My brother-in-law has my old i5-3570k which I had overclocked to 4.2ghz when I sold it to him (I had been running it at 4.2ghz boost for a few months by this point, no issues). He's got the new Microsoft Flight Sim and said that it was running poorly at 1080p medium. I got him to check Afterburner etc and it seems to be running at 99% CPU at 3.6ghz, and only about 60C. GPU (GT 970) was running at about 30% usage, and about 20FPS. 1440p medium doesn't see much difference in framerates - but it does use more GPU (45% now) so it's clear that the CPU is the problem.
What's striking me as odd is not only is it not running at the full 4.2ghz, but it's not even boosting to the full stock speed of 3.8ghz - it's sitting eactly half way between the base freq. of 3.6 and the boost of 3.8 despite needing more boost.
When he opens Tarkov, it runs at about 11% usage and 3.8ghz boost but when he enters a game - the clock speed drops to 3.6ghz and runs at 26% usage - without any spikes in temperature. The Usage increases but the clock speed drops...
When I handed it over, we built it together on Xmas day and ran a couple of benchmarks to check it was all seated correctly - no issues. Ran a couple of games and it was sailing through at the 4.2ghz I had it set to with no heat issues. He recently installed a new GPU himself, so I'm wondering if a cable could be knocked, or if it caused some kind of CMOS reset? I do remember him saying it wouldn't boot, and then it did after a couple of tries, so it could've lost the overclock. That doesn't explain why it's losing boost in high-load situations though - I never saw that CPU boost to less than 3.8ghz under load in the 7 years I owned it.
I'm going to give a video call to check the BIOS but wanted to make sure there's nothing I'm missing here? Obviously I can't check hardware - but I can guide him through it if needed, maybe check the CPU plug in case it's not receiving enough power, or the heatsink's knocked or something.
What's striking me as odd is not only is it not running at the full 4.2ghz, but it's not even boosting to the full stock speed of 3.8ghz - it's sitting eactly half way between the base freq. of 3.6 and the boost of 3.8 despite needing more boost.
When he opens Tarkov, it runs at about 11% usage and 3.8ghz boost but when he enters a game - the clock speed drops to 3.6ghz and runs at 26% usage - without any spikes in temperature. The Usage increases but the clock speed drops...
When I handed it over, we built it together on Xmas day and ran a couple of benchmarks to check it was all seated correctly - no issues. Ran a couple of games and it was sailing through at the 4.2ghz I had it set to with no heat issues. He recently installed a new GPU himself, so I'm wondering if a cable could be knocked, or if it caused some kind of CMOS reset? I do remember him saying it wouldn't boot, and then it did after a couple of tries, so it could've lost the overclock. That doesn't explain why it's losing boost in high-load situations though - I never saw that CPU boost to less than 3.8ghz under load in the 7 years I owned it.
I'm going to give a video call to check the BIOS but wanted to make sure there's nothing I'm missing here? Obviously I can't check hardware - but I can guide him through it if needed, maybe check the CPU plug in case it's not receiving enough power, or the heatsink's knocked or something.