how to make AMD Turbo not suck?

[soccerballtux]

I can't for the life of me get my 8310 CPU to turbo more than 3.7ghz. Sometimes 4.3ghz pops up, but only rarely.

I just thought there would be some rhyme or reason to the turbo, such as something really simple and common sense that I can think of myself, like

• if CPU thermal temp is low, aggressively turbo modules
• if one core is heavily (over 95%) utilized, turbo that module to 4.3ghz
• see if you can fit all other processes on that module's 2nd core
• power gate/shut off other modules not in use
• if module utilization crosses 80%, fire up another module
• unless of course, a program requests separate modules
• if user requests "performance mode", load one core on each module first (0,2,4,6) before loading the second cores of module (1,3,5,7)
• some way to detect light to moderate usage (web browsing), vs gaming-- and try to keep the CPU at as low a frequency and voltage state as possible and just make use of threads to distribute the load to maintain responsiveness
• last of all, stay within 95w

I wonder why it doesn't do this?

Does anyone know any details about the module loading, scheduling, turboing?
Maybe I could go write a Linux hotplugging driver, that would probably make me better. Could I write a driver like PhenomMSRTweaker to handle it?

I can get around to overclocking, but if a proper turbo implementation would be sufficient.


original thread content

Intel has a piece of software, but if I recall AMD doesn't have a driver to move the frequency-bound process to the turbo'd cores.

For example, if you have one Chrome tab that's currently rendering something, it should go on a Turbo'd core/module, and all the other non-critical system processes should go other modules.

 

[Erenhardt]

Phenom2 doesn't have turbo.
They way I do this is by disabling turbo and setting CPU speed to Turbo speed ( + a bit more ). This way everything always run on turbo frequencies.

Doesn't windows take care of distributing workload across threads?

 

[ummduh]

I thought that was a design point of Window 8's new scheduler and whatnot.

 

[Zor Prime]

Phenom2 doesn't have turbo.

That isn't accurate.

 

[soccerballtux]

Phenom2 doesn't have turbo.
They way I do this is by disabling turbo and setting CPU speed to Turbo speed ( + a bit more ). This way everything always run on turbo frequencies.

Doesn't windows take care of distributing workload across threads?

I'm pursuing this for my upcoming 8310.

selling point of Windows 8 scheduling to different modules before loading the second core of the module.

personally I don't trust the turbo code section and want control. it tries to put everything onto a single turbo'd module. No!

 

[soccerballtux]

updated title, thread content with observations on turbo implementation in my FX-8310

 

[AtenRa]

Which motherboard are you using ?? some models lets you play with individual core frequency settings.

Also, Win 8 doesnt use the next module before they use the second thread of the module, not every time. Win 8 may park an entire module if it thinks it is better and use two threads in a single module.

 

[soccerballtux]

Which motherboard are you using ?? some models lets you play with individual core frequency settings.

Also, Win 8 doesnt use the next module before they use the second thread of the module, not every time. Win 8 may park an entire module if it thinks it is better and use two threads in a single module.

hm, that's interesting. Asus M5A97 R2.0. I don't believe I have that.

You could even do cool stuff like applying a "profiling" layer to software interactions, at the kernel/OS level, to aid use of the turbo feature; something akin to how branch predicition works-- "most of the time that block X of code runs [closing tab, rendering tab/process, etc], we use the CPU a lot-- so preemptively move threads and turbo"

 

[AtenRa]

Well i have that board, its nice.

What i have found so far with the FX cpus is that it is better to increase manually the CPU to higher frequency with default voltage turning OFF the turbo. This way you have higher performance with all cores and power usage doesnt go higher than with its default settings.

For example, better turn OFF turbo, then OC to 4GHz(lower or higher) with default voltage and enable every power saving setting even cool and quiet. You will find with Win 8 it will settle at 1.8GHz (if i remember correctly) and will go up if it needs more performance to 4GHz every time.

 

[Abwx]

Upload Fritzchess bench, you can select the number of cores and it s a heavy enough soft to load adequatly the CPU, try with a single thread and then two and so on, this will allow to check what is the frequency with one to 8 cores.

If you cant reach more than 3.7 with a single core then there s something that is going wrong but unfortunately i have no precise knowledge of this CPU bios, there s other people here, like Slowspyder, who could provide some accurate info.

 

[soccerballtux]

Upload Fritzchess bench, you can select the number of cores and it s a heavy enough soft to load adequatly the CPU, try with a single thread and then two and so on, this will allow to check what is the frequency with one to 8 cores.

If you cant reach more than 3.7 with a single core then there s something that is going wrong but unfortunately i have no precise knowledge of this CPU bios, there s other people here, like Slowspyder, who could provide some accurate info.

Yeah, I did that with Prime95 using just one thread, then 2, etc.

I believe Anandtech looked into this and basically determined "AMD Turbo has no rhyme or reason, we're not sure what it does, and we're not sure why, but it's there"

 

[Abwx]

Prime 95 will load the CPU 20-25% more than any other application, not sure that it s the best soft to test the CPU on the first tries, eventualy when everything is working accordingly.

