Question Help me understand the MSI overclock feature ?

[realism51]

I do understand what the overclock feature is and what it is supposed to do, what I am asking about is does the MSI 650 Tomahawk board Overclock feature do anything?

With it off I will see my frequency (using Core temp to monitor) bounce around from like 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz. I have no other programs that I am aware of that are controlling the frequency.
However, when I turn the Overclock feature on in the BIOS, I am looking at the same frequency. Bounces around cuz nothing is going on, but it is still between 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz.
So what exactly is the OC feature on the BIOS even supposed to do?

Posting here because I am getting zero replies over on MSI forums.

 

[lvt]

You probably won't get much answers here as OC is a dying hobby.

I have a Gigabyte motherboard with Bios supported OC, from what I remember there is a section in the Bios that allows me to adjust the CPU and RAM voltages and some other things. I once tried to change here and there, Windows goes BSOD and after I restarted the computer everything in the Bios is reversed to default.

 

[TerryLaze]

I do understand what the overclock feature is and what it is supposed to do, what I am asking about is does the MSI 650 Tomahawk board Overclock feature do anything?

With it off I will see my frequency (using Core temp to monitor) bounce around from like 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz. I have no other programs that I am aware of that are controlling the frequency.
However, when I turn the Overclock feature on in the BIOS, I am looking at the same frequency. Bounces around cuz nothing is going on, but it is still between 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz.
So what exactly is the OC feature on the BIOS even supposed to do?

Posting here because I am getting zero replies over on MSI forums.

What are you running when checking the clocks?
You should be running either a heavy single core load or a heavy multicore load, to see if it clocks either higher with it on or off.
Also without knowing the CPU we don't even know if 5.4Ghz is overclocked or throttled speed, a 7950x for example should reach 5.7 at least in light bursty loads.

 

[Misgar]

Unless you load the system with a processor intensive task, you won't see much difference between overclock off or on.

With overclock disabled, run Prime95 and check CPU clock speed (MHz). Make a note of the reading. If you can, monitor the CPU temperature.

With overclock enabled, run Prime95 and check CPU speed again. If it's running at a different frequency and the temperature has increased, you know the overclock is working.

Take care when overclocking if you're not confident. Overclocking can reduce the life expectancy of your CPU, invalidate the warranty or if you're very unlucky, damage components.

Use HWInfo, HWMonitor, AIDA64, etc., to monitor performance.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I do understand what the overclock feature is and what it is supposed to do, what I am asking about is does the MSI 650 Tomahawk board Overclock feature do anything?

With it off I will see my frequency (using Core temp to monitor) bounce around from like 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz. I have no other programs that I am aware of that are controlling the frequency.
However, when I turn the Overclock feature on in the BIOS, I am looking at the same frequency. Bounces around cuz nothing is going on, but it is still between 4.5 to 5.4 Ghz.
So what exactly is the OC feature on the BIOS even supposed to do?

Posting here because I am getting zero replies over on MSI forums.

I'm not really sure what it does either but since fixed clock/voltage overclocks can be unstable and/or risky for processor life it's likely some PBO presets. In which case, you'd not see anything meaningful by watching clocks since the processor is so dynamic in it's operation: constantly boosting and pulling back on clock to control temperature on the cores. And especially so at idle when it's trying to keep as many cores as possible in deep sleep states for power efficiency.

Check some benches to see if it actually has effect: a good one would be Cinebench 20 or 23. Be sure to run it under as identical conditions as possible, one with the OC feature off, one with it on. Monitoring programs especially shouldn't be running. You could also try a game benchmark in a game that's CPU sensitive, and again try and maintain similar conditions for each run.

What's meant by similar conditions is have the same background apps running when you run the BM (preferred none for best score repeatability), run it full screen if you can, make the runs pretty close together so that the room temperature doesn't vary a lot. It can be several degrees warmer in summer afternoons which will make a significant difference with modern, thermally sensitive processors.

And last: get rid of Coretemp. Get HWInfo64, it's much better for Ryzen CPU's and AMD platforms in general.