Question I9 10900k HWinfo64 reading

[Inver_ShaRingan]

I would like to ask you guys, what's this Effective Clock speed meaning in HWinfo. Because since I turned on Enhanced Boost in MSi Bios, my i9 boosting to 5.1Ghz, and all cores with effective cores boosting to 5.1 even while P95 Small FFT.

But while gaming this Enhanced boots, doesn't seems to do anything, as effective cores showing various values between 1.6ghz-2.8Ghz and 3.65Ghz the highest on two single cores. So that means that the CPU while gaming doesn't actually run at 5.1Ghz all the time ?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Effective clock speed.

Effective clock vs instant (discrete) clock

It has become a common practice for several years to report instant (discrete) clock values for CPUs. This method is based on knowledge of the actual bus clock (BCLK) and sampling of core ratios at specific time points. The resulting clock is then a simple result of ratio * BCLK. Such approach...

www.hwinfo.com

Prime95 Small FFT forces 100% steady state load on all cores. Gaming does not. Gaming is going to be highly variable depending on the specific game and how it has been optimized, or not optimized, for single and multithreaded performance. And I think you mean "efficiency cores" not "effective cores". As far as "enhanced boost", that is simply an automatic overclock configured by MSI and if you don't have really good cooling then you might be seeing lower clock speeds because the system is throttling due to temperature issues.

I'd recommend NOT using any automatic overclocking features like enhanced boost and simply use the default configuration for your CPU which would include Intel speed step and Intel speed shift being both enabled, or disabling Intel speed shift and only leaving Intel speed step enabled. And leaving the setting for the default boost profile enabled. So, turbo boost enabled, hyperthreading enabled and speed step and speed shift (Or at least Intel speed step) enabled.

Or simply reset the BIOS to the factory defaults and then leave it as is aside from configuring any personal settings that need to be configured such as fan curves, etc. More often than not, especially if you don't have really exceptional cooling all the way around including for the CPU and case, those automatic overclocking profiles and such end up hurting more than helping.

Knowing your full hardware specifications would also be helpful.

 

[Inver_ShaRingan]

Effective clock speed.

Effective clock vs instant (discrete) clock

It has become a common practice for several years to report instant (discrete) clock values for CPUs. This method is based on knowledge of the actual bus clock (BCLK) and sampling of core ratios at specific time points. The resulting clock is then a simple result of ratio * BCLK. Such approach...

www.hwinfo.com

Prime95 Small FFT forces 100% steady state load on all cores. Gaming does not. Gaming is going to be highly variable depending on the specific game and how it has been optimized, or not optimized, for single and multithreaded performance. And I think you mean "efficiency cores" not "effective cores". As far as "enhanced boost", that is simply an automatic overclock configured by MSI and if you don't have really good cooling then you might be seeing lower clock speeds because the system is throttling due to temperature issues.

I'd recommend NOT using any automatic overclocking features like enhanced boost and simply use the default configuration for your CPU which would include Intel speed step and Intel speed shift being both enabled, or disabling Intel speed shift and only leaving Intel speed step enabled. And leaving the setting for the default boost profile enabled. So, turbo boost enabled, hyperthreading enabled and speed step and speed shift (Or at least Intel speed step) enabled.

Or simply reset the BIOS to the factory defaults and then leave it as is aside from configuring any personal settings that need to be configured such as fan curves, etc. More often than not, especially if you don't have really exceptional cooling all the way around including for the CPU and case, those automatic overclocking profiles and such end up hurting more than helping.

Knowing your full hardware specifications would also be helpful.

Thanks 😊. At least I know a bit more now 😅.

z490 MSI Gaming Plus

Arctic Freezer II 240 ARGB with pump curve set at 75% at idle and 100% with 0.1S delay for anything above 70C. And I Guess this is quite efficient cooling for this CPU, at least good enough 🙈.

HX1000 Corsair PSU

5700XT red devil

4x8Gb Kinston Fury Beast RGB
3600MT/s cl17 21 21

NZXT H5 Flow with 2x 140 high speed ARGB Be Quiet front, 2x 120 Be Quiet ARGB on radiator, and one the same rear one.
Also one Fan at the bottom of the case (replaced nzxt stock one with RGB high pressure from Arctic.

So the overall I have quite good temps, so I guess I shouldn't be limited thermally with Enhanced Boost, but I don't think I can see any real difference in games and overall, other than higher voltage used to boost it to 5.1Ghz 1.306-1.412V VCore.

What you think ? With this hardware/cooling I can leave this Boost Enhanced turned on and squeeze few extra FPS (CoD, Fortnite etc) or leave this all at stock ?

 

[Darkbreeze]

I mean, if you're not seeing any difference in gaming performance, then there isn't much point to leaving it enabled and subjecting the CPU to higher core voltages for no reason. You might want to run some gaming benchmarks and compare with and without but if it was my system and I wasn't seeing any improvements I'd just stick with the stock configuration. Your hardware is liable to last longer that way anyhow.