Btw, what are the voltages at stock and under load.?.

 

[rancherlee]

Just crank the whole processor up to 4.0-4.1, should even be able to undervolt to 1.25v at those speeds and disable the turbo.

 

[soccerballtux]

but....that's not what I want...

 

[rancherlee]

but....that's not what I want...

You asked how to fix it! In all seriousness the 95w tdp 8 core chips severely cut back on "peak" turbo values to maintain the 95w TDP. Even my 125w 8320 didn't hit its peak 4.0 all that often, more than 2 cores dropped it to 3.7 and more than 4 used dropped to base clock. I tried several ways of adjusting the turbo use and frequencies and it easier to crank up the base clock and reduce the voltage to find a happy medium. 4.0-4.1 undervolted to 1.25 is going to use about the same power as the 3.3 base at stock 1.35v. Just trying to save you a headache as the AMD turbo is frustrating.

 

[soccerballtux]

Btw, what are the voltages at stock and under load.?.

it's hard to be certain about the voltages, they bounce around a lot and not always depending on the frequency-- more intelligent than that-- higher voltage for many heavily loaded cores, lower voltage for fewer loaded cores

 

[SlowSpyder]

If I get a chance I'll investigate this on my FX a little this weekend. I never really played around too much with turbo. My original plan with this CPU was to clock three modules moderately high and have one turbo module clocked to the stratosphere. Like you, it didn't seem to kick in as much as I thought so I switched gears (overclocked everything) and didn't look back. But, I'm curious myself, I'd like to see if I mess around with it and run some benches to see how that compares... hopefully I can get it to do what I want. I've made it into Windows at 5.5GHz+ with three modules disabled.

 

[Erenhardt]

If I get a chance I'll investigate this on my FX a little this weekend. I never really played around too much with turbo. My original plan with this CPU was to clock three modules moderately high and have one turbo module clocked to the stratosphere. Like you, it didn't seem to kick in as much as I thought so I switched gears (overclocked everything) and didn't look back. But, I'm curious myself, I'd like to see if I mess around with it and run some benches to see how that compares... hopefully I can get it to do what I want. I've made it into Windows at 5.5GHz+ with three modules disabled.

Would love to see benches for that turbo

soccerballtux, how can you live with 675000 RPM fan?!

 

[soccerballtux]

Would love to see benches for that turbo

soccerballtux, how can you live with 675000 RPM fan?!

it keeps the bigger electrons more comfortable

 

[daveybrat]

Phenom2 doesn't have turbo.
They way I do this is by disabling turbo and setting CPU speed to Turbo speed ( + a bit more ). This way everything always run on turbo frequencies.

Doesn't windows take care of distributing workload across threads?

My Phenom II 960T has a stock speed of 3.0GHz and 3.4GHz Turbo. (granted i disabled the turbo feature and simply clocked it at 3.5GHz instead)

On the flip side, my new 4690K that i run at stock has a base speed of 3.5GHz but seems to want to run between 3.7-3.8GHz Turbo most of the time.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I should mention that my Llano based laptop happily runs turbo frequencies regularly. It's been a while since I tried, but my FX didn't seem too impressive with the turbo as I mentioned earlier.

 

[Jovec]

AMD's turbo implementation is... not elegant. You will most likely reach turbo speeds (or even turbo +1/2) via manual OC using less voltage than turbo uses.

 

[soccerballtux]

AMD's turbo implementation is... not elegant. You will most likely reach turbo speeds (or even turbo +1/2) via manual OC using less voltage than turbo uses.

between fresh format and 8 cores and 16GB RAM it's super quick; I think I'll bother with overclocking later.

What I really want is full hotplugging and governor control; but for that I need linux, and that's just not going to happen...

 

[DrMrLordX]

cpufreq-utils ftw! Right.

fwiw, my 7700k just doesn't turbo, period. Or at least not that I can identify.

Under the current UEFI rev, the "stock" vcore (if you can call it that) is ~1.212v, and I can get the thing stable at 4 ghz at that voltage, so to heck with turbo. I just lock all the cores at that speed with cpufreq-utils and let it ride. For whatever reason, auto voltage sets vcore to ~1.328v which is just silly.

 

[soccerballtux]

cpufreq-utils ftw! Right.

fwiw, my 7700k just doesn't turbo, period. Or at least not that I can identify.

Under the current UEFI rev, the "stock" vcore (if you can call it that) is ~1.212v, and I can get the thing stable at 4 ghz at that voltage, so to heck with turbo. I just lock all the cores at that speed with cpufreq-utils and let it ride. For whatever reason, auto voltage sets vcore to ~1.328v which is just silly.

run the windows experience index benchmark tool and watch the frequency in HWInfo64.exe. Windows will lock a thread to a core and crank the turbo to the max speed (in my case 4.3ghz) for the duration of the turbo. Cheating. Hrmph!

Which, btw, is 1.413v (1.38v in cpu-z) for me