Why is my CPU dropping to 1.6ghz even though high perf mode is enabled?

[BSim500]

It ran at 4ghz for 2+ years though, even when idle. Why would this change?

I've no idea beyond corrupted registry settings that cause Windows to think a 100% in Minimum Processor State is a default 5% (or maybe get the whole High Perf profile confused with Balanced or Power Saver), or an odd hardware glitch (may be related to your recent problems booting?) Or as John3850 said, 3rd party motherboard utilities can be "overly helpful" when it comes to modifying power profiles. If it isn't affecting performance though (ie, it's not doing something silly like locking it at 1.6Ghz under load), then personally I don't see it as a 'problem' as "High Perf" doesn't really boost CPU performance higher at all under load vs Balanced. Modern EIST v3.2 is not the "benchmark evil" that Ye Olde Speedstep v1 was back on the mobile Pentium 3/4's when it required a special driver to function under Windows 2000 (which came with a whole lot of performance / stability issues that are no longer relevant today...)

 

[Ketchup]

I've no idea beyond corrupted registry settings ...

This is a fresh OS install according to futurefields.

 

[BSim500]

This is a fresh OS install according to futurefields.

I really give up then. I guess what I'm saying is : a lot of people who previously responded and tried to assist him seemed to have drifted away when his "problem" morphed from a serious "Help! My PC is stuck at 1.6GHz even under load" to a mere personal triviality of "Now it runs at 4GHz under load but I still hate Speedstep", which I really don't see as a "problem" at all as long as it doesn't throttle down / lock it at 1.6GHz under load. Especially when his AMD drivers are doing exactly the same transparent "underclock/undervolt when idle" thing for his 7950 dGPU as Windows does for his i5-2500K without a similar irrational fear / complaint of "I don't like the way it's doing exactly what it's designed to do".

 

[unclewebb]

Is the contention that the BD PROCHOT feature is sending false positives? Because thermal throttling should not occur unless the CPU gets into a critical range which I thought was 98°C for the 2500K.

That's right. Normally a CPU will only drop down under load and start using the 16 multiplier if it reaches the thermal throttling temperature. The first couple of posts show that his CPU is not anywhere near the thermal throttling temperature so that is not the problem.

As Dufus mentioned, BD PROCHOT stands for bi-directional processor hot. This communication line going to the CPU allows other sensors on the motherboard to send a signal to the CPU to control the CPU speed. Even when the CPU is nowhere near the thermal throttling temperature, if this signal goes active, the CPU will be forced to immediately drop down to the 16 multiplier. Internally the CPU acts exactly the same as if it was thermal throttling.

This type of throttling is very common in the laptop community but it also happens on some desktop motherboards. When desktop users here about this they immediately assume it must be SpeedStep or C States or Windows power plan related.

When a sensor starts going bad, the CPU might work at full speed sometimes but other times it will randomly drop down to 1600 MHz and sometimes it might get stuck there. You can exit everything you were doing, your CPU can be completely idle in the High Performance Windows profile but the multiplier will be stuck at 16. Restarting the computer might snap the computer out of this or 5 minutes later after a sensor cools down might snap the computer out of this.

Anyway, ThrottleStop allows you to disable the BD PROCHOT signal path. This allows the CPU to continue running at full speed. The CPU will still thermal throttle if it ever gets too hot but disabling BD PROCHOT allows the CPU to ignore outside signals telling it to throttle.

If you go back and read the first few posts, futurefields did a good job of explaining what was going on.

futurefields - Using ThrottleStop, can you disable BD PROCHOT and post some pics of ThrottleStop while playing your game. When using the Windows High Performance profile with the Minimum processor state set to 100%, you should not see the multiplier dropping down to 16, ever, unless it is thermal throttling and you already showed that is not the problem.

 

[futurefields]

I really give up then. I guess what I'm saying is : a lot of people who previously responded and tried to assist him seemed to have drifted away when his "problem" morphed from a serious "Help! My PC is stuck at 1.6GHz even under load" to a mere personal triviality of "Now it runs at 4GHz under load but I still hate Speedstep", which I really don't see as a "problem" at all as long as it doesn't throttle down / lock it at 1.6GHz under load. Especially when his AMD drivers are doing exactly the same transparent "underclock/undervolt when idle" thing for his 7950 dGPU as Windows does for his i5-2500K without a similar irrational fear / complaint of "I don't like the way it's doing exactly what it's designed to do".

under Prime95 and Intel's XTU test it stays at 4ghz, yet under Passmark 8 cpu test it was fluctuating, and when I had Firefall MMO running in Windowed mode so I could see CPUZ it was also fluctuating.

