Introducing CPU-Z Validator V3

The standard validation is available from the “Validate” button, exactly as before. A name and email address are optional and are only required to create an account and manage your validations. In less than 10 seconds, a CPU-Z Validation V3 page will be displayed, showing the current health of your computer.

We worked for more than a year with several major support services and repair stores to add meaningful system analysis messages. They’re classified according to the usual Critical / Warning / Informational levels.

We cover more than 100 detection points, including, for example, outdated drivers, an overheating CPU or SSD, bloatware, various hardware issues, and much more.

Various tools are available to easily share the validation. Good ol’ screenshots and forum banners are still available.

The advanced validation is as simple as the standard validation for the user, but it requires much more time to complete, ranging from a couple of minutes to several hours. Advanced Validation is an in-depth diagnostic tool designed to identify hardware issues and check the health of your computer under heavy load. It includes much more complex workloads, along with error-detection engines targeting the CPU, RAM, and GPU.

Advanced Validation also includes a significantly extended benchmarking tool that not only covers CPU performance, as before, but also GPU, RAM, and storage performance. Enhanced sensor monitoring, based on HWMonitor, has also been added to display various live temperatures, frequencies, fan speeds, and more on the validation page.

The Advanced Validation engine has been developed entirely in-house using low-level code to remain lightweight yet powerful. This engine is already being used in production in repair stores and RMA centers, with tens of thousands of computers already tested. A sample report is available here.

The core feature of CPU-Z for overclocking is the validation of frequencies. 10+ years ago, measuring CPU frequency was quite simple. You just had to check the number of elapsed cycles vs a known timer, read the CPU registers for the current multiplier and you’re done.

Today, the situation is MUCH more complex. Any part of the CPU can potentially run at different, desynchronized frequencies. The base (input) clock is altered by numerous internal PLLs controlled by embedded power-management MCUs, which may boost or throttle frequencies, use ratios, “gears,” or various other obscure parameters, changing the final frequencies several times per second and at different rates. Tracking everything simultaneously has become extremely difficult.

In addition, memory overclocking has become increasingly important, and the current validation system was not originally designed to handle it properly. As a result, many overclocking attempts are rejected, and the reason is not always clearly explained. This is why we need a new approach.

With CPU-Z Validator V2, the only way to obtain a “validated” status is to use Standard Mode (5-sec load, one-shot measurement, all frequency data sources within 1%). Any drift in one parameter means the dump is rejected. The XOC Mode in V2 removes all load and most internal checks, which leads to the final “unsure” status.

On V3 XOC Mode, we will keep the load disabled, but this time we will calculate both the “effective” frequency (lowest top frequency reached across all data sources) and the “input” frequency. If the effective frequency is lower than the input frequency, the dump will still be validated but the real, effective frequency will be used as the final validated frequency.