Intel 3770 Clock Speeds are reducing!

The actually technology is called "Intel Speedstep" and I think it's kind of a pain. However under a real load from gaming, synthetic stress tests, or video converting, your i7-3770K will run at either 3.4GHz or 3.9GHz depending on the load put on the CPU.

If you want to disable, there is an option in your BIOS, and it won't hurt anything.

It will last longer i guess  

The main motivation behind SpeedStep is power saving. With SpeedStep, dynamic voltage and sleep states, today's CPUs use as much as 90% less power when idle/low-load than they otherwise would.

CPUs already had 10+ years lifespans under normal operating conditions before the big push to improve power saving, so whatever lifespan gains from power saving there may be would fall well outside most PC's useful life.

Why Do you call it a pain?

But if the cpu heat up and cools down over and over, wont it reduce the life of the cpu?

While thermal cycling is a potential problem, even pre-SpeedStep CPUs already had significant temperature change between idle and full-load yet I do not remember hearing about excessive failure rates for P2, P3, K7, Athlon, etc. CPUs.

The only major thermal cycling fail I remember reading about is nVidia GPUs from a couple of years ago due to using the wrong type of solder balls to attach the die to the substrate. This caused the solder balls to break due to being too stiff to cope with the thermal expansion mismatch.

Best answer selected by timarp000.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey