deagle: I apologize for over reacting. I guess I just strongly disagree with some of the information that was posted.
Stuff like this next statement simply isn't true.
the thermal throttling @ the G0 6600 Quad beginns ~ 83°C all Temps lower are fine
I decided to up my core voltage a little and I also disabled my CPU fan so I could create some heat and explore at what temperature thermal throttling really begins at. When thermal throttling is reached, the PROCHOT# bit in the processor gets set which software like RealTemp reads and displays. There are two separate bits set within the CPU. The Status bit shows you if thermal throttling is presently taking place and the History bit shows you if any thermal throttling has taken place since you started up.
In this first picture you can see that both core0 and core1 have reached the same maximum temperature of 93C. Core0 shows that it was the first to start thermal throttling.
In the second picture you can see that both core0 and core1 are presently throttling while the other two cores are still fine.
Picture 3 shows what happens during throttling. Intel Core processors drop the multiplier down to 6.0 which reduces the MHz. This helps to keep the CPU temperature under control and hopefully prevents it from reaching TjMax.
Picture 4 shows the next phase of thermal throttling. The processor has now reduced the VID. That's basically the processor telling the motherboard that it would like less voltage so it can try and control the heat it's producing. Because I am overclocking on an Asus board and I have manually set the core voltage, the motherboard has decided to ignore this request for less voltage and is still feeding the CPU 1.400 volts. The PROCHOT# Status bit continues to turn on and off which is keeping the temperature steady at 93C.
It's good to know that even when overclocked with extra core voltage that you can run your processor right up to TjMax and still be Prime stable. These things do a great job of taking care of themselves. The further you try to overclock, the more you'll need to reduce your core temperatures to remain Prime stable.
After I stopped running Prime and turned the CPU fan back on things returned to normal. The PROCHOT# History bits for core0 and core1 remain lit up until the next time it gets rebooted. During this test core2 and core3 never got hot enough to trigger thermal throttling. The two sets of Dual Cores within a Quad work independently so you can have situations where two cores are running at a slower speed while the other two cores are still running at full speed.
