Dear HWBOT community,

I’m Sam (aka Doc TB) and I’m in charge for the online side of CPU-Z.

After many internal discussions with fellow overclockers we would like to share our plans for the future of the CPU-Z Validator before the public release. It’s important for us to present these changes to the community first and collect early feedback from the people who use the platform the most.

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. Easy.

Today, the situation is much more complex. Almost every part of the CPU can potentially run on a different, desynchronized clock. The base frequency can be affected by numerous internal PLLs, while embedded MCUs may boost or throttle frequencies, ratios, “gears,” or other internal parameters several times per second, at different rates. This has become extremely difficult to track accurately, especially now that both Intel and AMD can update their internal power-management MCUs through microcode or firmware updates.

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.

3 validation modes

With CPU-Z Validator V3, our goal is to preserve the overclocking DNA of CPU-Z while expanding its usefulness to a wider audience. Overclockers will still be able to validate and share results, while less experienced users will gain a clearer understanding of their system and any potential issues. In addition to current validation, V3 will introduce a new component analysis feature designed to help users understand what could be wrong with their PC. The idea is to provide a simple and accessible way to highlight possible issues, inconsistencies, or suspicious configurations based on the detected hardware

The V3 will have 3 validation modes: standard, advanced and XOC. All will be able to achieve the “validated” (or “healthy”) status. Standard Mode will load the CPU as it does today, with a 5 second monitoring test (default mode). We will also introduce an advanced test suite (betatesting in progress), with much more complex loads with various error-detection capabilities, that can take from some minutes to several hours.

I won’t go into further detail about the mainstream-oriented features here, as they are probably not the main focus for most of you. Instead, I would like to focus on the parts that matter most to the HWBOT and overclocking community: validation, result integrity, and how CPU-Z Validator V3 can continue to support competitive overclocking in the best possible way.

New dedicated XOC mode for overclocking

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 effective frequency will be used as the final validated frequency.

Let’s take a real work example. If you get 9130 MHz as input frequency and 9020 MHz “effective” frequency, the V2 will reject while the V3 will validate it at 9020 MHz. This is an important improvement, especially for memory overclocking. A discrepancy in CPU frequency will no longer automatically reject a dump that is primarily focused on memory frequency.

Various improvements and changes

Another major improvement is the validation workflow itself. To avoid the need to spam F7, save many CVF files, and manually submit them one by one, V3 validation will run a batch of fast measurements instead. The current plan is to perform between 5 and 10 measurements over a 5 second period, although the exact values are still to be determined. Only the highest valid value reached during that batch will be kept. This is a significant change compared to the one-shot measurement system used in V2.

Here is some additional details about the V3:

·         Validation V2 (V2.15+) will still accept validations for 60 days after the V3 is released. Then the V2 database will switch to read only.

·         The V3 release date is planned for July. This will include the standard and XOC modes. Advanced Mode will be available later, probably around September.

·         A beta version is available now. All dumps submitted using the beta version will be removed when the official version is released.

·         With the new V3 XOC Mode, we will be able to measure how long a given frequency was sustained. As requested, we may display this information at some point, for example: “9130 MHz reached for 800 ms.”

·         Offline validation will still be possible.

At this stage, nothing is final. We are sharing this direction early because your feedback matters. The HWBOT community has years of experience with competitive overclocking, validation rules, edge cases, and real-world hardware behavior, and we want to make sure the next version of the Validator reflects those needs as much as possible.

Here is a link to a beta version: https://download.cpuid.com/betas/cpuz.3.00_2026062201.zip

I’ll be happy to read any feedback or questions regarding the new CPU-Z Validator V3!

PS: I would like to thank everyone who has already helped us with V3, as well as everyone who will help us in the future.

Question, will 3.0 work with retro Hardware such as K7, or will we still have to use vintage version?

6 minutes ago, Mr.Scott said:

Question, will 3.0 work with retro Hardware such as K7, or will we still have to use vintage version?

I guess let's test the beta too and see if we find any issues :)

Will vintage CPUz still validate and if so, can we please expand it to k8 and socket 775/771 CPUs?

Thank you very much for releasing new versions

The problems that are mentioned are reasonably solved.
This however is hammering the older platforms, when going for max OC. With the release of newer versions, the old, lighter CPUz are getting pushed out of use and the combo of old gear and new software is sometimes very non functional or results in system freezups.
So I'd suggest the options to be added:
3.0 software with validation option for say 2.14 or simply keep old cpuz being able to valid.
The vintage versions could also be expanded.

