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i7 6700HQ not boosting? (in 3Dmark)

Kaisah

Kaisah

Kaisah

Associate
Joined
26 Jan 2016
Posts
23
Hey guys,

When I'm running benchmarks in firestrike in 3D mark, about 80-90% of the time my CPU doesn't appear to be boosting the clock speed, causing low physics scores. I run the benchmark after a fresh reboot each time, with no other processes running other than the startup ones.

Any idea why this is? I have no idea if it boosts when playing games etc, as i have no way to check. As far as I can tell, msi afterburner doesn't report CPU clock speed, and thats the only real monitoring tool I have.

Firestrike report (poor run): http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7515258
Firestrike report (good run only yesterday): www.3dmark.com/fs/7505395

My setup is a GE72-6QF MSI laptop with a i7-6700HQ & GTX 970M (slightly overclocked, 100mhz core clock, 300mhz mem clock).

It appears the GPU is working as intended, but my CPU clock speed is hanging at 2.6Ghz, and on the poor run the boost speed is actually lower?! Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks in advance
 
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I think the max boost speed stated is for one core (3.5GHz?), then lower for 2 (3GHz). If all cores are being worked then it stays more or less nominal clock
 
What would explain the differences in the physics scores though? And specifically the reported values in 3Dmark:

Poor run:

Reported stock core clock
2,600 MHz
Maximum turbo core clock
2,493 MHz

Decent run:

Reported stock core clock
2,600 MHz
Maximum turbo core clock
3,293 MHz
 
Have you made sure your power plan settings in control panel aren't set to energy saving and turbo boost is set to enabled in the BIOS?
 
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Drollic said:
Have you made sure your power plan settings in control panel aren't set to energy saving and turbo boost is set to enabled in the BIOS?
Click to expand...

I have set all power settings to "maximum performance" etc, yeah.

I haven't checked the BIOS, would this turn itself off though? As it appears it has been working, just sometimes doesn't. Ill check this tonight.
 
Thanks for the comment Marc.

I downloaded both programs. I ran a benchmark with Realbench and achieved around 80500 score. I had HWINFO running too, and all four cores were around 2.5ghz.

I then ran a 15min stress test, which passed, but again all four cores stayed at 2.5ghz. Temps got up to 75, however i didnt have my laptop on a cooling pad (I normally do). I dont think 75 isnt anything too bad though?

I then rebooted to look in the bios settings to see if turbo boost is enabled. I think this is locked/missing from my bios as I couldnt find it. When windows loaded after this I ran another 3D mark test.. and achieved around 7200 score, with a 9000+ (Not a cheesey DBZ ref..) physics score. I opened up HWINFO and all cores were at 3.2GHz.. Very weird?

Should the cores be boosting during the stress test? At no point did they go above 2.5ghz, even though it was reporting CPU at 100% at various stages.

10 minutes after running the 3Dmark benchmark and after typing this up, HWINFO is still reporting all four cores @ 3.2ghz... wtf? Nothing else running.

Thanks
 
Have you tried adjusting the MSI 'Shift' setting to see if that makes a difference? What about removing the overclock on the GPU, perhaps there is a power limitation feature inbuilt and you're exceeding the total power draw? All 4 cores under load will boost to a maximum of 3100mhz on that cpu. If you leave hwinfo running whilst you are just browsing, what is stated as the maximum core clock for each core?
 
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The GPU clock doesn't seem to make a difference whether it's on or off.

Clocks are a static 2.5 over all cores when normally browsing. After they have boosted though it takes a while for them to drop. Now for example;

Core 0 2593mhz
Core 1 3290mhz
Core 2 2593mhz
Core 3 3291mhz

This seems a bit random
 
If I open HWINFO cores 0 and 2 are generally around 2.5. Cores 1 and 3 jump to 3.2 quite a lot.

If I open cpuz and click 'stress cpu' all cores imediantly drop to 2.5. As soon as I stop the stress the above happens with some cores jumping to 3.2.
 
You're plugged in at the wall and not operating off just the laptop battery? If so, it sounds like it's boosting as it should although my knowledge of those chips is pretty poor. As i understand it, if the load is mild to heavy under safe temps you should see all 4 cores hit 3100mhz. If the load becomes heavy enough, you might see all 4 cores hit 3100mhz but could expect this to slowly drop down to the default 2600mhz which can happen in a matter of seconds. I believe it's part of the inbuilt power limitations but could be wrong. I'm not sure if the MSI 'Shift' setting can help with this and if perhaps this kind of feature can be removed with a BIOS setting.
 
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Thanks for the link. I haven't overclocked the CPU though, its completely standard. The problem seems to be it isn't using the turbo boost at all in some situations even when stressed, as I believe it should do. The temps are always within an acceptable range - 60-70 max, I don't think that would be grounds to throttle anything due to thermal limits?

I will read through the link and hopefully that will explain :) Appreciate the help.
 
Kaisah said:
Thanks for the link. I haven't overclocked the CPU though, its completely standard. The problem seems to be it isn't using the turbo boost at all in some situations even when stressed, as I believe it should do. The temps are always within an acceptable range - 60-70 max, I don't think that would be grounds to throttle anything due to thermal limits?

I will read through the link and hopefully that will explain :) Appreciate the help.
Click to expand...

I think the previous poster meant boosting, not overclocking.

It sounds like the chip is boosting as it should. Under heavy loads, it wont boost as high because the voltage/amps will be clamped as well as the target temp - which is very low on the mobile cpus - which is again dependant on usage scenario but typically in the 60c to 75c range.

You'll likely only see high boost frequencies in the medium usage scenario and even then, the boost limit could drop quite quickly. Also not uncommon to see different cores at different speeds.
 
Thanks guys - seems this is pretty normal then.

I have tried various other benchmarking software, and the results are better and more like what you would expect from this processor. It just seems like 3Dmark has a problem with this cpu, sometimes it boosts higher than other times. Every other benchmark has consistent accurate results.

I've also learned quite a bit about cpu's and boosting the last few days ^^.
 
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