davidk21770: The RealTemp calibration method is similar to your idea. My theory is to calibrate by running a Dual Core at 6x333 for 45nm or 6x266 for 65nm and drop the core voltage down to about 1.10 volts. If you are using an after market heatsink and turn your fan up to high and open your case, then your reported core temperature should be about 5C above your room temperature near your computer. If you are water cooled then you might get a degree better than that and if you have a quad then you can add a degree or two to that number. When water cooled you would compare to your water temperature instead of your air temperature.

This is not an exact science but if your sensors are not sticking then your reported temperatures should be very close to those numbers. You need to make sure you don't have a lot of background processes running during this test so your CPU can idle down to its lowest temperature. Task Manager should only be showing 0% to 1% CPU Usage.

If you use the RealTemp calibration feature then I think your reported temperatures will be pretty close to your core temperature from idle to TjMax but there's no easy way to 100% accurately measure the core temperature and prove this one way or the other. This type of calibration will also help reduce the amount of error due to TjMax not being an exact number.

Now I just need to convince people that calibrating isn't an option when you have a 45nm CPU. When surfing from forum to forum, it's very rare to see anyone using this feature. With 65nm, if TjMax is correct, then you'll probably be pretty close even without a calibration but 45nm CPUs are all over the place and you need to do something before trying to compare temperatures of them.