i9900K and MCE

[deustroop]

I just popped a i9900K into a z390 board and out of the box the cpu runs all cores @ 5GHz at low load, ` 2%.. MCE is set to auto, which appears to be the same as Off. The only manual feature I have set is Dram freq.

When I set up a stress test ( cpu-Z, Intel Tuning), all core, and 100% use, all core freqs drop down to 4.7 and the power usage also declines eventually and stays within the TDP 90 W. I understand this is a stepping down to save power. My question is whether the 5GHz on all cores at low usage ( ~ 2%) is normal, and specifically, that all cores are in lock step ?

I can ""overclock" this cpu, if that is what's it called, by setting MCE to On. Then at 100% usage, the cpu does slightly over 5GHz on all cores permanently, with no power conservation. The watage is ~130w and package temps are 75-83c .

Why lock step for every freq. Is this overclocking normal as well ?

 

[Furious_Styles]

I personally would not recommend using MCE. And yes it's normal to drop all cores in stress tests like that. The bios will allow you to set per core or all core multipliers. There is also a negative offset option for AVX loads typically.

 

[deustroop]

Is there a problem using MCE ? Does it suffer in comparison to other ways of over clocking ?

 

[ondma]

Is there a problem using MCE ? Does it suffer in comparison to other ways of over clocking ?

Sometimes MCE sets the voltage higher than necessary.