FX 6300 Not reaching 4.1 GHz when turbo enabled

[Tyk3]

Hi guys,

I have an FX 6300 with Asus M5a78L/USB 3 Motherboard. I have an aftermarket cooler and my temps are fairly good. It never goes above 52 even under Prime 95 small FFT torture test.

My problem is that even with Turbo boost enabled it never reaches 4.1 GHz even when under stress and running cool. It never goes above 3.8 GHz.

All My Bios settings are at default and i have the bios version of 1503. Can anyone suggest what am i missing. Is there something in BIOS that might be preventing it.

I Scanned through forums before posting the question but no one has provided any correct answer, everyone just says go and do a manual overclock. It should reach 4.1 if AMD says it would, if kept sufficiently cool.

 

[Azrael47]

I had that motherboard at one time and I (out of experience) would never go past 4.1Ghz on that motherboard. I saved for a better motherboard to overclock on such as he Sabertooth or Formula Z. The VRM on that motherboard is not the greatest. Have you tried a manual overclock? Mine is at 4.2 at 1.29v runs cool.

 

[Tyk3]

Hi Azrael, Thanks for replying. I don't want to do a manual overclock because i don't need it, it runs whatever games i throw at it in max settings so no requirement for overclocking yet. Also Isn't that motherboard pretty good?? It has a max TDP of 125W and FX6300 has a TDP of 95W so there should be room for an average overclock.

Now i am not an expert on motherboards ( which you are 😛 ). I am just coming from the fact that it is an Asus Mobo so hardware components should be decent. On Paper it does says it supports overclock and has a TDP of 125w. so unless there is any other reason Motherboard might be bad. It should atleast overclock to 4.1 right? which is like just the default turbo, not even more than that. Why should we need to do something manually for the turbo, it should just work if the processor is running cool.

am i making some sense here?

 

[Azrael47]

Yes, I understand what you mean. I did some testing on the board you have now a couple of months back and I could get it to 4.2 on a manual overclock but the motherboard was very hot. Have you tried adjusting the power settings located on the start menu. You could be on balanced meaning that your card will only run at 4.1 when doing CPU intensive things. If this is so then put it to High performance and that should work. If not, if you have CCC, then go to performance then CPU speed then put it to the maximum.

 

[Tyk3]

I will do another focused testing using your recommendations, lets see if it reaches 4.1. But i think it didn't reach 4.1 even when i was running Prime 95 and all cores were maxed out. But i am not too sure i will confirm once more and reply. Thanks for taking time out to help.

 

[Azrael47]

no problem man.

 

[Tyk3]

Dude I have totally weird results here. When under load the frequency drops.

When CPU is idle, it runs at 3.8 GHz multiplier being 19.

When i run prime 95, and all cores are maxed out , it drops to 3.5 GHZ with multiplier being 17. and sometime even down to 3.0 GHz

What in world is going on here? my CPU temps never go above 52 in any case. It is well below its limit.

EDIT :

I read on AnandTech forum just now that Turbo Core doesn't works the way we think it does.

Here is how it works... if half the number of cores on a CPU are sitting idle, it will decrease their frequency by 500-800MHz and boost the frequency of the other half that are being used by the same amount. so if all the cores are being used they will run at stock speed, so that explains the results i got from the Prime 95 test.

But now what is weird is that when my cpu is idle 0% load, all the cores are boosted by 300MHz , they all run at 3.8 instead of a few running at 3GHz, and the rest running at 4.1 GHz. don't know why... 🙁 needs more research to be done.

 

[guggi4]

It will never go above 3.8 GHz if you load every core. The CPU hits only 4.1 when you put load on only one or two cores. But since you also don't reach 3.8 under full load, it looks like throttling of your board which is unable to keep up.

 

[Tyk3]

@Guggi : Are you a Punjabi? (that username is a common nickname in Sikh culture/Punjabi dialect 😛 ). Anyways thanks for replying. Now according to the AnandTech's explanation of Turbo Core, when under full load all the cores will run at stock speed so i believe that is why i am seeing them at 3.5 ( 3.0 was very occasional and only on one core at a time. ). so i am not worried on that part.

What makes me wonder is why my processor will run at 3.8 on all cores when idle, that is not in compliance with what turbo core does. 3 cores should be less than stock and 3 should be higher. All cores should not be boosted at the same time.

 

[Tyk3]

Ok, new updates, i just sat in front of the Core Temp and kept monitoring the Core frequencies and Yes, the processor does goes to 4115 GHz, 200.84 x 20.5. So turbo clock is working as it should only that it is difficult to spot and my understanding of how turbo core functions was incorrect.

However while looking into this i saw another thing, Core 0 on my processor keeps jumping between 1.4 GHz and 3.8 GHz multipliers 7 and 19. does anyone else had this with their Processors. can anyone at stock clock check and see....

 

[guggi4]

no, i'm from austria (NOT the one with kangaroos 😉 ),its just because of my family name.
i wouldnt care too much about your cpu, looks like its working like its supposed to be. it may dont go down in idle because you selected "performance" in win power settings. it leaves you cpu at 100% all the time. change it to "balanced" and it should clock down to 1,4ghz like mine does.

 

[Tyk3]

@guggi4 : Hey you were indeed correct, i changed power plan to balanced now all the cores go down to 1.4 when not being used and shoot up when being used. Awesome Bro, you fixed the stuff. =) However , i wonder why in high performance mode the first core alone kept jumping all the time between 1.4 and 3.8, it should have stayed at 3.8 all the time like the rest of the cores. =( Don't know how these things work, they are never perfect; some or the other minor stuff keeps going wrong all time.

 

[guggi4]

Glad that I could help you I also wouldn't worry too much about the last thing, there may be a reason for the behaviour but as long as you don't get performance issues I see no point in messing around.

 

[AniAM]

How's it running now Tky?