Question i7-13700KF only E-Cores are used during games (I wanna force it to work with fixed p-cores speed)

[Extr3m3]

I've bought a new PC with:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-13700KF​
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 AORUS ELITE AX​
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Ventus 3X OC 12GB GDDR6X
• Memory: Kingston Fury Renegade RGB, DDR5, 32 GB, 6400MHz, CL32
• System: Windows 11 (but also tried with Windows 10)

I mostly use my PC for gaming and I noticed that during all games only my E-Cores with 3400 MHz Core Speed are used. I even tried to OC it and it was stable with 4.5-4.6 GHz during stress tests. But I could only see this 4.6 GHz only during stress tests (never in games).

Even without OC but with default CPU boost options enabled in bios and xmp profile enabled I always see 3400 MHz. I guess the possible reason for this is that games which I play are under specific % load required for boost or utilizing P-Cores with higher clock speed.

I would point out that I don't care about power consumption and electric bill. It would be even fine if I could see 4.5-4.6 GHz always (even in idle).

I'm not happy with my new PC because compared to my 7 years old PC (with overclocked CPU) I could only see slight increase of performance in games. But with my old CPU I could OC it and had fixed core speed even in idle (it required from me to disable C states and I had fixed OC clock speed even in idle).

But with my new Intel Core i7-13700KF it doesn't work like that because it has annoying E-Cores. Disabling C-States and some others power consumption options in bios didn't help.

I've seen that many people have issues with those Raptor Lake generations but for some people it works like it should. But couldn't find posts with same CPU and the same motherboard. So maybe issue is for the Gigabyte Motherboard side?

I tried with the newest bios and also with some 2 older versions of bios.
Temperatures are fine even during stress tests after OC (so it's not temps issue).


Any solutions? I tried almost anything but nothing helped. I even consider to sell that CPU and motherboard and to buy some Ryzen with Asus / MSI Motherboard.

 

[mdd1963]

Was this a fresh install, to include all drivers listed at mainboard manufacturer's website (most especially chipset/mainboard drivers!), or a 'just swapped mainboard, cpu, ram, and rebooted' and now I have the following results...? (No slight intended, just seen too many instances of the latter scenario over the years..)

 

[dwd999]

Some of us use a free program called Core Director from bitsum.com.

 

[thestryker]

At stock settings the E-cores can boost to 4.2ghz so if you're not seeing this while gaming it's because they're not being used enough to trigger boost behavior. Generally speaking E-core clocks should have zero impact on gaming performance.

 

[Extr3m3]

Was this a fresh install, to include all drivers listed at mainboard manufacturer's website (most especially chipset/mainboard drivers!), or a 'just swapped mainboard, cpu, ram, and rebooted' and now I have the following results...? (No slight intended, just seen too many instances of the latter scenario over the years..)

It was fresh install first with Windows 10 and all the newest drivers from Gigabyte Motherboard website. Didn't work then I tried Windows 11 fresh install with also the newest drivers from mobo website and it also didn't work.

It never worked for me like it should since I bought it. I could see some similar issues with Raptor Lake and E-Cores on the Internet but I couldn't find any solution for that.

Like I said it works perfectly only under high load (like 90-100% CPU load) but I could only reach it during stress tests (prime95) and some benchmarks (cinebench etc.).

But I've never seen clock speed higher than 3400-3500 MHz during games. I mostly play Counter Strike 2, Escape from Tarkov, Red Dead Redemption 2 and it always stucked around 3400 MHz. But during stress tests I could see stable 4.5 - 4.6 GHz for hours of stress testings.

 

[Extr3m3]

Some of us use a free program called Core Director from bitsum.com.

Do I really need some external apps? Is that only way?

 

[dwd999]

Do I really need some external apps? Is that only way?

Its the way that's easiest for me.

 

[Extr3m3]

At stock settings the E-cores can boost to 4.2ghz so if you're not seeing this while gaming it's because they're not being used enough to trigger boost behavior. Generally speaking E-core clocks should have zero impact on gaming performance.

I've never had any CPU with that technology with P-Cores and E-Cores and it's quite confusing.

Anything that i really want to is just to see 4.6 GHz no matter what I do (gaming, idle etc.) and no matter how high CPU load is. And I could reach it with my old i7 CPU.

 

[thestryker]

I've never had any CPU with that technology with P-Cores and E-Cores and it's quite confusing.

Anything that i really want to is just to see 4.6 GHz no matter what I do (gaming, idle etc.) and no matter how high CPU load is. And I could reach it with my old i7 CPU.

Then you need to change your expectations because there's absolutely no point in running a system like that period let alone one with hybrid core design.

Stock behavior is this:
P-cores max boost is 5.4ghz
E-cores max boost is 4.2ghz

As long as you have a decent motherboard, good power supply and good cooling at stock settings you should see the loaded P-cores running 5.3ghz most of the time during gaming (the 5.4ghz peak is single core). Any time the E-cores are loaded they should be running 4.2ghz.

 

[bill001g]

I would check the windows power setting page it is acting like it is in power saving mode and only using the ecores. It should actually run the game on the fastest cores and run window background crap on the ecores.

