2500k clock speeds

[helidan]

I updated the BIOS on my Asus P8Z68 V Pro the other day (so that my new Corsair mouse would work in the UEFI BIOS).

Prior to the BIOS update core temp would only show the CPU running at one of two speeds, idle (1600) or my overclocked speed (4400) and nothing else inbetween.
Now core temp is showing various speeds inbetween idle and max such as 1800, 2000, 2600, 3200 etc.

I've been monitoring the individual core speeds in CPU-Z and during various tasks core 2 for example might briefly jump to 2600 and then back to idle, then cores 1,3 might jump to 3300, then core 4 might jump all the way to my BIOS set OC turbo speed and so on and so forth.

I've just never seen other speeds displayed other than idle 1600 and my OC 4400

Is this the way turbo/speedstep behaves, ie. you've got idle and full turbo speeds but depending on the load some cores can increase to various intermediate speeds?
Did the BIOS update change the way Intel Turbo works??

 

[burgessanthony]

Yes, this is normal. I see anything between 1600 and 3900 depending on load. I think there are 'steps' so it isnt just random numbers, but this is what speedstep/turbo does.

 

[helidan]

Any thoughts as to why I'm only seeing these intermediate speeds since the BIOS update?

 

[burgessanthony]

I am not familiar with the Asus boards, but I see its a Z68 chip - there is somethign about these boards only accepting ivy bridge with a bios update, but I may be way off the mark here.

either way, if it works now as it should and you dont have any problems then I wouldnt worry too much!

 

[Mousemonkey]

I am not familiar with the Asus boards, but I see its a Z68 chip - there is somethign about these boards only accepting ivy bridge with a bios update, but I may be way off the mark here.

either way, if it works now as it should and you dont have any problems then I wouldnt worry too much!

What would that have to do with the OP's CPU?

 

[helidan]

I am not familiar with the Asus boards, but I see its a Z68 chip - there is somethign about these boards only accepting ivy bridge with a bios update, but I may be way off the mark here.

either way, if it works now as it should and you dont have any problems then I wouldnt worry too much!

The system is working perfectly, Prime95 pushes all cores to the max (in my case 4.5ghz), speedstep downclocking to 1.6ghz as it should. I was just wondering where these intermediate speeds were coming from all of a sudden. It's like the system is being more adaptive to various loads now.