I would also like an internal cpuz option, to read the saved cvf file or upload saved one (or whole batch) from software.

Thank you

36 minutes ago, Mr.Scott said:

Question, will 3.0 work with retro Hardware such as K7, or will we still have to use vintage version?

First, I’m a retro-computing enthusiast (check x86.fr !) so I care deeply about vintage hardware. Franck does as well.

Unfortunately, it is now technically impossible to support very old versions of Windows in a single executable. CPU-Z is currently compiled with Visual Studio 2008 in order to support every Windows version from Windows XP to 11. However, this compiler is almost two decades old, has not been supported by Microsoft for a long time, and cannot access modern features such as recent instruction sets (eg: AVX).

Current supported versions of Visual Studio, such as Visual Studio 2022+, are now limited to Windows 10 and newer. As a result, support for older operating systems in the main CPU-Z binary will eventually have to be dropped.

To summarize:

• The initial CPU-Z 3.00 release will support Windows XP through 11. It will include access to Standard/XOC Mode and the ability to submit validations to the new Validator V3.

• Extended Mode, which provides advanced system validation, will be available only on Windows 10 and newer. This is because it has been built from scratch using a modern toolchain.

• Support for older OS, meaning pre-Windows 10 versions, will be dropped at some point in a later revision (3.10?).

• Nothing has been decided yet, but I think the best solution would be to allow validation on the vintage version, while restricting it to vintage hardware (Up to Haswell).

Tested the 3.0 beta, only issue I found is that inserted name does not show up on the validatie website page. Bdw, the new webpage layout looks really nice!
3.0 Beta:
Dump [t3acacsi] Submitted by Anonymous - 2026-06-22 21:21:07
On the old version:
Dump [ihzr2k] - Submitted by Server075 - 2026-06-22 23:25:27

Interesting informations.

Like some other users already said; my most important point would be about retro/legacy hardware.
Not only the support, but the validation, like in the old days, where you got very unstable frequencies still validated, like 8GHz Celerons and stuff like that.
And if the validation gets even more stressful/complicated (for example 478, 775, 939, ...), there will be at some point no way to outbid old records (from the late 2000s).

I would also suggest, like an user above said, that it could depend on the platform/hardware how the validation is taken or even different versions.

30 minutes ago, server075 said:

Tested the 3.0 beta, only issue I found is that inserted name does not show up on the validatie website page. Bdw, the new webpage layout looks really nice!
3.0 Beta:
Dump [t3acacsi] Submitted by Anonymous - 2026-06-22 21:21:07
On the old version:
Dump [ihzr2k] - Submitted by Server075 - 2026-06-22 23:25:27

Fixed ;)

41 minutes ago, Doc TB said:

First, I’m a retro-computing enthusiast (check x86.fr !) so I care deeply about vintage hardware. Franck does as well.

Unfortunately, it is now technically impossible to support very old versions of Windows in a single executable. CPU-Z is currently compiled with Visual Studio 2008 in order to support every Windows version from Windows XP to 11. However, this compiler is almost two decades old, has not been supported by Microsoft for a long time, and cannot access modern features such as recent instruction sets (eg: AVX).

Current supported versions of Visual Studio, such as Visual Studio 2022+, are now limited to Windows 10 and newer. As a result, support for older operating systems in the main CPU-Z binary will eventually have to be dropped.

To summarize:

• The initial CPU-Z 3.00 release will support Windows XP through 11. It will include access to Standard/XOC Mode and the ability to submit validations to the new Validator V3.

• Extended Mode, which provides advanced system validation, will be available only on Windows 10 and newer. This is because it has been built from scratch using a modern toolchain.

• Support for older OS, meaning pre-Windows 10 versions, will be dropped at some point in a later revision (3.10?).

• Nothing has been decided yet, but I think the best solution would be to allow validation on the vintage version, while restricting it to vintage hardware (Up to Haswell).

While it causes me physical pain to refer to Haswell as "vintage" (gosh I am getting old), I really like the solution of expanding vintage to include more platforms. This move would keep a huge part of the community happy.

19 minutes ago, mrmouse said:

Not only the support, but the validation, like in the old days, where you got very unstable frequencies still validated, like 8GHz Celerons and stuff like that.
And if the validation gets even more stressful/complicated (for example 478, 775, 939, ...), there will be at some point no way to outbid old records (from the late 2000s).

