Intel Xeon Speedstep help!

[micjohvan]

Hi everyone, my first post here but I have been lurking around the site for a while.

Recently I was doing a upgrade on my older AMD rig and my friend came to me and offered me a Intel board he was no longer using. Its a ASrock Z77 Extreme 4. I did a bit of research and its a good board so i picked it up off him VERY cheap. (like 25 bucks lol) I went to my local Microcenter to get a i5 or maybe a i7 (depending on price) but they informed me they didnt have any 3rd gen core I's left and that they were all gen4 (new socket type) now. After I talked with the salesman a bit more he informed me they had a couple good Xeons in the back that they didnt display on the floor. Long story short I got a good deal on this Xeon and it seems to be working great on the board as of right now.

The Xeon is a E3-1230v2 that is advertised to run at 3.2GHz. Its a quad with HT.

Now when I have CPUz up it says its running at 1.6GHz which is fine for speed step. However when I am in game or running a minecraft server or something CPUz never shows a increase in the clock speed? I have twin monitors so my second displays the PC health info while the primary is for whatever im doing, so I am able to monitor this stuff while in game without minimizing.

I have had the CPU slightly over 80% load and CPUz still always reports 1.6 Naturally I disabled speedstep to see if that would help and it made no difference at all...

Why is this and how can I fix it? I dont really need full speed but I would like to at least make sure its working correctly. This ASrock board didn't come from the factory with Xeon support and it was added later in a BIOS update. (mine worked out of the box, maybe a version2 or something) But I want to make sure im not crippling my new CPU on this board and I would like to see my CPUz report the increase just so I know its working.

Please let me know if you have any ideas or tips.
Rig specs will follow:

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
Socket LGA1155 69w 8MB
8GB DDR3 1866
ASrock Z77 Extreme 4
2 Nvidia GTX770 in SLi (ref. card by Nvidia)

Running all stock speeds, no overclocks anywhere.

Thanks!

 

[daswilhelm]

what bios version are you running?

 

[Saberus]

Usually only an issue with laptops, but it's worth a shot. Under Control Panel and power options, the advanced settings has a setting for the min and max processing power, if it's not 100% for both, max it out.

 

[micjohvan]

I am unsure of bios ver will check tonight when I get home from work. And I already set the power settings for max performance. It has made no difference as well.

 

[Karsten75]

Did you download and install the Intel .inf drivers for your processor from the Intel website?

 

[micjohvan]

OK SO I FIXED!!!!! I ran the Intel Diagnostic and stress test from their website and my CPU passed with flying colors! 66c under threshold at the end!!! But watching CPUz the clock NEVER went up even under a sustained load of 100%! So I noticed the multiplier was always at 16x on a 100MHz bus speed. I figured I would try to increase the multiplier manually but I didn't think I could as this is not a unlocked CPU. (please excuse my newbness with OC, its been many many years since I did overclocking) Anyways I headed back into the BIOS and noticed there was no option for multiplier but there was something else. something like max core count or load or some such nonsense but it was set at 16... On my hunch I changed it to 24 to see what would happen and BAM! Now CPUz shows 2.4GHz most of the time!

So my final question is this. My CPU is rated to 3.2GHz but has a Turbo up to 3.7GHz. What is the best bet for stable operation to set the multiplier? I'm thinking 30 (3GHz) I know anything over 3.2 is supposed to be turbo and I don't want a melt down. I want good performance but want to keep her below the danger line by a decent margin.

 

[CTurbo]

The 1230v2 has a base clock of 3.3ghz and a turbo clock of 3.7ghz. Your Z77 should allow to to set the multi as high as 33 and that is where you should set it. The fsb should be set at 100mhz. The 1230v2 runs really cool compared to most Ivy chips. Even the stock cooler, assuming it's installed correctly, will easily keep the temps down. You can disable speedstep if you want, but make sure turbo is enabled.