Overclocking 3570k - BIOS settings do not effect clocks once booted

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Tungst

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Jul 4, 2013
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Hey there :)

I've just built (to my annoyance now that I find out that Haswell is only ~£20 dearer, hopefully its not that good? :p) an i5 3570k rig with an ASUS Sabertooth z77 mobo and Noctua D-NH14 cooler with HAF X case. It's my first build and I'm pleased everything works.

The build's only OS is Debian Wheezy, maybe that factors into my problem somewhat; I'm having to use lscpu and mprime to test/view clocks once booted instead of CPU-Z and prime95. As far as I can see, that's pretty similar? Other than not being able to see my voltages, which is annoying, but nevermind.

After some playing with the BIOS trying to set up a manual OC to 4.5GHz, I booted into my system and ran mprime then used lscpu to check the current clock speed; it was still stuck at 3.4GHz. Going back into the BIOS, all the settings were as I set them up, everything had saved, but nothing seems to have carried over into the actual boot. I fiddled with a couple of things and ended up just trying to OC to 4.1GHz (My temps are completely fine, never rising above 55C even when mprime is testing), still no luck; lscpu displays a core clock of 3.4GHz.

So I tried the BIOS's autotune setting, same result. Then I tried updating the BIOS, update succeeded, tried the autotune setting again, no luck.

Racking my brains trying to figure out what to do next. I can take BIOS screenshots for you if you like but I'm assuming that the autotune settings should just work out of the box if the BIOS is updated? No?

If I can get my hands on a copy of windows I'll try that next if nobody here can help :(

Cheers.
 
Solution
jlan86
It sounds like you're right about the turbo interfering with it. When overclocking you should turn it off and just take manual control. When turbo is on, Windows and some other programs usually detect the speed as the default base clock times the default multiplier. So a CPU with a 3.4 turbo, even if it's overclocked 10% to 3.74 turbo, Windows will still call it a 3.2. CPU-Z should detect the correct multiplier, but all modern CPUs turndown the multiplier when not under load. You've gotta area it to get the speed up.

You definitely have an unlocked CPU. If it was locked you would not be able to change it in the bios. Has your computer crashed lately? You might need to flash the bios. Mine crashed a couple times and when it did my...
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Tungst

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Jul 4, 2013
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Cheers for the reply Mt :)

Unfotunately I've already updated my BIOS to the latest version, 2003, I'm still having no luck. It's possible the clock reading I'm getting isn't correct though so I'm trying to find another working program that will allow me to check the clocks.

UPDATE:I tried enabling Speed Step in order to determine if CPU G wasn't reporting my clock speeds properly. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the problem; CPU G gives me a reading of 1.6GHz idle and goes up to 3.4GHz (When running speed step) when under load even though I have all multipliers set to 37...

This is getting really annoying, its like there's some sort of lock in place not allowing me to go above 3.4GHz, I'm going to try setting multipliers to 32 in order to check if this is a problem with some "limit" or if its just not reading the multipliers from the BIOS or something. This is definately a 3570K, I have no idea what one of the locked processors behaves like but I'd assume its something like this? Could I have somehow got a K series that wasn't actually unlocked?
 
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T

Tungst

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Jul 4, 2013
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10,510
Update:

On setting multipliers to 32, Turbo Boost and Speed Step automatically turn off, this makes sense to me seeing as the processor no longer needs to function above base freq.

Once loaded, CPU G gives me a reading of 3.2GHz... looks like this is some sort of problem with a limit at 3.4GHz then...

...Could it be anything other than a locked processor? If someone here could tell me how the locked ones behave then I could see if mine is behaving like that. Do they ever accidentally ship non-K series in K series boxes?
 
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Mt Power

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Jul 17, 2012
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So not sure about the shipped wrong product. you can remove your hsf and look on the lid of the cpu. it has the cpu info there.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1291703/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboards

I used this guide. the turbo shouldnt be turning itself off. Mine does however grey out when setting manual clocks, but remains enabled. speed step should also remain enabled.

have you defaulted everything, and see if it goes to the 4.2ghz on its own boost feature? that would at least let you know if it will go above the 3.4ghz. also maybe try a dual boot, with windows or another os to see if that is the culprit.
 
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jlan86

jlan86

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Mar 1, 2013
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It sounds like you're right about the turbo interfering with it. When overclocking you should turn it off and just take manual control. When turbo is on, Windows and some other programs usually detect the speed as the default base clock times the default multiplier. So a CPU with a 3.4 turbo, even if it's overclocked 10% to 3.74 turbo, Windows will still call it a 3.2. CPU-Z should detect the correct multiplier, but all modern CPUs turndown the multiplier when not under load. You've gotta area it to get the speed up.

You definitely have an unlocked CPU. If it was locked you would not be able to change it in the bios. Has your computer crashed lately? You might need to flash the bios. Mine crashed a couple times and when it did my multiplier stopped working. Flashing the bios fixed the problem. Maybe something went wrong when you updated to the most recent bios.
 
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