i7 4770k turbo boost issues

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Neospiral

Neospiral

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Jun 28, 2013
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Hello,

I am working on a stable 4.5GHz overclock for my core i7 4770k. I am up to 4.4GHz atm, but I'm afraid to go higher because I've hit upwards of 95C (my cooler isn't the greatest, upgrading shortly) during stress tests. The issue I'm having is this:

I'm trying to get the CPU to run at 4.4GHz constantly while idle but no matter what settings I change, it won't sit at higher than 3.5GHz. I've disabled Speedstep, C1E, and all the other throttling stuff I know of, and it just sits there at 3.5GHz, never going higher.

While running stress tests, of course it goes up to the full 4.4GHz, but that's the only way I can get it to run at full turbo boost. Anyone have any suggestions? Have I missed a setting somewhere? Or do I just not understand how Turbo Boost and overclocking work. Any help appreciated!
 
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Neospiral
Welp, I feel like an idiot. After going through all this experimentation, I just had to go into Windows power saving and enable Performance instead of Balanced.

Incidentally, as you see, I upgraded my cooler and picked up a nice Asus board to replace the Asrock Extreme3. Currently running @ 4.6, and the hottest I've seen my CPU get is about 79°C at 1.278v. The Swiftech is a beast for an AiO cooler. Thanks everyone who tried to help!
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mclovits

mclovits

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If your temps are that high you should stop overclocking and stressing before you damage your CPU. I'd guess that you're either experiencing temperature related throttling. Is this also happening in games? If the CPU isn't being stressed it might not even overclock to the full 4.4GHz. Also, does it throttle down when not in use? Down to like 1600MHz?
 
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Neospiral

Neospiral

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Jun 28, 2013
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The thing is that the 4.4GHz is stable, it's just hot because my cooler sucks. I get the full, overclocked turbo boost speed out of the CPU during gaming and stress tests, with nary a hiccup in performance.

As noted, I've disabled Speedstep and all the other throttling utilities, so it doesn't throttle down if I don't want it to. If you're curious, when all the power saving options are enabled (including speedstep), it throttles way down to 800MHz when idle.

My question was if there was a way to force turbo boost at idle (i.e., make the CPU run at 4.4GHz 100% of the time), and whether I'm missing some big step or setting for this, or I'm misunderstanding something.

When I see people post CPU-Z shots and the CPU is running at whatever their OC speed is, I assume they didn't take the shot while under enough load to push the speed that high from taxation, but rather because they've somehow forced the CPU to run at max speed while idle.
 
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Neospiral

Neospiral

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Jun 28, 2013
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Perhaps that is the reason. I have an Asrock board and I set the multiplier at 44, but perhaps it is just the turbo boost multiplier and not the base multiplier. Any tricks to setting the base multiplier instead of the turbo?

And I don't normally want it to max out 100% of the time, just for testing purposes. I usually keep speedstep on because there's really no reason not to.
 
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mclovits

mclovits

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Some people run Prime95 in the background when taking those screenshots, but you don't want to run @4.4GHz all the time if you don't have to, there's no performance gains, you're just reducing your CPU life. I run @4.4GHz in games, but when just surfing the web and watching Youtube, my CPU throttles to 1600MHz, and it's just as fast as when it's running at 4.4GHz.

For testing, I just used Prime95 small FFT overnight, I haven't had a crash since then and I'm @ stock voltages, no need to murder the CPU by keeping it @4.4GHz the whole time, only if you are stress testing it.
 
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Neospiral

Neospiral

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I only want to force it for test purposes. I don't plan to run it at 100% speed all the time. I'm just trying to learn how to force it. In the UEFI, there's only one field to change the multiplier, and apparently it's the turbo boost multiplier, rather than the core clock multiplier.
 
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mclovits

mclovits

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Can you disable turbo altogether? There should be a CPU ratio multiplier...
 
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Neospiral

Neospiral

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Jun 28, 2013
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Can you disable turbo altogether? There should be a CPU ratio multiplier...
Click to expand...

I actually just did this. Went into UEFI and disabled Turbo completely. Manually set the multiplier to 40, voltage at 1.25, save changes and reboot. I get into windows, CPU-Z, still sitting at 3.5GHz. With all throttling AND turbo disabled, shouldn't setting the cpu multiplier make it run at the 4GHz while idle?
 
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Neospiral

Neospiral

Honorable
Jun 28, 2013
383
0
10,960
Welp, I feel like an idiot. After going through all this experimentation, I just had to go into Windows power saving and enable Performance instead of Balanced.

Incidentally, as you see, I upgraded my cooler and picked up a nice Asus board to replace the Asrock Extreme3. Currently running @ 4.6, and the hottest I've seen my CPU get is about 79°C at 1.278v. The Swiftech is a beast for an AiO cooler. Thanks everyone who tried to help!
 
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