4790K + Z99 + GTX 960 - Vcore all over the place

[di11on]

Hi folks,

I just put my build together as follows:

Intel i7 4790K
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
MSI GTX 960 G2 Gaming
Samsung 830 SSD
16GB HyperX Beast RAM

I've put the system together and everything seemed to be going swimmingly. Temperatures on all cores between 21 and 25 degrees. Then I ran a game but got low fps. So I fired up CPUZ, GPUZ and core temp. The temperatures are all fine, nothing higher than 30 degrees but all cores are still very lightly loaded, even with a game playing (but at low fps) ( <10%). The GPU temp is fine too at 30 degrees.

The looking at Vcore in CPU-Z - it's changing all the time between 0.771V and 0.9V sometimes up past 1.0V and the clock frequency is changing too. It seems very odd.

What's going wrong?

Cheers in advance.

 

[faalin]

You've paired a high end cpu, MB, SSD, and ram with a lower end mid grad video card. What games are you playing and what settings do you have the game set at?

 

[di11on]

I've played this game on a E8400 with a GTX 460 at way higher FPS. The strange thing is that all the cores are all lightly loaded whereas on my old machine, one core at least would have been maxed out when playing.

 

[di11on]

Update: Vcore seems to sit at 0.771V most of the time with the Frequency at 800MHz. Vcore then randomly steps up from time to time often as far as 1.22V with corresponding increases in frequency - but most of the time it's sitting at 800Mhz with low temps.

Is it some sort of power management or something?

 

[SkylerJacobs]

What game?
Is Vsync turned on?

 

[di11on]

What game?
Is Vsync turned on?

The game is WWII Online... I am only getting around 13-15 fps because the Frequency is at 800MHz. When the game is loading I can see that it goes up to 4000MHz, but then drops back down. Perhaps I have a power management issue?

My PSU is 500W.

 

[SkylerJacobs]

What you are talking about with the CPU frequency is called Intel Speedstep technology. This allows the CPU frequency to drop down to 800mhz at idle/under small loads.

Do you have any newer games to test the system with?

A 500 watt good quality power supply should be plenty for 4790k and 960.
What power supply do you have?

 

[di11on]

What you are talking about with the CPU frequency is called Intel Speedstep technology. This allows the CPU frequency to drop down to 800mhz at idle/under small loads.

Do you have any newer games to test the system with?

A 500 watt good quality power supply should be plenty for 4790k and 960.
What power supply do you have?

I get that it's being clever dropping the frequency when idle, but when gaming it either doesn't seem to be able to hold the frequency at 4GHz or it doesn't know that it should be holding it at 4GHz. In task manager it shows the process using 8% CPU load.

The PSU is the one that came with the Antec Sonata III case - an Antec Earthwatts 500W supply. I have modded the Sonata case and added a fan at the front along with grills at the side and top. However, temps do not seem to be an issue.

One point of note is that I had to use the supplied 6-pin molex to 8pin molex PCI-E power adapter for the GTX 960 (i.e. the PSU connector had 6 pins and the GTX 960 wants 8 pins.

I'll test something like Arma 3 later and report back

Edit: I'm using a Hyper 212 Evo cooler for the CPU.

 

[logainofhades]

Try turning off speed step, in the bios.

 

[di11on]

Update:

So I downloaded and played Arma 3 this morning using the default settings (it had most things set to ultra) and it played fine. CPU was at 4GHz and cores were loaded (but not fully) and core temps were between 40 and 50 degrees.

Then I went and played WWIIOnline and it was fine! FPS was around 130! Perhaps there is a breaking in period for the cores? Perhaps some of the software required for Arma 3 impacted on WWIIOnline? Who knows. Happy now anyway - cooling seems to be fine and everything is stable.