i5 3570k - Always run 4 Cores

[hondaf17]

A month ago you all helped me decide to upgrade to an i5 3570k. Purchased with the AsRock Z77 Pro 4 Motherboard combo from Microcenter. Very happy with the upgrade.

I have no experience OCing Intel (always AMD previously).

On my Mobo I selected "auto overclock to 4.4 Ghz" and was done. This fluctuates the speed, core count and voltage as necessary based on load. I am fine if speed and voltage fluctuate (my temps stay nice and cool) but I always want it to be at 4 cores. I have Intel Extreme Tuning up on a separate monitor, and sometimes Planetside 2 will tell me I'm CPU constrained, and I'll look and see only 2 cores running at 4.4Ghz. Obviously 4 cores would help.

The OCing features in my BIOS are confusing. I've read a ton of forums on Toms Hardware and Overclockers and haven't found an answer. I'm sure it's something simple and I know a lot of people here have this chip so I'm looking forward to your feedback.

TYIA,

 

[ShintaiDK]

I havent tried Planetside 2 myself. But is there actually a load on the other cores? Else they will idle as unused. And upping their speed wont do anything.

 

[ChippyUK]

I have to agree, have you tried another game like Battlefield 3 which is very good for maximizing the use of your cores?

Btw, it looks like there are tons of posts on their forums about the game engine not making full use of their processor so this may remain unresolvable unless they improve it with a patch.

 

[inf64]

What's the status of your core parking? Can you check and see if it is enabled or disabled?

 

[Puppies04]

If a game is coded to use a maximum of 2 cores then it doesn't matter how many cores you throw at the problem. Ok a quad will enable background tasks such as windows or program updates to run without impacting your game very much but the only other option would be to increase the clockspeed of your CPU.

 

[BrightCandle]

PS2 only seems to use 2 cores, despite its whining in its frame rate monitor of being CPU limited. It could really do with more cores being used based on the size of battles but no it only uses 2 cores and regularly limits the performance well below an ideal FPS.

 

[Revolution 11]

Supposedly, PS2 benefits from higher graphics settings as more work is loaded onto the GPU.

 

[Torn Mind]

The general gist is that programs don't utilize extra cores unless properly programmed to do so.

 

[hondaf17]

Good thoughts guys. I'll fire up BF3 and see if it stays pegged at a constant 4 cores.

I have, however, seen it go to 4 cores before in PS2. What I was getting at is I'd rather force it to stay on 4 cores always, rather than trust Intel/CPU to know when it's necessary to go to 4 cores. That make sense?

 

[BrightCandle]

Good thoughts guys. I'll fire up BF3 and see if it stays pegged at a constant 4 cores.

I have, however, seen it go to 4 cores before in PS2. What I was getting at is I'd rather force it to stay on 4 cores always, rather than trust Intel/CPU to know when it's necessary to go to 4 cores. That make sense?

I have never seen ps2 use more than 2 of the 6 cores I have on offer and alas I have played a lot. Every time its complaining about CPU limits in the frames rate monitor it uses there is ~16% usage. It has the occasional spike for a thid but I think that is world loading.

Don't sweat it its working properly. In fact in general games won't max out all your cores, even those that are multi thread heavy like bf3. It isn't a problem with your computer is that games just can't utilise all the cores. Its a hard problem, we developers are working on it slowly. We likely will never crack it, too many problems are impossible to multi thread well.

 

[LoveMachine]

I have, however, seen it go to 4 cores before in PS2. What I was getting at is I'd rather force it to stay on 4 cores always, rather than trust Intel/CPU to know when it's necessary to go to 4 cores. That make sense?

Likely there was some other task going on in the background unrelated to the game that was loading the other cores. As others have mentioned, if the application isn't written properly, it won't be able to utilize the entire processor, and there isn't a way to outsmart this with BIOS settings, etc.

 

[LoveMachine]

Also, if you load the CPU with a stress test (IBT or Prime95) or multicore-aware program like handbrake, do all four cores go to 100%? If so, its a PS2 issue, and there isn't anything you can do.

 

[2is]

Good thoughts guys. I'll fire up BF3 and see if it stays pegged at a constant 4 cores.

I have, however, seen it go to 4 cores before in PS2. What I was getting at is I'd rather force it to stay on 4 cores always, rather than trust Intel/CPU to know when it's necessary to go to 4 cores. That make sense?

No, you haven't... What you've seen is the windows task scheduler at work which makes it appear like it's using all 4 cores, at the same time. Unless you see your total CPU usage well above 75%, you aren't utilizing all 4 cores.

And btw, just becase you aren't seeing ALL cores to 100% doesn't mean anything really. BF3 can certainly use all 4 cores, but if you run into a GPU bottleneck before a CPU bottleneck, you won't see all 4 pegged at 100% not to mention CPU loads fluctuate all the time in games.

 

[lyssword]

in "power options" (search for that in start menu/control panel) did you set "performance" mode?

 

[hondaf17]

You're right guys. When playing PS2 I sometimes see it go to 3 cores, and I will assume that is b/c of a background task (Ventrilo, hardware monitoring, etc). Haven't seen it go to 4, although I could've swore I did before.

I'll check out BF3 tomorrow.

Interesting though on my old AMD platform I could disable cool n quiet and just tell it to run all 4 cores at a certain multiplier, which it would always do. Can't do that on Intel? Or is the Intel program just telling me that PS2 is only utilizing 2 of the cores?

 

[2is]

You can't tell a program to run on 4 cores if it doesn't support 4 cores, doesn't matter what brand processor you have. By default, programs have access to all the CPU cores unless you set the affinity otherwise. Having access to and taking advantage of are two different things though.

 

[Red Hawk]

You're right guys. When playing PS2 I sometimes see it go to 3 cores, and I will assume that is b/c of a background task (Ventrilo, hardware monitoring, etc). Haven't seen it go to 4, although I could've swore I did before.

I'll check out BF3 tomorrow.

Interesting though on my old AMD platform I could disable cool n quiet and just tell it to run all 4 cores at a certain multiplier, which it would always do. Can't do that on Intel? Or is the Intel program just telling me that PS2 is only utilizing 2 of the cores?

There is -- Intel's counterpart feature is Enhanced Intel SpeedStep, which you should be able to disable in the BIOS. But there's no benefit from it, only the downside of more noise, heat, and power consumption. If there's a high load that can be split between two or more cores, Windows automatically shifts it (and this is on Windows' hardware scheduler, not anything that can be set in the BIOS). When the BIOS detects that a core has a high load on it, it automatically increases the clock speed of the core to the set maximum multiplier.

The fact of the matter is that most games are not made to use more than two or three cores. It's something that has to be done at the programming level before the game is even released; if a game doesn't support multithreading, there is no magic switch anywhere in the PC settings that will suddenly allow it.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Nope, this is just a case of PS2 being very poorly optimized for more than 2 cores

My 3930K is ultimately no faster than my 3570K, which is not the case for games that can can truly push the 3570K to its limit.