higher values, the temperature difference decreases.

When the CPU is idle again both temperatures decrease and will after some time again asymptotically reach their idle values.

The website overclocker.net offers an AMD temperature information and guide, containing more detailed information and some comments by AMD employees concerning this issue.