x79 Extreme9 + I7-3930K with speedstep enabled. Need help

[slayer68]

I've got a rock solid 4.4 ghz overclock on my Extreme 9 with a 3930K processor. I have no issues except with one game: DCS:A-10C After about a week of troubleshooting I discovered that during gameplay my processor downclocks to 1200Mhz seemingly randomly and it causes stuttering when it shifts down. The weird thing is it only happens when there are explosions and lots of action on the screen. If I turn off speedstep completely there is no issue at all.

Also it will do this at stock clockspeed without any overclocking at all....the speedstep should't be ramping down when there is more processing going on????

The main problem is that I don't want to have my processor running full blast 100% of the time. I spend a lot of time browsing the web etc in addition to gaming.

On my I7-920 it worked flawlessly. When would play DCS:A-10C it would jump to 4Ghz and stay there , then ramp back down after I left the game. With this new system it seems the game hardly loads the processor up so it drops and it ALWAYS happens when there are explosions on the screen causing lag and stutters.

I've tried enabling /disabling various C states and such but there are a daunting amount of options compared to my old 920.

Not sure if this is a BIOS issue or some setting that I can change. I've read somewhere in my searches of something similar that was fixed in the BIOS update but can't find it now..

I updated to the 1.98C beta BIOS but no change. really a strange issue...

[kwokfc]

Re: x79 Extreme9 + I7-3930K with speedstep enabled. Need help

1) Have you try to put a fan over the vrm? Sounds like a vrm overheats and throttled down.-->If you haven't done that, good first step.
2) What is your cpu temp running at idle and load? Cpu will throttled down/system shut down if cpu overheated. In addition, how much voltage on the cpu?
3) Disabling C-state(s) help stabilizing your overclock. Do you see your system throttle down with all C-states disabled?
4) Did you turn on PLL overvoltage? Try set to Level 3 to begin with.
5)From my experience on the X79 extreme 4 and 7, disabling C states might help to lower clock/power, but temperature wised, not a lot of gain. I always see 1 or 2 cores constant hovering 40% to maintain dynamic clocking.-->so, unless you really want it, keep them on..If you want no hassle, leave them off.

[wazza300]

Re: x79 Extreme9 + I7-3930K with speedstep enabled. Need help

did you try raising all the turbo limits to match your cpu multiplier? maybe this is why its downclocking,dont know much about x79 boards but worth a try,also to save time and the hassle tried simply switching power profiles in windows power saving options switch to high performance then cpu shouldnt throttle down,when finished gaming switch back to balanced profile and cpu will throttle again,plus it saves having to go into the bios

[slayer68]

Re: x79 Extreme9 + I7-3930K with speedstep enabled. Need help

I'm pretty sure the CPU isn't throttling due to thermals. I can run Prime 95 (12 threads, small FFT) and the CPU only gets to 57C at the most. I'll have to try the Load line calibration at level 3 and see what happens. Right now its on auto.

I did set my power profile in Windows (7 x64) to high performance. The problem might be fixed but I don't know how. I disabled SpeedStep but have the option for OS power control enabled. I also enabled all the C states and it seems to be working the way I want. When I game now it doesn't drop the multiplier, all cores ramp up to 4.4 ghz and stay there, when I'm just browsing the web or doing email it's droping to 12x multiplier ( 1200mhz) which is what I want.

I guess I was under the mistaken assumption that disabling speedstep would not let the processor downclock at all ( and it didn't seem to until I enabled those other options above) I thought it had to be enabled to take advantage of any power saving features. Maybe someone with more knowledge can tell me how it really works as I just made assumptions based on how my old 920 worked.