This really deserves some confirmation on real-world hardware, but the XOC load on v3.00 is extremely light, probably lighter than any previous version.
Also, the frequency burst mode will greatly help to catch the exact moment where an unstable frequency reached its peak.

v3.00 may actually be too much "friendly" with extremely unstable platform. That's why I might add the exact duration of the reached frequency

Just a minor request, but would it be possible to have the validation file it saves when hitting F7 default to naming it with the decimal places of the frequency it's saving? So, instead of just having something like cpuz-4059.cvf, it might be cpuz-4059-71.cvf, or something, to indicate the decimal places as well. With some CPUs, trying to squeeze those last little bits of clock speed on a frequency validation, especially when it's fluctuating ever so slightly, would make it a little easier to know which fluctuation it's saving, rather than my current method of saving one, then renaming them before saving more and more that all have the "same" frequency, then needing to upload multiple files to see which one was actually the highest, particularly on platforms/CPUs with a max BCLK limit.

6 hours ago, Doc TB said:

but I think the best solution would be to allow validation on the vintage version, while restricting it to vintage hardware (Up to Haswell).

This sounds like a good solution. As K7 enthusiast i always struggle with CPU-Z versions newer than v1.59, as these tend to freeze the whole system upon load (usually at 15% loading). On a fresh win xp install it'll work, but soon (after a few crashes) "modern" CPU-Z v2.x will start to freeze the system during loading. Splitting the codebase into an old version vintage version which supports W98 up to XP and platforms up to "natively xp-compatible" aka Sandy/Ivy/Haswell sounds like a great idea. Besides bugfixing there shouldn't be any "new" hardware to add anyways.

So yes, go ahead - sounds like a great plan going forward for both, current platforms and vintage.

2 hours ago, yee245 said:

Just a minor request, but would it be possible to have the validation file it saves when hitting F7 default to naming it with the decimal places of the frequency it's saving? So, instead of just having something like cpuz-4059.cvf, it might be cpuz-4059-71.cvf, or something, to indicate the decimal places as well.

Or even better: make it configurable in cpu-z.ini...

Moving forward and evolving is always good.

Just find a way to keep old hardware alive , by having a tool we can use with no problems.

7 hours ago, yee245 said:

Just a minor request, but would it be possible to have the validation file it saves when hitting F7 default to naming it with the decimal places of the frequency it's saving? So, instead of just having something like cpuz-4059.cvf, it might be cpuz-4059-71.cvf, or something, to indicate the decimal places as well. With some CPUs, trying to squeeze those last little bits of clock speed on a frequency validation, especially when it's fluctuating ever so slightly, would make it a little easier to know which fluctuation it's saving, rather than my current method of saving one, then renaming them before saving more and more that all have the "same" frequency, then needing to upload multiple files to see which one was actually the highest, particularly on platforms/CPUs with a max BCLK limit.

I’m afraid that would be meaningless with V3, because the final displayed frequency may be adjusted down on submission. By selection the highest clock from a set of measurements points, the new burst mode should remove the need to spam F7 to achieve the highest clock speed.

I tried normal validation and xoc validation, xoc validation seems to be very light i like it, this is great news for memory clock record!
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K @ 4600 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K @ 5400 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

Sam, thank you for showing on HWBot, it's nice we've been heard as some CPU-Z updates made our overclocking life harder.

Not about V3 but do you have any plans of making a search engine for CPU-Z validations like the HWBot database? Years ago I've used Google for this but when links changed from numbers to abstract symbols, it doesn't index them any more.

Hi,

Is the "new" vintage version available to test somewhere ? that way we can make sure everything is working as expected on this vintage version for older HW.

Thanks Doc

14 hours ago, Antinomy said:

Not about V3 but do you have any plans of making a search engine for CPU-Z validations like the HWBot database? Years ago I've used Google for this but when links changed from numbers to abstract symbols, it doesn't index them any more.

Google search is still a thing to find a random CPU or motherboard (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=13900KS%20site%3Avalid.x86.fr)

Regarding a true search engine, technically, that feature has already been implemented in V3, but it is currently available only to admins. Whether we will release it to the public has not yet been decided. The CPU-Z Validator database contains a bunch of engineering samples and unreleased products that have not been marked as private by their submitters...

On 6/22/2026 at 2:56 PM, Doc TB said:

Dear HWBOT community,

I’m Sam (aka Doc TB) and I’m in charge for the online side of CPU-Z.

After many internal discussions with fellow overclockers we would like to share our plans for the future of the CPU-Z Validator before the public release. It’s important for us to present these changes to the community first and collect early feedback from the people who use the platform the most.

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. Easy.