 

[futurefields]

That's right. Normally a CPU will only drop down under load and start using the 16 multiplier if it reaches the thermal throttling temperature. The first couple of posts show that his CPU is not anywhere near the thermal throttling temperature so that is not the problem.

As Dufus mentioned, BD PROCHOT stands for bi-directional processor hot. This communication line going to the CPU allows other sensors on the motherboard to send a signal to the CPU to control the CPU speed. Even when the CPU is nowhere near the thermal throttling temperature, if this signal goes active, the CPU will be forced to immediately drop down to the 16 multiplier. Internally the CPU acts exactly the same as if it was thermal throttling.

This type of throttling is very common in the laptop community but it also happens on some desktop motherboards. When desktop users here about this they immediately assume it must be SpeedStep or C States or Windows power plan related.

When a sensor starts going bad, the CPU might work at full speed sometimes but other times it will randomly drop down to 1600 MHz and sometimes it might get stuck there. You can exit everything you were doing, your CPU can be completely idle in the High Performance Windows profile but the multiplier will be stuck at 16. Restarting the computer might snap the computer out of this or 5 minutes later after a sensor cools down might snap the computer out of this.

Anyway, ThrottleStop allows you to disable the BD PROCHOT signal path. This allows the CPU to continue running at full speed. The CPU will still thermal throttle if it ever gets too hot but disabling BD PROCHOT allows the CPU to ignore outside signals telling it to throttle.

If you go back and read the first few posts, futurefields did a good job of explaining what was going on.

futurefields - Using ThrottleStop, can you disable BD PROCHOT and post some pics of ThrottleStop while playing your game. When using the Windows High Performance profile with the Minimum processor state set to 100%, you should not see the multiplier dropping down to 16, ever, unless it is thermal throttling and you already showed that is not the problem.

Will Try these when I get home from work!

Thanks all,

 

[futurefields]

Are there any free utils that can give me an OSD of cpu clock speed, usage and temps while in a fullscreen game?

 

[BSim500]

Are there any free utils that can give me an OSD of cpu clock speed, usage and temps while in a fullscreen game?

MSI Afterburner / Rivatuner?

 

[futurefields]

Isnt Afterburner GPU only?

 

[BSim500]

Isnt Afterburner GPU only?

Isn't there a way of doing it via plugins?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html

Edit : Wouldn't it be easier to simply log CPU multipliers / clock speeds to a file? TMonitor (I suggested this earlier) can do this (right-click -> Logs -> Start recording). Then run your game for a couple of minutes. Then stop recording. Then review the log file (comma separated value file, so it'll open in Excel or other spreadsheet).

Edit 2 : For many games it's perfectly normal for the CPU to not be maxed out constantly at max multiplier if the game only loads each core 30-60% or so (or if the load on any 1 core is under 90%). Seeing it fluctuate between 3-4GHz is perfectly normal. Even less (eg, 1.6-3GHz) for older games. That's why video encoding / Prime is a far more reliable "multiplier under load" test than gaming (especially with VSync on).

 

[futurefields]

TMonitor sounds perfect! Will try out later.

 

[unclewebb]

TMonitor sounds perfect! Will try out later.

Do yourself a favor and avoid using TMonitor. Anyone that recommends this program has never properly tested it. TMonitor does not correctly report the CPU MHz for Core i or Core 2 CPUs when they are lightly loaded. The programmer's explanation didn't make any sense years ago and it makes even less sense now that CPU-Z has been updated.

http://i.imgur.com/2hWbgQ6.png

All 8 threads are independently reporting the exact same 34 multiplier while TMonitor claims the CPU is running with the 8 multiplier. Look at the CPU load that TMonitor is generating. That's ridiculous.

ThrottleStop can accurately log your CPU multiplier. Check off the Log File option, go play a game and when you are done, exit the game and then exit ThrottleStop. Beside the ThrottleStop.exe will be a folder called Logs and in there will be the log file data with today's date on it. Open the file and Copy and Paste the data to www.pastebin.com or upload the log file somewhere convenient so I can have a look.

Before you start logging data, go into the Options window and turn on GPU temperature monitoring. Having that data included in the log file can make it easier to determine what is causing this throttling.

Seeing it fluctuate between 3-4GHz is perfectly normal. Even less (eg, 1.6-3GHz) for older games.

That's not normal at all. Go play whatever old game you want to play and run a ThrottleStop log file. ThrottleStop follows the Intel recommended monitoring method for Core i CPUs. Some older monitoring apps used to do funny things like report the multiplier from cores that were idle in one of the C States. Intel does not recommend doing that. If you have a look at Intel XTU, you are not going to see the actual multiplier dropping down like that when using the Windows High Performance profile while playing a game unless something is wrong with your computer.

