Intel Speedstep for overclocking?

[Smoblikat]

So im overclocking and i dont know what to do for intel speedstep, usually i leave it on and C1E on and im running 5ghz @ 1.336v small FFT P95 running as i type this (linx later, i just wanted preliminary testing). but im not sure what either of them do, i thought that C1E lowered idle volts, and speedstep lowered idle clocks, but im sure im wrong. Please set me straight on this.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Intel® Speedstep® will clock the processor down to a lower level (on 2nd generation Intel Core™ processors to 1.6GHz) when it is idle. I don't that it effects the voltage at all but I could be wrong.

 

[Smoblikat]

Intel® Speedstep® will clock the processor down to a lower level (on 2nd generation Intel Core™ processors to 1.6GHz) when it is idle. I don't that it effects the voltage at all but I could be wrong.

Oh, so i was right. Then C1E must be voltage. Do you work for intel?

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Oh, so i was right. Then C1E must be voltage. Do you work for intel?

I believe so! He is a great contributor on this forum.

Thank you for your time on clarifying on many things, IntelEntusiast!

 

[Smoblikat]

I believe so! He is a great contributor on this forum.

Thank you for your time on clarifying on many things, IntelEntusiast!

Kewl, i didnt know real intel and AMD people visited this site.

 

[tweakboy]

Turning off SpeedStep is the first thing you should do if you want to OC your CPU.

If you dont OC your CPU then leave it on, wouldn't hurt, just go to lower frequency when idle.

 

[alfa147x]

Why not turn off SpeedStep while you OC when you're done turn it back on?

 

[tweakboy]

Why not turn off SpeedStep while you OC when you're done turn it back on?

Because its going to keep on reducing your CPU frequency by a lot. Then when you use CPU it goes up to OCed speed.

Why not use SpeedStep after the OC,, couple reasons

1. stability of your OC can possibly degrade
2. Your system is doing too much work, downclocking and upclocking. It doesnt reduce the CPU voltage so there is no point, your temps will be the same.
3. You want proper readings of your OC, and you will never know if its stable unless it runs at frequency consistenly. gl :whiste:

 

[Puppies04]

Because its going to keep on reducing your CPU frequency by a lot. Then when you use CPU it goes up to OCed speed.

Why not use SpeedStep after the OC,, couple reasons

1. stability of your OC can possibly degrade
2. Your system is doing too much work, downclocking and upclocking. It doesnt reduce the CPU voltage so there is no point, your temps will be the same.
3. You want proper readings of your OC, and you will never know if its stable unless it runs at frequency consistenly. gl :whiste:

I could write a long paragraph about why almost all of this is utter rubbish but I think it will suffice to say that my 4.6ghz OC is sat quite happily while I am writing this @ 1.6ghz putting 0.9v through the CPU. How you claim this can degrade the CPU compared to pumping 1.35+v constantly through it is beyond me. Any testing software will pump the CPU straight up to your max OC speed and you will get perfectly reliable stability data.

 

[Smoblikat]

Because its going to keep on reducing your CPU frequency by a lot. Then when you use CPU it goes up to OCed speed.

Why not use SpeedStep after the OC,, couple reasons

1. stability of your OC can possibly degrade
2. Your system is doing too much work, downclocking and upclocking. It doesnt reduce the CPU voltage so there is no point, your temps will be the same.
3. You want proper readings of your OC, and you will never know if its stable unless it runs at frequency consistenly. gl :whiste:

Thats where C1E comes into play, it reduces idle voltage, how does EIST degrade OC's? When i benchmark it returns back to its overclocked state, so could you please elaborate on how it will misread my clockrates?

I could write a long paragraph about why almost all of this is utter rubbish but I think it will suffice to say that my 4.6ghz OC is sat quite happily while I am writing this @ 1.6ghz putting 0.9v through the CPU. How you claim this can degrade the CPU compared to pumping 1.35+v constantly through it is beyond me. Any testing software will pump the CPU straight up to your max OC speed and you will get perfectly reliable stability data.

For now i agree with you.

 

[Spikesoldier]

from an old school OCing perspective, one should disable EIST to find the maximum frequency one can achieve on any given intel chip.

once a max OC has been determined, you can attempt to turn EIST back on to save power in idle scenarios. sometimes, however, this would introduce instability, which would cause you to sacrifice some of your OC to remain stable with EIST enabled.

personally, i have EIST disabled and run full frequency 24/7.

 

[toyota]

Thats where C1E comes into play, it reduces idle voltage, how does EIST degrade OC's? When i benchmark it returns back to its overclocked state, so could you please elaborate on how it will misread my clockrates?



For now i agree with you.

C1E does not lower the voltage at all for me. in fact it lowers the multi while leaving the voltage exactly I what I have it manually set at if I am overclocking. to be clear, even with EIST on my cpu will not downclock at idle unless I enable C1E too while overclocked. neither EIST or C1E does anything for voltage on my board.