Microsoft has been changing these sceens lately but you now have the ability in the advanced option to use a core parking function. The common thing to do is to part the P cores to save power but you can do do the reverse.

Generally nobody overclocks ecores. More the question would be why is your game not using pcores.

 

[Extr3m3]

I was a bit tired yesterday and I made a mistake with core speeds (I wrote earlier core speeds from my old CPU by mistake). Anything in my thread is fine except core speeds.

I have 4.2 GHz on all cores during games. So it looks like only E-Cores are utilized (but E-Cores with some boost).

I have default bios options with XMP profile enabled now.

My issue is showed below:

I can see only 4.2 GHz during all games.

There is a screenshot when I look at my second monitor during games:

CPU-Z showing up also 4.2GHz on P-Cores.

But when I shut down my games I can see often P-Cores Speed between 4.8 and 5.3 GHz. But it's only in idle or during stress tests.

This screenshot showing up CPU-Z / HWiNFO behavior in idle before I run any game:

But it will immediately change when I run any game. (it will change to 4.2 GHz).

 

[thestryker]

So you've got conflicting information showing up in the sensor readings. HWInfo shows everything operating correctly while CPU-Z and your overlay show something different.

 

[Extr3m3]

If something is wrong with my sensor readings, what can I do then?

It's another screenshot during other game (from 2nd monitor). I've also attached HWMonitor:

And also my Power Plan Settings in Windows 11:

 

[thestryker]

You can tell something is wrong at a glance by looking at HWMonitor. E-cores will never reach 5.3ghz yet it's saying the maximum reached clockspeed was.

Reset your Windows power plan settings to default and then set it to balanced and see if anything changes.

How did you go about setting the BIOS to default settings?

 

[Extr3m3]

You can tell something is wrong at a glance by looking at HWMonitor. E-cores will never reach 5.3ghz yet it's saying the maximum reached clockspeed was.

Reset your Windows power plan settings to default and then set it to balanced and see if anything changes.

How did you go about setting the BIOS to default settings?

After changing power plan to default and then to balanced is still the same (nothing changed).

I did BIOS settings reset to default by pressing f6 or f7 (I don't remember exact button). I also think that I had additional bios settings reset when I've updated my BIOS to newest version. But most of the time I performed it by pressing f6 button in BIOS.

I didn't try to clear CMOS yet (if it's matter).

 

[thestryker]

CPU-Z and HWMonitor use the same polling, but I just can't think of any reason they'd be displaying the wrong data like that.

If you're just sitting at the desktop not doing anything do the CPU clockspeeds stay mostly low while periodically boosting? (just trying to get an idea if that is at least working right)

Is this a new Windows installation or did you use your existing one from your old platform?

 

[Extr3m3]

On balanced power plan, when I'm just sitting at the desktop my clock speed is dynamic and it's changing between 1600 and 5300 but when I just open web browser then my clock speed most of the time is 5300 (periodically drops to lower values but most of the time is 5300).

On high performance power plan when I'm just sitting at the desktop I can see 5300 most of the time (periodically drops to 800 and then just back to 5300 but most of the time 5300).

It's fresh installation of Windows 11 (ISO from Microsoft website). Recently I also tried fresh installation of Windows 10 but results in both cases were the same.

 

[thestryker]

It sounds like your system is working correctly then, and personally I'd leave it on balanced as the performance will always be there when you need it. Older systems sometimes that setting made a difference (ex: my sig system is set to high perf to get it to max boost right, but it still clocks down like it's supposed to), but with new ones it doesn't.

I'm assuming the benchmark numbers when running Cinebench are where they should be for that CPU?

I genuinely have no idea why CPUZ/HWMonitor would be displaying incorrectly like as it's something I've never seen or heard of before.

 

[Extr3m3]

Cinebench numbers are fine but during benchmarks and stress test I always can see stable 5.4 GHz even in CPU-Z and HWMonitor. But for some reason I can't see it never in games.

So should I just trust HWmonitor during games? Do you thing that P-Cores are used during games but just sensors in CPU-Z and HWMonitor showing up wrong info? But how to explain that during benchmarks and stress tests CPU-Z / HWMotnitor can display everything correctly but not in games?

How I can be sure that everything is fine and just CPU-Z / HWMonitor showing wrong values. How can I know that HWiNFO is correct in that case?

 

[thestryker]

HWMonitor is showing E-cores reaching 5.3ghz which is not correct and means you can't trust anything it's displaying. Whatever bug is causing that is likely the same thing impacting CPU-Z's display.

Install Intel's XTU and see what that displays (I haven't used it on my 12700K as it's running Linux now so I don't have first hand how it shows hybrid cores) for realtime information I believe it shows P-core clock.

 

[Extr3m3]

XTU showing up similar values to HWiNFO.

Screenshots from XTU while playing games:

 

[thestryker]

It seems pretty safe to say that HWMonitor/CPU-Z are just wrong then, but I really wish I had any clue for you as to why.

 

[Extr3m3]

Ok then I will have to trust to HWiNFO and XTU readings. If you will have any clue in the future what could cause bugs in CPU-Z / HWMonitor then just write me.

Thank you for your help.