Turbo Boost not working (but enabled)

[SuneDK]

Mobo: asus z170 pro gaming
cpu: i7 6700k @stock speeds

I tried various benchmarks, firestrike, heaven and aida64 and never do i see any signs that my computer turbo boosts to the 4200 its supposed to reach according to the BIOS (and stock i7 6700k settings)

Screenshot, you can see CPU utilization is 100% during aida64 test, yet cores remain at 4ghz.

Is it a bios bug? I have the latest one for this mobo.
Is it some different setting? can a cpu itself be faulty in just that area or?
(I know AIDA writes 4200 max, but it never actually showed those numbers on any software during any tests)

Windows runs high performance profile @100%.
Intel Speedstep tech is enabled in bios.
Intel Turbo boost tech is enabled in bios.

The only thing I've changed in my bios is lowered the voltage to 1.250 (adaptive, offset auto).
And activated an XMP profile for my ram, which set the dram voltage at 1.350.
system runs stable with it during gaming for hours and few short stress tests I've done. (5-10min)

 

[CircuitDaemon]

Turbo will not kick in on all cores, you will only see it in real world applications where not all cores are being used for certain process and single or dual threaded applications could benefit more from a frequency increase rather than more available cores.

Since you are running a synthetic benchmark, all cores are being used. Maybe you could try prime95 and only enable it on 2 cores and see how it goes?

 

[SuneDK]

Turbo will not kick in on all cores, you will only see it in real world applications where not all cores are being used for certain process and single or dual threaded applications could benefit more from a frequency increase rather than more available cores.

Since you are running a synthetic benchmark, all cores are being used. Maybe you could try prime95 and only enable it on 2 cores and see how it goes?

Sorry, I'm new to this testing environment. How do you mean only enable it on 2 cores, turbo boost?
Is that a bios option? or a Prime95 option?

 

[CircuitDaemon]

Your "issue" is on the software side. This tests use all cores by default and turbo won't get enabled on a process that runs on all cores. Prime95 will let you select how many threads to run on before starting the stress test, just select 1 or 2 to see if turbo kicks in. Keep CPU-Z open, you'll see it there. Turbo is a setting from the BIOS and works at somehow a hardware level, the OS has no control over it.

 

[rgd1101]

because of this
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core%20i7-6700K.html

 

[SuneDK]

Your "issue" is on the software side. This tests use all cores by default and turbo won't get enabled on a process that runs on all cores. Prime95 will let you select how many threads to run on before starting the stress test, just select 1 or 2 to see if turbo kicks in. Keep CPU-Z open, you'll see it there. Turbo is a setting from the BIOS and works at somehow a hardware level, the OS has no control over it.

because of this
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core%20i7-6700K.html

It still doesn't kick in turbo boost, even with 1 thread chosen (prime95 26.6)

 

[Thalles Adorno]

It DID kick in. Look in the clocks section: Core 1: Max 4202, Average: 3997.7....... BTW, Turbo will be only used in light applications that are only using 1 or 2 cores and your thermal limit is ok with that

 

[SuneDK]

It DID kick in. Look in the clocks section: Core 1: Max 4202, Average: 3997.7....... BTW, Turbo will be only used in light applications that are only using 1 or 2 cores and your thermal limit is ok with that

Its during idle that the CPU clock speed randomly hops to 4200 for just a second btw, I've noticed.

I tried running single-threaded test as suggested, 1 thread in prime95 and same results, never once saw the core speed go above 4k in cpu-z or the aida current-speed window. Surely with thermals in the 50s, there should be plenty of head-room to push a core to 4200 - is it my voltage set too low at 1.250 adaptive? although offset is auto, so it should give it more if needed.

 

[CircuitDaemon]

Turbo is autonomous. Don't expect it to keep the speed at 4.2GHz, the whole point is to optimize resources in terms of energy and horsepower depending on the application. If you want it to stay high, just disable turbo and overclock the processor from the bios, there's no point on keeping it at a high frequency at all times, but if it really bothers you that much, you can just overclock.

As Thalles said, it did kick in, it's just not the way you might expect it to look like. Sometimes it will boost for less than a second for a single set of instructions or whatever.