Why isnt my AMD A6 3420M quadcore not turbo boosting itself ??

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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
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I bought an HP notebook and this is my first ever laptop.. It has an AMD Quadcore A6 3420m with the 6520g gaphics card thats built into the cpu.. AMD i guess calls it an APU.. its got 4gb ddr3, and a 500gb HDD, 17.3 inch lcd and i thought for $450 it was a good laptop for my budget range..

This cpu is suppose to have turbo boost which brings the cpu clock from 1.5ghz to 2.4ghz... however nothing I do will make this cpu raise its clock speed... Playing games it sits at 1.5ghz, browing the internet or watching movies it sits at 1.5ghz, using prime 95 it sits at 1.5ghz... Absolutetly nothing will make this cpu raise its speed... Except very rarely when i watch the cpu speed in CPU-Z it will for a breif split nano second jump to 2400mhz but then drop back down but this is when im sitting idle doing nothing.. lol

I thought it was the power plan in the notebook so i set it to Performance but that didnt do anything.. I tried updating the bios that did nothing, updating the AMD drivers all that did was lower my clock speed to 1400mhz ??? WTF.. The Cores are only getting to about 50-60c on load..

I called HP and they didnt even know what i was talking about with turbo boost.. They thought i was trying to overclock the cpu myself... I went back to bestbuy and the Geeksquad guys said the cpu only uses turbo boost when it needs it... well wtf do you have to do to make the cpu need it... I guess putting 100% load on all 4 core isnt enough ?? Or playing skyrim or what not isnt enough ??

This is starting to feal like false advertisement to me.... Could you guys help me please.. ??
 
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NightFox

Member
Apr 28, 2000
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I remember reading somewhere that it was not possible to see the turboboost frequencies. They work but the drivers dont support reading them. I could be wrong though.

Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
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I tried installing core temp to show all 4 core speeds, but its giving me wierd numbers like 3,000 and 4900 mhz. However it is showing all 4 cores randomly increasing and decreasing clock speed... but only when im idle or doing something on the desktop.. if im playing an game and using 100% of 1 core that core sits at the lower frenquency and doesnt move.. If i hit prime 95 all 4 sit at the lower frequency...

Seems this turbo boost shit only works when there is no load or something lol...


Another thing i should note is i know for a fact that turbo boost isnt working because when im in my game, sitting in the main menu im getting 33fps.. If i use K10stat which allows you to overclock your cpu, and raise the speed to 2400mhz manually my fps sky rockets to 55fps.. Turbo boost is not working.. and i wish i knew why
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
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wow thats frakin lame.. I thought it would kick on during load... So i guess the only way to get the add'd performance i want would be to use K10stat and overclock the cpu to 2400mhz then..

I tried that a few mins ago using the stock 1.125 volts that it was running with at 1.5ghz and it seemed stable. The temps were around 72c tho while gaming, vs 63c at 1500mhz..

What do you suppose is too hot for this cpu ? I like getting 25fps more in my games but at the cost of burning up my laptop i dunno if its worth it..
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
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I have and it doesnt.. Well it it does but only for a split nano second as i mentioned before, but if what the guy above said is true then this turbo boost is crock of shit if it only boosts itself during minor applications and not big loads...

I'll just have to find a way to set my laptop overclock to run at 2.4 or so ghz but when its on battery power i need it to run at the lower speeds. Im also not sure if 72-75c is too hot for a laptop or not.
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
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Candymancan21 said:
but if what the guy above said is true then this turbo boost is crock of shit if it only boosts itself during minor applications and not big loads...
Click to expand...

That's about right. When all cores are loaded, it won't turbo. The idea is TDP headroom. If there is a lighter load (single core?), then it can boost.
 
veri745

veri745

Golden Member
Oct 11, 2007
1,163
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Also turbo will only kick in temporarily, on the order of a few milliseconds at a time, which makes it barely human-detectable in real time if you're watching core speeds. Most programs that monitor frequency have too low of a polling rate to watch the actual core frequencies.
 
podspi

podspi

Golden Member
Jan 11, 2011
1,982
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I do agree that the way many Llano laptops have been advertise border on false. I've seen advertisements that claim the boost clock, not the base clock.

All of that being said, how is the performance of the laptop? If it is fine, who cares what clock speed it is running at?
 
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pelov

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2011
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mrcmtl

Member
Jul 22, 2010
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I have a A8-3500M and I can tell you that turbo mostly kicks in during lightly threaded usage, between 1 or 2 core. I have seen 4 core turbo but thats only for a second or two tops. So yes, if you want added performance, you need to overclock it. I personally don't overclock since I don't really need the added performance and I do fear for the laptop's long time life. I only undervolt to increase battery life.
 
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cebalrai

Senior member
May 18, 2011
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I have a laptop with an A8-3500M as well and turbo boost seems to be working fine. It works even when I do something as simple as starting a browser.

It's my impression that turbo will not kick in under the following circumstances:

1) There's not enough push on the CPU to warrant it.
2) The CPU is above a certain temperature.
3) More than half the cores are being used.

Also keep in mind that programs such as CPU-Z check the CPU ever second or two, and in that time turbo might have turned on and off again multiple times.
 
sm625

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
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I think AMD just screwed up on their turbo algorithm. It seems way too conservative. A single thread of superpi wont violate any tdp limits, yet it wont turbo either. It just doesnt work the way it should. It is completely deceptive on their part since the base clock speed is totally crippled. You really need to hit that 2.4GHz theoretical target for that chip to be worth anything.
 
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mrcmtl

Member
Jul 22, 2010
79
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sm625 said:
I think AMD just screwed up on their turbo algorithm. It seems way too conservative. A single thread of superpi wont violate any tdp limits, yet it wont turbo either. It just doesnt work the way it should. It is completely deceptive on their part since the base clock speed is totally crippled. You really need to hit that 2.4GHz theoretical target for that chip to be worth anything.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt that. I just ran SuperPi and when I disable turbo, it finishes in 46s while it can do 34s when turbo is enabled.
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
3
81
cebalrai said:
I have a laptop with an A8-3500M as well and turbo boost seems to be working fine. It works even when I do something as simple as starting a browser.

It's my impression that turbo will not kick in under the following circumstances:

1) There's not enough push on the CPU to warrant it.
2) The CPU is above a certain temperature.
3) More than half the cores are being used.

Also keep in mind that programs such as CPU-Z check the CPU ever second or two, and in that time turbo might have turned on and off again multiple times.
Click to expand...



Yea but does your turbo boost kick in when playing video games or stuff like that.. Im not talking about when you open a browser or something.. Doing that is when i have noticed the turbo boost kicks in for a split nano second specially if i watch all 4 cores on coretemp i can see them all chaning randomly from 1500 to 2400mhz like every nano second (core temp seems to read the speed changes faster then cpu-z), but when i play a single threaded or double threaded game it stays at 1500mhz.


Someone asked if im happy with the performance of the laptop.. the answer is yes and no.. For $450 its really fast and i like it, but i dont like how turbo boost doesnt kick on during gaming.. As i said my fps is say 30 in games, and if i use Kstat10 to overclock it to 2.4ghz my fps will be about 50.. I dont want to have to overclock the cpu everytime i play games and then downclock when im not.. It was my belief that it would do this itself per the advertising.

But after reading what some of you said, and the links one guy gave it seems turbo boost only works in lightly threaded apps like stuff on the desktop

Also my cpu got to 73c at 2400mhz 1.125v is that too hot a laptop cpu ? at 1500mhz its at about 62c
 
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mrcmtl

Member
Jul 22, 2010
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Candymancan21 said:
Yea but does your turbo boost kick in when playing video games or stuff like that.. Im not talking about when you open a browser or something.. Doing that is when i have noticed the turbo boost kicks in for a split nano second specially if i watch all 4 cores on coretemp i can see them all chaning randomly from 1500 to 2400mhz like every nano second (core temp seems to read the speed changes faster then cpu-z), but when i play a single threaded or double threaded game it stays at 1500mhz.


Someone asked if im happy with the performance of the laptop.. the answer is yes and no.. For $450 its really fast and i like it, but i dont like how turbo boost doesnt kick on during gaming.. As i said my fps is say 30 in games, and if i use Kstat10 to overclock it to 2.4ghz my fps will be about 50.. I dont want to have to overclock the cpu everytime i play games and then downclock when im not.. It was my belief that it would do this itself per the advertising.

But after reading what some of you said, and the links one guy gave it seems turbo boost only works in lightly threaded apps like stuff on the desktop

Also my cpu got to 73c at 2400mhz 1.125v is that too hot a laptop cpu ? at 1500mhz its at about 62c
Click to expand...

If the CPU would turbo all the time when gaming, then that wouldn't be called turbo. 2.4Ghz seems a bit high, no doubt that you will be fine for now but I don't know about the long run. I'd put it at around 2Ghz just to be safe. With K10Stat, you can always set 2 profiles and manually switch between profiles. It's a simple one second solution.
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
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so what do you guys think i should do ?

Keep this laptop or perhaps upgrade to the A8 for the faster gpu

Basicly this laptop has a 500gb hdd, 4gb of ram, the A6 apu, and a 17.3inch lcd and it was only $450

The other one has 6gb of ram, the A8 apu, 750gb hdd, but only a 15 inch lcd and its $580 which I would have to wait until next payday to make up the difference when returning mine.

According to reviews the A8's gpu with its 400shaders enabled has 25% fps improvement in games over the A6 gpu with only 333. However the downside IMO is the smaller monitor. I compared both next to each other and the 17 inch one is massivly bigger which i like. But 25% more fps would mean around 10 more fps in games. right now im getting like 30 fps in skyrim with this A6 and overclocking the cpu does nothing so im limited by the GPU.

what do you guys think ?
 
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sm625

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
8,172
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Take it back. Wait for trinity... And hope that works better. Or... maybe ib will offer the same gaming performance as an A6. I doubt it but it is at least possible.
 
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mrcmtl

Member
Jul 22, 2010
79
1
71
Trinity laptops should come out around summer. Do you want to wait that long? The price should roughly remain the same unless you bought a laptop that was a killer deal.

One question, does your laptop have 1x4Gb or 2x2Gb of ram?
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
3
81
I belive its only 1x4gb.. That made me wonder, how is it running in duel channle mode with only 1x4gb lol.. I should probably upgrade that assuming i keep it. But then I also only have a 5400RPM HDD.. I mean $450 is cheap and is a good deal to me, but now that you mention the memory ..

Any idea how much memory costs for these laptops ? Or how I find out which stick to buy ? ?


This is the laptop i got

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-g7.../dp/B0070FKAM6
 
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Candymancan21

Senior member
Jun 8, 2009
278
3
81
Well overclocking the cpu aparently does nothing for skyrim, its GPU limited.. But he brought up a good point my laptop has only 1 stick of ram.. Doesnt DDR3 run in duel channle mode ? Seems like a big performance hinderance with that 1 stick.
 
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