 

[Smoblikat]

from an old school OCing perspective, one should disable EIST to find the maximum frequency one can achieve on any given intel chip.

once a max OC has been determined, you can attempt to turn EIST back on to save power in idle scenarios. sometimes, however, this would introduce instability, which would cause you to sacrifice some of your OC to remain stable with EIST enabled.

personally, i have EIST disabled and run full frequency 24/7.

So switching back and forth between full load and EIST load will cause instability? Do you think its effecting my OC? Im @ 5ghz 1.28v and i have EIST and C1E enabled.

 

[Puppies04]

C1E does not lower the voltage at all for me. in fact it lowers the multi while leaving the voltage exactly I what I have it manually set at if I am overclocking. to be clear, even with EIST on my cpu will not downclock at idle unless I enable C1E too while overclocked. neither EIST or C1E does anything for voltage on my board.

I presume that is because you have told the board to put that voltage through to the CPU at all trimes, i.e manual voltage. If you use offset voltage then your cpu would look up it's own required voltage at any given speed + or - whatever offset value you need to keep things stable I think mine is set at + 0.025 @ 4.6 and it is solid as a rock.

 

[toyota]

I presume that is because you have told the board to put that voltage through to the CPU at all trimes, i.e manual voltage. If you use offset voltage then your cpu would look up it's own required voltage at any given speed + or - whatever offset value you need to keep things stable I think mine is set at + 0.025 @ 4.6 and it is solid as a rock.

yeah this board has no offset options.

 

[Puppies04]

yeah this board has no offset options.

Yeah that kind of explains it then doesn't it

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Oh, so i was right. Then C1E must be voltage. Do you work for intel?

Yes I do work for Intel®. Officially my job is social media rep to the enthusiast space. I am not an engineer but I access to some of them for information. I have spent almost 8 years working in Intel. Most of the time today I spend try pass along good information here on the boards but at the same time I also work at passing up a lot of the concerns and feedback from people on all the boards that I post on. I also learn a lot from all the people on these boards; the level of knowledge here always amazes me.

Right now I try to watch and post on 7 different forums and read a lot of other technology sites. This is a full time job so unless there is a reason that I should be watching the forums during my off hours I may not see something posted at night or on the weekends if you think that I should see it please IM and I will try to follow up with it.

 

[Smoblikat]

Yes I do work for Intel®. Officially my job is social media rep to the enthusiast space. I am not an engineer but I access to some of them for information. I have spent almost 8 years working in Intel. Most of the time today I spend try pass along good information here on the boards but at the same time I also work at passing up a lot of the concerns and feedback from people on all the boards that I post on. I also learn a lot from all the people on these boards; the level of knowledge here always amazes me.

Right now I try to watch and post on 7 different forums and read a lot of other technology sites. This is a full time job so unless there is a reason that I should be watching the forums during my off hours I may not see something posted at night or on the weekends if you think that I should see it please IM and I will try to follow up with it.

Thats good to know, thank you. So coming from a rep, do you know what EIST and C1e specifically do? Is it nesscesary to have both at once or will C1e do everything that EIST will do?

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/2nd-gen-core-desktop-vol-1-datasheet.html

Page 46 Enhanced Intel® SpeedStep® Technology or (Eist)

The following are the key features of Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology:• Multiple frequency and voltage points for optimal performance and power efficiency. These operating points are known as P-states.• Frequency selection is software controlled by writing to processor MSRs. The voltage is optimized based on the selected frequency and the number of active processor cores.— If the target frequency is higher than the current frequency, VCC is ramped up in steps to an optimized voltage. This voltage is signaled by the SVID bus to the voltage regulator. Once the voltage is established, the PLL locks on to the target frequency.— If the target frequency is lower than the current frequency, the PLL locks to the target frequency, then transitions to a lower voltage by signaling the target voltage on SVID bus.— All active processor cores share the same frequency and voltage. In a multi-core processor, the highest frequency P-state requested amongst all active cores is selected.— Software-requested transitions are accepted at any time. If a previous transition is in progress, the new transition is deferred until the previous transition is completed.• The processor controls voltage ramp rates internally to ensure glitch-free transitions.• Because there is low transition latency between P-states, a significant number of transitions per-second are possible.

Page 49 C1e

Core C1/C1E StateC1/C1E is a low power state entered when all threads within a core execute a HLT or MWAIT(C1/C1E) instruction.A System Management Interrupt (SMI) handler returns execution to either Normal state or the C1/C1E state. See the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architecture Software Developer’s Manual, Volume 3A/3B: System Programmer’s Guide for more information.While a core is in C1/C1E state, it processes bus snoops and snoops from other threads. For more information on C1E, see “Package C1/C1E”

I am going to guess that based on this information that they work in conjunction with each other to help save power. Again a guess that I would have them both turned on or off. Most of the time I have a hard time on getting information from the engineers on anything to do with overclocking since we dont officially support it.

 

[Smoblikat]

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/2nd-gen-core-desktop-vol-1-datasheet.html

Page 46 Enhanced Intel® SpeedStep® Technology or (Eist)

The following are the key features of Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology:• Multiple frequency and voltage points for optimal performance and power efficiency. These operating points are known as P-states.• Frequency selection is software controlled by writing to processor MSRs. The voltage is optimized based on the selected frequency and the number of active processor cores.— If the target frequency is higher than the current frequency, VCC is ramped up in steps to an optimized voltage. This voltage is signaled by the SVID bus to the voltage regulator. Once the voltage is established, the PLL locks on to the target frequency.— If the target frequency is lower than the current frequency, the PLL locks to the target frequency, then transitions to a lower voltage by signaling the target voltage on SVID bus.— All active processor cores share the same frequency and voltage. In a multi-core processor, the highest frequency P-state requested amongst all active cores is selected.— Software-requested transitions are accepted at any time. If a previous transition is in progress, the new transition is deferred until the previous transition is completed.• The processor controls voltage ramp rates internally to ensure glitch-free transitions.• Because there is low transition latency between P-states, a significant number of transitions per-second are possible.

Page 49 C1e

Core C1/C1E StateC1/C1E is a low power state entered when all threads within a core execute a HLT or MWAIT(C1/C1E) instruction.A System Management Interrupt (SMI) handler returns execution to either Normal state or the C1/C1E state. See the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architecture Software Developer’s Manual, Volume 3A/3B: System Programmer’s Guide for more information.While a core is in C1/C1E state, it processes bus snoops and snoops from other threads. For more information on C1E, see “Package C1/C1E”

I am going to guess that based on this information that they work in conjunction with each other to help save power. Again a guess that I would have them both turned on or off. Most of the time I have a hard time on getting information from the engineers on anything to do with overclocking since we dont officially support it.

Thanks, from what i could understand it looks like they are similar and work well in unison. , really? Intel doesnt officially support overclocking? Then why do they make extreme edition and k series processors?

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

There is a big difference between supporting overclocking where we'll warranty the processor even if you fry it by over-volting and making it possible to for you to overclock the processor.

This is something that has changed a great deal since I have been with Intel®. When I first started the Intel Pentium® 4 was our top of the line processor and not only did we not make it possible to overclock but our tech support group would void your warranty if there was even a hint that you might have overclocked it in the past. Now we have processors that we have made unlocked. Right now to the enthusiast space the Intel Core™ i5-2500K is our #1 selling processor.

 

[Smoblikat]

There is a big difference between supporting overclocking where we'll warranty the processor even if you fry it by over-volting and making it possible to for you to overclock the processor.

This is something that has changed a great deal since I have been with Intel®. When I first started the Intel Pentium® 4 was our top of the line processor and not only did we not make it possible to overclock but our tech support group would void your warranty if there was even a hint that you might have overclocked it in the past. Now we have processors that we have made unlocked. Right now to the enthusiast space the Intel Core™ i5-2500K is our #1 selling processor.

This might be a dumb question.............but isnt it harder to lock down a processor than it is to leave it unlocked? So wouldnt it be easier to just make all processors unlocked? Is greed the only factor preventing this?

 

[alfa147x]

This might be a dumb question.............but isnt it harder to lock down a processor than it is to leave it unlocked? So wouldnt it be easier to just make all processors unlocked? Is greed the only factor preventing this?

It's not about making the chip. It's about demand

 

[Smoblikat]

It's not about making the chip. It's about demand

Demand for what? It wouldnt affect anyone at all. OEM's lock out overclocking, and people who wouldnt have OC'd before wont OC now anyways.

 

[fastamdman]

Because its going to keep on reducing your CPU frequency by a lot. Then when you use CPU it goes up to OCed speed.

Why not use SpeedStep after the OC,, couple reasons

1. stability of your OC can possibly degrade
2. Your system is doing too much work, downclocking and upclocking. It doesnt reduce the CPU voltage so there is no point, your temps will be the same.
3. You want proper readings of your OC, and you will never know if its stable unless it runs at frequency consistenly. gl :whiste:

You are wrong 100% with everything you stated.
1. Degradation occurs from TO much voltage, not to little. The less voltage that is being pushed through a chip, the less there will be degradation and or the possibility of it.

2. The system is doing LESS work when the system is running at lower speeds and MORE work when at higher speeds. The voltage WILL drop with the power saving features on and the temps WILL be lower because of it at idle.

3. No matter what your load clock speeds and voltages are always the same, both with the features on and off.


For anyone wondering, it is best to leave the power saving features on, no matter what. This will help keep idle temps low, keep the cpu from degrading and save power / your electric bill.

There are NO downfalls to running the power saving features on the 2500k/2600k processors. I can achieve very very high overclocks with the settings on or off, they do NOT change because of it.

So im overclocking and i dont know what to do for intel speedstep, usually i leave it on and C1E on and im running 5ghz @ 1.336v small FFT P95 running as i type this (linx later, i just wanted preliminary testing). but im not sure what either of them do, i thought that C1E lowered idle volts, and speedstep lowered idle clocks, but im sure im wrong. Please set me straight on this.

As I stated above you can go ahead and leave everything on. But just as a heads up you are not stable at those settings. Run LinX and you will BSOD.