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At what CPU usage % does the overclock set in?

FalseChristian

FalseChristian

Diamond Member
I have a i5 2500K Overclocked to 5GHz (50/100, Maximum is 57x100). When idle CPUZ reports the CPU only running at 1.6GHz (16x100). Now, this is not a problem for me when I'm surfing the Internet or playing FreeCell but when I'm playing a game I want that 5GHz!

Thank you.
 
Clock speed will go up as your system requires for whatever tasks you have running. Idling, or browsing the net don't really demand much so it clocks down to stay cooler, and use less power.

On some games you may not get 5Ghz simply because your machine doesn't need it. Especially if your GPU is the bottleneck.
 
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You can change the base clock to whatever you need I'm pretty sure. I know my Asus board in sig has the option to do it. It's in rma currently so not sure where in uEFI I saw it tho.

Think it is in Advanced > CPU configuration > CPU ratio <--- Looking at uEFI screenshot. No way for me to click it but I'm pretty sure it said something about the minimum the cpu would run at. ???

I'm not sure at what % of a load the cores ramp up at. Guess you'd have to try something and see.

If I monitor my cores and start IBT and pick 1 thread all cores ramp to my overclock in about 1/2 second or less as I'm not sure how fast the program polls the info.
 
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So I see many people with Radeon and Geforce cards, one would have to run a windowed game and CPU-Z in parallel? Maybe even compare how it scales to different resolutions...
CPU-Z will even show you your current frequency in the taskbar when minimized.
Also windows System Information will show current CPU-clock, but not update/poll it constantly.
277ghz.jpg
 
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So could anyone describe the CPU speed changes when running a game?
1. Do polygonal games always run at maximum frequency?
2. Are you ever able to see "Turbo" frequency with CPU-Z or other programs?
3. Are there any applications that not only poll but also plot the frequency over time (like the task-manager does with % usage)?
I'm dying to know.
 
know of fence said:
So could anyone describe the CPU speed changes when running a game?
1. Do polygonal games always run at maximum frequency?
2. Are you ever able to see "Turbo" frequency with CPU-Z or other programs?
3. Are there any applications that not only poll but also plot the frequency over time (like the task-manager does with % usage)?
I'm dying to know.
Click to expand...

1. If by maximum frequency you mean max turbo boost than no. For whatever reason it engages very rarely.
2. Yes, CPU-Z shows actual frequency at a given instant.
3. Sure for example Asus Doctor.
 
Lepton87 said:
1. If by maximum frequency you mean max turbo boost than no. For whatever reason it engages very rarely.
2. Yes, CPU-Z shows actual frequency at a given instant.
3. Sure for example Asus Doctor.
Click to expand...

Just like the term "boost" implies, the effect is temporary, I don't mean turbo-boost but rather the frequency that the CPU is sold with.
CPU-Z however shows the "stepping" frequency for all cores, while turbo actually boost single cores. I guess this is the main difference between clock-scaling (SpeedStep) and turbo boost.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any screenshots which show Asus Doctor, plotting the CPU clock.
I'm looking for stuff like AT uses, except in this case during video transcoding we are at max nominal CPU frequency at all times. While I'm interested to see a graph like that for any modern game.
fx8150turbocore.jpg


ThatsABigOne said:
Just turn off speed step.
Click to expand...
People do that for benchmarks sometimes, but it would be a very detrimental thing to do if one actually intends to use the PC. I am interested to see how EIST and Q'n'Q work during games. They work seamlessly and gradually during video playback, so much I was able to test myself.
 
OP, if you choose High performance in power options it will run at whatever your overclock is. Doesn't throttle down to 1600 anymore. When you are finished playing you can go back to balanced or power saver, whatever you use.
 
1. Turn off SpeedStep
2. Use ThrottleStop

I don't see the need to do it as you would most likely see zero gains. The only time that I had ever used ThrottleStop was when the C2E was overheating and thermal throttling kicked in during a game and reduces the speed to 700MHz if I recall correctly, caused a massive FPS drop. Never had to use TS anymore after I did some servicing to fix the overheating issue.
 
I turn off all power saving features like eist, speedstep, etc, when I overclock. That way, I'm running full speed all the time. :ninja:
 
RealTemp includes a nifty TurboBoost monitoring/logging utility, which gives you per-core frequencies and also gives you an averaged frequency unlike CPU-z which is instantaneous.
 
With Sandy Bridge, what is the most common way of overclocking? Is it disabling all power saving functions and running at max frequency, or is it just making max turbo boost available on 4C and bumping that up to 4.x GHz (is it possible to turbo boost on all 4 cores)?

It would be cool to use power saving functions but also have the CPU boost all cores during any load (e.g. gaming).
 
gramboh said:
(Is it possible to turbo boost on all 4 cores)?
It would be cool to use power saving functions but also have the CPU boost all cores during any load (e.g. gaming).
Click to expand...

It's possible to turbo boost on all cores, but the turbo boost will be 0.3 GHz (or 3 bins) lower than the boost of just one core, or 0.2 GHz lower than boosting 2 cores, or 0.1 GHz lower than boosting 3 cores...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/3

This stuff complicates things for sure and it's easy to see why people disable those features, effectively negating almost 10 years of R&D. It's like returning today's radios to a state 60 years back when they had two twiddly knobs for volume (voltage) and frequency.

Luckily SB has just one base frequency, but Sandy Bridge E has 100MHz, 125MHz, 166MHz and 250MHz as base clock, which makes things even more complicated.

Just like hobby electronics slowly faded away from the mainstream as the stuff got more dense so will OC. Even though with the power saving features enabled OC makes sense for the first time, where it's not an irrational power for performance trade-off any more.
 
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Can anyone point me to a good generic SB overclocking guide (that explains implications of the various power saving functions when overclocking SB)? Going to read up for my IB build.
 
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