 

[BSim500]

That's not normal at all. Go play whatever old game you want to play and run a ThrottleStop log file. ThrottleStop follows the Intel recommended monitoring method for Core i CPUs. Some older monitoring apps used to do funny things like report the multiplier from cores that were idle in one of the C States. Intel does not recommend doing that. If you have a look at Intel XTU, you are not going to see the actual multiplier dropping down like that when using the Windows High Performance profile while playing a game unless something is wrong with your computer.

Sorry, I was talking in general on "Balanced", not on "High Performance". I should have clarified.

 

[john3850]

There is a program named ThrottleStop_600 that that is pretty cool to play it.
you can download at http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Utilities/ThrottleStop/

 

[futurefields]

guys, do I have ThrottleStop configured correctly? ALso, does it need to be configured to run on system startup? In order for the PROCHOT thing to work?

 

[futurefields]

I DID IT!!!!!

WOOOOOO

Gotta disable C1E, and C3 and C6

 

[Ketchup]

I DID IT!!!!!

WOOOOOO

Gotta disable C1E, and C3 and C6

Glad it is working. So are you going to settle with that for now?

 

[futurefields]

Yeah probably. I think its weird I have to flip some settings I didnt have to before, but at the same time I really dont want to rebuild a new system if this one is going to perform as it should now.

 

[Ketchup]

Yeah probably. I think its weird I have to flip some settings I didnt have to before, but at the same time I really dont want to rebuild a new system if this one is going to perform as it should now.

Never seen a board's idle states go haywire like that, but there will always be something new. Being full speed is better than being stuck on slow-poke though. If that's all that goes wrong, should last until you are ready to upgrade.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Never seen a board's idle states go haywire like that, but there will always be something new. Being full speed is better than being stuck on slow-poke though. If that's all that goes wrong, should last until you are ready to upgrade.

Ive seen settings in real Temp not let my CPU throttle up for some odd reason.............

 

[unclewebb]

PhIlLy ChEeSe - Most users don't realize that Turbo Boost needs to be enabled within the CPU so Intel's 2nd, 3rd and 4th Gen CPUs can run at full speed. Unfortunately Gigabyte created an option in their bios that gives users the impression that they can disable Turbo Boost and use a high multiplier instead. That is not how Intel CPUs work. For a high multiplier, the bios turns Turbo Boost back on in the background before you boot up. People are sure they have Turbo Boost disabled because they selected that in the bios but when they reach Windows, it is really back on. Make sure that Disable Turbo is not checked in RealTemp and you won't have any problems.

futurefields - With BD PROCHOT enabled, does your multiplier stay at 40 while gaming or while running Prime95? If you have to have BD PROCHOT disabled to maintain the full multiplier then you probably have a sensor on your board that has gone bad. With C1E, C3 and C6 disabled in the bios, you can enable SpeedStep - EIST in the bios and if you are using the Windows High Performance profile, your multiplier should stay at 40 regardless of load. The Windows Minimum processor state is what controls your CPU.

The AUTO setting in the bios for C States can mean anything. If you are not overclocking, AUTO usually means C States are enabled but as soon as you start overclocking, sometimes AUTO changes and it disables the C States. Sometimes this changes after a bios update. The C State panel in ThrottleStop lets you see exactly what core and package C States your CPU are using.

 

[futurefields]

I actually got rid of Throttlestop so I'm not sure what state BD PROCHOT is in. My multiplier is locked at 40 right now with C1E, C3 and C6 disabled.

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong - just having the cpu run at 4ghz all the time doesnt necessarily mean my CPU is going to draw a ton of power, as long as the load is low. There is a difference in power draw between 4ghz @ 1% load, and 4ghz @ 97% load yes?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong - just having the cpu run at 4ghz all the time doesnt necessarily mean my CPU is going to draw a ton of power, as long as the load is low. There is a difference in power draw between 4ghz @ 1% load, and 4ghz @ 97% load yes?

Subtle, but yes, there is a slight difference between idle and load, at the same vcore and frequency. If you wanted to save power though, allowing it to down-clock is much better.

 

[john3850]

I see you like ThrottleStop normally I just use the C1E in Real Temp.
I believe that auto oc may have change your settings.

 

[futurefields]

I'm not really worried about it at this point. Im guessing some sensor on my motherboard stopped working and so I have to disable C states. At this point im just prepared to ride this one till the wheels fall off, i even upped my overclock to 4.4 maybe ill push it to 4.8