ASUS Sabretooth Z87 + i4770K == CPU Ratio does nothing, stuck at 3500 no matter what

[Davepl]

I don't find the UEFI BIOS all that intuitive, but I'm not entirely new to this. However, it's my first Haswell unlocked CPU.

The problem is that if I do the following, it still boots at 3500MHz and stays there:

- Turn off ASUS optimizations (ie: set it the middle, normal setting on the main page)
- Turn off XMP
- Set "CPU Core Ratio" to "Sync All Cores"
- Set all the cores to 40

With a core multiplier of 40 and a BCLK of 100, it should be 4000Mhz, but no matter what it just happily boots to 3500Mhz. CPU-Z and the ASUS util and a couple of others tools confirm the 3500.

I've played around to make sure Turbo mode is off, that "slow the clock when idle" setting is off, and a number of other things, to no avail.

Could anyone tell me what the shortest path (other than Auto, as I want to control it) to getting a 40 multiplier to do something? All the articles I can find do it like I have above (since I followed the articles) and I'm all out of ideas.

Any help would be great!

PS: I note that in the BIOS it does indeed say Target Turbo frequency of 4000. But when it boots, the POST says 3508 (odd number) and CPU-z will say 3501.

 

[taliyuna]

Asus sabertooth is a bit complex did you check all the options to make sure you really have access to your CPU ? There are many on/off options that can block overclocking in general;
"Sync all cores" sounds too advanced for a 4Ghz overclock; i have an MSI board so the options may be different but the idea is the SAME SO listen:
-Set CPU Ratio Mode to "Dynamic" thats a must if its on "fixed" change that!
You didnt say anything about the voltages but you need to change that too cause the CPU needs more power if its gonna run faster so :
-Up the voltages only a little you should try 1.050 for core voltage and 1.025 for the ring voltage.
-Set both Core and Ring voltage modes to Adaptive that should increase the voltages only a little automaticaly if you set them too low 😉
---My point is you need to do some extra stuff if you want a successful overclock not just up the multiplier;
note that the voltage I recomended is enough for 4.0 Ghz but might be too low for anything higher so dont push it (if your computer boots with these voltages then its a good CPU and can probably go higher too if not just reset your bios and increase the voltages a little)

whatever you do watch this video FIRST it should answer all of your questions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mLP3pGvnDU


Worst case scenario your CPU is of the worst quality and it just won't overclock and the motherboard just resets the clock freq.. (but that is extremely rare even the worst ones clock up to 3.8 honestly, but require huge voltages) therefore double check everything;

 

[Davepl]

I'm new to the board, but a lot of first answers on threads look like "I'm gonna park this boilerplate answer here so when the question expires it gets picked as the default answer". Neither I nor anyone on this thread needs to know that if the CPU as more power "its gonna run faster". FWIW, the voltages and multipliers are set as per the dozen or so Haswell tutorials I've watched, they just don't take effect. That was the question.

Anyway, the answer above is from someone who's never seen the BIOS in question, so doesn't help. But there must be 2-3 things that are pre-requisites for running the ASUS Sabretooth BIOS with a non-stock multiplier. Those are what I'm hoping someone can assist me with.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Davepl]

It turns out that the board was indeed running at 4GHz, but the POST says 3500. Every app I had, including a fairly recent version of CPU-Z, showed it at 3500. The -very- latest version of CPU-Z reports it at 4GHz. Why detection of clock speed is so hard, I don't know. Maybe everyone based it off of BCLK before?

In any event, my issue is solved as result.