CPU Performance Drops: 3dmark Firestrike

[F7GOS]

Morning folks, I tried posting this yesterday but for some reason it was flagged as spam and deleted so Ill try again.

I recently built a budget built with the following components

CPU: Pentium G3258 @ 4.0Ghz
CPU Cooler: Rajentek Aidos
GPU: Powercolor R9 280X
MB: MSI H81m-P33
RAM: 8Gb DDR3 Corsair (clocked at 1333 because of the G3258 - capable of 1600Mhz)
Storage: 120GB SSD / 500GB HDD
Case: Corsair Carbide 88R + 3 x 120mm Fans
PSU: EVGA 500W 80+

I initially used the 3D mark Demo before and during setting up the OC on the system. I eventually settled on the below and as you can see from the initial and final scores there was a good increase.

Temps are stable. the GPU reaches a max of 70°C and the CPU a max of around 50°C so im very happy with that.

Something has happened to the PC and I have no idea what.

All of a sudden my Physics score has dropped off to much less than even what I was getting with the base clocks.

The Graphics scores remain consistent with the last image I posted (About 9400-9500) but the Physics score has dropped off to below 1800 (about 5-6fps average)

Now, I know that the physics test is mainly CPU bound so I thought I might be experiencing thermal throttling of the cores, and I bought the full version of 3d Mark this week to be able to easily monitor everything that is going on.

The result was just as I had prevously seen. about 50°C through out the test. and the clock speed never dips below the 4Ghz - so its not throttling.

Long story short is I have no idea what to look out for. The CPU usage in task manager is minimal - below 5% before I run the test and there are no programs gobbling ram in the backround as its a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro.


Does anyone have anything I can look into?


The only 2 things I have done is added braided GPU Cables and tried out MSi's OC Genie tool in the MB Bios which I then turned off and reset my multiplier to 40 to get me back to a manually set up 4Ghz.


What would cause a CPU to suddenly half its physics scores?

 

[Supahos]

Have you monitored it's speed back in Windows? It may not be running at 4ghz just because you set it in bios. Any chance you disabled one of the cores goofing around in bios?

 

[F7GOS]

I really cant specifically recall any tinkering with the cores. Im quite a cautious overclocker.

It would explain why I was thinking that the score was more like a dual 2.0 ghz gpu (approx 60% my original score at 3.2Ghz) if it was only running as a single 4.0ghz

does anyone with MSI motherboard knowledge know what I should look for. The "Active cores" can only be set at 1 or ALL.. I have it set at all.

if I "Cleared CMOS" would that restore it to a factory setting?

I mean all I want to do is use the chip standard with the multiplier increased from 32 to 40.

 

[Supahos]

You should be able to go into BIOS and set to defaults, reboot, go back into bios and change multi to 40

 

[F7GOS]

The answer is that windows update had decided to restart itself without me enabling it. It was sitting In the background using one whole core.