CPU Z for a noob

Peter450 · 15 Sep 2008 at 19:07

I have a Asus P5QE and a 8500 i just downloaded cpu z to check my mobo bios date and noticed something strange, the cores are both clocked at 2092.1 they kind change between that and 2092.2, thats over 1000mhz down on what they should be right?

I loaded up a game, homeworld 2 and then alt tabbed about of it in case it was some kind of power saving thing but no change at 2g

I have the motherboards epu 6 engine in the taskbar and have set it to max perf with a +5% freq overclock so this has me quite confused

The multiplier being shown is 6, i thought it would be around 9 or 10, the fsb freq is shown as 348

Wizardskills · 15 Sep 2008 at 19:09

It will be intel speed step. It clocks the processor down when it doesnt need all the speed, and thus saving you electricity. It can be turned off in bios though

Peter450 · 15 Sep 2008 at 19:26

Does it need to be turned off when you overclock?

setter · 15 Sep 2008 at 19:34

No you dont have to turn it off, can be left running to save a bit of power.

Peter450 · 15 Sep 2008 at 23:02

I turned off speedstep in the bios but no change, when i booted cpuz iy briefly showed the full speed then went back down to 6, i have the epu 6 engine installed although it's set for max perf (it's a performance/powersaving utility) could that be whats doing it?

setter · 15 Sep 2008 at 23:19

you also have to disable c1e enhanced halt in the bios as well.

RJC · 15 Sep 2008 at 23:29

C1E and EIST, can also be called enhanced halt like setter mentioned.

Major_Disaster · 15 Sep 2008 at 23:37

Heh, i might save a reply for this question so i can just paste it again later, considering how many times it gets asked

Peter450 · 15 Sep 2008 at 23:51

Well i did a couple of tests, i turned speedstep off in the bios, although there was no change in the cpu z program other than it briefly flashed the full speed and showed 9.5 cpu multiplier only to default back again, performance has been significantly improved

I have quite a old game, called homeworld2 and was looking forward to doing the campaign in hi res, with settings maxed, this i did and it was very smooth throughout, except on 1 level were the framerate dipped below 60 (i have v sync on) i noticed this as a very mild quick stutter, were the frame rate was was briefly dropping below the magic 60 then heading back up again, it was not hugely noticeable and after blowing up a couple of ships it was back to business as usual but to be honest on such a old game (2003) i was expecting it not to even break a sweat

I reloaded the level from the campaign just out of curiosity really just to see if turning off speedstep made any differance, and it had there was no stuttering at all, despite me throwing my whole fleet in like crazy just to kick off a really big space battle, it was rock solid, now i didn't read a huge amount into it as it was very smooth before with only a very minor stutter or two when panning the camera, but i thought i'd test out the other game i just put on my system mass effect, and the differance here was very big, i guess being a modern game having the performance held back made a much bigger impact.
while the framerate with speedstep on was around 30-60 with 60 being hit facing a wall it's now almost always 60+ with only minor dips when in graphically intensive area's i'm not sure if this is something related to my system or speedstep, but i can't deny making that one small change has had a very big impact on games performance on my most current modern game