AMD Turbo Core Degrades Gaming Performance?

[Mordz]

I have an FX 6300 and had it overclocked before. But, as the temperature exceeded the safe operating temperature i reverted it to the stock clock. So i had to enable the turbo core options in BIOS in hope to compensate the performance degradation. But what i got is the exact opposite, i got a very bad performance in gaming, especially Assassin's Creed 3. I've never come to notice that until I'm getting sick with the abnormal framerate (I have a GTX 760 which would be enough to run any games @1080p). So i disabled the turbo core options and to my surprise, Assassin's Creed 3 runs far better without turbo core enabled. And my question is how exactly does this turbo core works? And why does it degrade gaming performance?

 

[CTurbo]

Have you tried to disable turbo and overclock? I don't like turbo either.

 

[CTurbo]

The first thing I would do is disable turbo, and set all 6 cores at 4.0 or 4.1. Even the stock cooler should be able to handle that.

If not, it sounds like an after market cooler should be really high on your list of things to buy.

 

[Mordz]

Have you tried to disable turbo and overclock? I don't like turbo either.

The first thing I would do is disable turbo, and set all 6 cores at 4.0 or 4.1. Even the stock cooler should be able to handle that.

If not, it sounds like an after market cooler should be really high on your list of things to buy.

Yes i have, and it performs much better. Well i already have an aftermarket cooler but honestly I don't know what's wrong with it. The CPU temperature is 37C at most when idle, and i think it's not quite a normal temperature

 

[ethereal essence]

This is all i can really find on how turbo core works

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/2

basically it will underclock/shut down unneeded cores and bump up ones that are in use. However I have seen some anecdotal info that states that there are two stages. Stage 1 is all cores up to a certain frequency (depending on the TDP of the cpu) and the other is half the cores up to max turbo.

What could be causing the problem is this. Lets say that the game takes 4 cores. You have 6 cores and 3 FPUs (which are used in gaming). With turbo on the BIOS senses that only 4 cores are in use. So it shoves everything on to 2 modules, and powers down the other which frees up TDP for pushing the 4 remaining cores faster. since it shuts down a full module, you lose 1 FPU and are down to 2.

When you disable turbo core what happens is that the game sends out a thread for the FPU. You have 3 available so those threads have less time to wait to be processed. So the scheduler utilizes all the resources it can to get the best performance.

This is all speculation but this is the only thing I can think of that would indicate why performance improved when disabling turbo clock (outside of the obvious overclocking with turbo core on, which this is not the case).

 

[Mordz]

This is all i can really find on how turbo core works

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/2

basically it will underclock/shut down unneeded cores and bump up ones that are in use. However I have seen some anecdotal info that states that there are two stages. Stage 1 is all cores up to a certain frequency (depending on the TDP of the cpu) and the other is half the cores up to max turbo.

What could be causing the problem is this. Lets say that the game takes 4 cores. You have 6 cores and 3 FPUs (which are used in gaming). With turbo on the BIOS senses that only 4 cores are in use. So it shoves everything on to 2 modules, and powers down the other which frees up TDP for pushing the 4 remaining cores faster. since it shuts down a full module, you lose 1 FPU and are down to 2.

When you disable turbo core what happens is that the game sends out a thread for the FPU. You have 3 available so those threads have less time to wait to be processed. So the scheduler utilizes all the resources it can to get the best performance.

This is all speculation but this is the only thing I can think of that would indicate why performance improved when disabling turbo clock (outside of the obvious overclocking with turbo core on, which this is not the case).

Thanks! great answer! this explains everything

 

[ethereal essence]

This is all i can really find on how turbo core works

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/2

basically it will underclock/shut down unneeded cores and bump up ones that are in use. However I have seen some anecdotal info that states that there are two stages. Stage 1 is all cores up to a certain frequency (depending on the TDP of the cpu) and the other is half the cores up to max turbo.

What could be causing the problem is this. Lets say that the game takes 4 cores. You have 6 cores and 3 FPUs (which are used in gaming). With turbo on the BIOS senses that only 4 cores are in use. So it shoves everything on to 2 modules, and powers down the other which frees up TDP for pushing the 4 remaining cores faster. since it shuts down a full module, you lose 1 FPU and are down to 2.

When you disable turbo core what happens is that the game sends out a thread for the FPU. You have 3 available so those threads have less time to wait to be processed. So the scheduler utilizes all the resources it can to get the best performance.

This is all speculation but this is the only thing I can think of that would indicate why performance improved when disabling turbo clock (outside of the obvious overclocking with turbo core on, which this is not the case).

Thanks! great answer! this explains everything

It does make sense in a logical kind of way, but again just my best guess