Today, the situation is much more complex. Almost every part of the CPU can potentially run on a different, desynchronized clock. The base frequency can be affected by numerous internal PLLs, while embedded MCUs may boost or throttle frequencies, ratios, “gears,” or other internal parameters several times per second, at different rates. This has become extremely difficult to track accurately, especially now that both Intel and AMD can update their internal power-management MCUs through microcode or firmware updates.

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.

3 validation modes

With CPU-Z Validator V3, our goal is to preserve the overclocking DNA of CPU-Z while expanding its usefulness to a wider audience. Overclockers will still be able to validate and share results, while less experienced users will gain a clearer understanding of their system and any potential issues. In addition to current validation, V3 will introduce a new component analysis feature designed to help users understand what could be wrong with their PC. The idea is to provide a simple and accessible way to highlight possible issues, inconsistencies, or suspicious configurations based on the detected hardware

The V3 will have 3 validation modes: standard, advanced and XOC. All will be able to achieve the “validated” (or “healthy”) status. Standard Mode will load the CPU as it does today, with a 5 second monitoring test (default mode). We will also introduce an advanced test suite (betatesting in progress), with much more complex loads with various error-detection capabilities, that can take from some minutes to several hours.

I won’t go into further detail about the mainstream-oriented features here, as they are probably not the main focus for most of you. Instead, I would like to focus on the parts that matter most to the HWBOT and overclocking community: validation, result integrity, and how CPU-Z Validator V3 can continue to support competitive overclocking in the best possible way.

New dedicated XOC mode for overclocking

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 effective frequency will be used as the final validated frequency.

Let’s take a real work example. If you get 9130 MHz as input frequency and 9020 MHz “effective” frequency, the V2 will reject while the V3 will validate it at 9020 MHz. This is an important improvement, especially for memory overclocking. A discrepancy in CPU frequency will no longer automatically reject a dump that is primarily focused on memory frequency.

Various improvements and changes

Another major improvement is the validation workflow itself. To avoid the need to spam F7, save many CVF files, and manually submit them one by one, V3 validation will run a batch of fast measurements instead. The current plan is to perform between 5 and 10 measurements over a 5 second period, although the exact values are still to be determined. Only the highest valid value reached during that batch will be kept. This is a significant change compared to the one-shot measurement system used in V2.

Here is some additional details about the V3:

·         Validation V2 (V2.15+) will still accept validations for 60 days after the V3 is released. Then the V2 database will switch to read only.

·         The V3 release date is planned for July. This will include the standard and XOC modes. Advanced Mode will be available later, probably around September.

·         A beta version is available now. All dumps submitted using the beta version will be removed when the official version is released.

·         With the new V3 XOC Mode, we will be able to measure how long a given frequency was sustained. As requested, we may display this information at some point, for example: “9130 MHz reached for 800 ms.”

·         Offline validation will still be possible.

At this stage, nothing is final. We are sharing this direction early because your feedback matters. The HWBOT community has years of experience with competitive overclocking, validation rules, edge cases, and real-world hardware behavior, and we want to make sure the next version of the Validator reflects those needs as much as possible.

Here is a link to a beta version: https://download.cpuid.com/betas/cpuz.3.00_2026062201.zip

I’ll be happy to read any feedback or questions regarding the new CPU-Z Validator V3!

PS: I would like to thank everyone who has already helped us with V3, as well as everyone who will help us in the future.

Hi! Jon here wanted to ask for some people Ive been discussing this update with a question.

Simply - can you make the window re-sizable? Like grab a corner expand and contract and maybe with changeabke font sizes?

Only way to validate without it running a full load test is xoc mode. so for all valids for frequency is xoc mode? is this going to be ok as i though xoc mode was not allowed at one point?

Xoc is allowed on version 3.0

Awesome! V3.0 seems really good on new platforms from quick testing only thing is the warnings on low ram frequency.. might make new benchers or people think something is wrong with there pc, also the older graphics driver warning.. also odd as some graphics drivers perform better with different drivers.. nit picking not complaining here lol. The valid webpage looks great btw! will be testing on older platforms soon. Great work all in all!

I see the beta is 64b only, there will be a 32b on it's release then?

On 7/1/2026 at 6:43 PM, Luger said:

Awesome! V3.0 seems really good on new platforms from quick testing only thing is the warnings on low ram frequency.. might make new benchers or people think something is wrong with there pc, also the older graphics driver warning.. also odd as some graphics drivers perform better with different drivers.. nit picking not complaining here lol. The valid webpage looks great btw! will be testing on older platforms soon. Great work all in all!

Absolutely, we're working with customer services to get their feedbacks and this will be tuned before release.