Question Low CPU usage during CPU-Z stress test

[slake98]

Hello, a couple weeks ago I was playing rocket league when suddenly my fps was cut in half, it only lasted a couple seconds so I didn't think anything of it, a few days later it happened again, this time it laster a couple minutes instead. I didn't bother doing anything about it because it didn't happen so often and usually went away with a reboot. But now it's stuck like this, so I'm trying to fix it.

I downloaded CPU-Z to check how my CPU was doing and noticed that the Core Speed was at 1400MHz instead of 4000MHz like I would excpect, I read somewhere that it is only low because there is no load on the CPU. So I tried the Stress CPU button under the Bench bar, but it was still only at 1400MHz, no matter how hard I tried to max the CPU load it never went above 1400MHz. The temperature never got above 40 degrees celsius during the stress tests I tried.

I have tried searching for answers to this but so far I've found nothing. If anyone know how I can fix this, or if it's even fixable, I would really appreciate it
Here is a validation dump thing I got from the validate button in CPU-Z: https://valid.x86.fr/mtui5h

 

[mdd1963]

CPU stress test should indeed max out clock speed and % usage during the test...

Double check that WIndows power plan is set to at least Balanced and not Economy.

Install/run HWMonitor during CPU-Z stress to monitor temps throughout the test.

(You might also want to double check that the FX8350 is officially supported on your mainboard's CPU support list, as some of the 125 watt TDP CPUs were too much for some AM3/AM3+ boards....open your case and point a small fan blowing across the VRM circuitry to see if perhaps VRM throttling is occurring or can be prevented...)

 

[slake98]

Thanks for the reply!

I have tried doing the stress test with both balanced and high performance power settings in Windows, same result with both.

When I tried doing the stress test using CPU-Z and monitoring the temps with HWMonitor I got that all cores were working 100% at 1400 MHz and the temperature stabilized at around 27 degrees celsius after around 10 minutes of the stress test.

I am not sure what VRM throttling is, I did however notice that the core voltage shown in CPU-Z is at 0.872V and I read that the default voltage for the AMD FX-8350 should be 1.375V, maybe the problem might be related to this ?

 

[slake98]

CPU stress test should indeed max out clock speed and % usage during the test...

Double check that WIndows power plan is set to at least Balanced and not Economy.

Install/run HWMonitor during CPU-Z stress to monitor temps throughout the test.

(You might also want to double check that the FX8350 is officially supported on your mainboard's CPU support list, as some of the 125 watt TDP CPUs were too much for some AM3/AM3+ boards....open your case and point a small fan blowing across the VRM circuitry to see if perhaps VRM throttling is occurring or can be prevented...)

I did absolutely nothing, but for some reason it's back up to 4 GHz now. I have no clue what caused it in the first place, very strange.