12700K - no longer are a couple of cores boosting to 5Ghz

[jamieboo]

Hello folks

I recently updated my Asus Z690 Tuf Gaming Plus Wifi D4 motherboard bios from 1304 to 1504 (avoiding the more recent ones for the moment!) and all seems pretty good, I've noticed slightly improved DPC latency which is good as I use the machine for audio production.
However I notice that none of the cores of my 12700K ever reach 5GHz now. Previously, if under strain, there would always be a couple of cores that would boost to 5GHz, but that doesn't seem to happen now.
I have not set anything differently in the bios to how it was before: XMP 1, but apart from that pretty much stock.
Turbo 3 is still enabled, and I understand that is the thing that would normally allow limited boosting to 5Ghz.
Using Cinebench R23, on multicore the CPU gets to 4.7, and singlecore get's to 4.9 on some cores - which I gather is pretty much typical if Turbo 3 is disabled - but like I said it's enabled.
I can't see any voltage changes anywhere and there problem doesn't seem to be due to thermal throttling.

Maybe I was just imagining a couple of cores hitting 5Ghz in the past! 🙂


Any ideas?


Thanks

[jamieboo]

Can someone please help me with this? I'm a bit stuck!

I've tried using ThrottleStop to see if it could shed any light on what might be going on here.
If I click on the Limits button to try to find out what is limiting my CPU, the box pops up and shows a red 'EDP OTHER' in the Ring column - anyone got any idea what this means!?
ThrottleStop also shows that SpeedStep is enabled, but Speed Shift is disabled. I thought Speed Shift was meant to be the newer, more efficient version.
But in the bios it says they're both enabled.
But it does seem that something somewhere is limiting the performance of my 12700K.

Any ideas?

Thank you

[Nate152]

Hi jamieboo,

I have the 12700KF.

At defaults settings, it should show at least one P-core boosting to 5.0GHz. You may have to put a load on your 12700k to get a P-core to boost to 5.0GHz.

[jamieboo]

Nate152 wrote:
Hi jamieboo,

I have the 12700KF.

At defaults settings, it should show at least one P-core boosting to 5.0GHz. You may have to put a load on your 12700k to get a P-core to boost to 5.0GHz.

Thanks Nate152

I'm pretty ignorant about overclocking and stuff. But before I try that, I would just like to understand what is happening here. What did bios 1504 do to hobble my cpu??

[Nate152]

It shouldn't have done anything.

I'm using HWinfo, if you have that installed, open it and use your pc for a while, then check the maximum values.

Click the pic to make it bigger.

[Bison963]

EDP is the limit for iGpu.

[jamieboo]

Nate152 wrote:
It shouldn't have done anything.

I'm using HWinfo, if you have that installed, open it and use your pc for a while, then check the maximum values.

Click the pic to make it bigger.

Yes, I've been using HWinfo. In fact that's where I first noticed the lack of 5Ghz boost.

Bison963 wrote:
EDP is the limit for iGpu.

No, apparently not related to iGpu. It means Electrical Design Point and in my case relates specifically to CPU throttling. I've been corresponding with the writer of ThrottleStop - the very halpful unclewebb - over on the Linus Tech forum.

But it's still all a bit of a mystery.

I think I might roll back the bios to 1304.
What do you reckon?

[jamieboo]

Hello again folks

So I've still been trying to figure out why my 12700K no longer has a couple of cores boosting to 5Ghz.
I rolled back the bios to 1304.... and that did not solve the issue.
So I've just been aimlessly tinkering and asking inane questions in forums far and wide. No solutions, alas.

Today I went into the bios and changed Performance Core Ratio from Auto to By Core Usage.
This then opened a list of individual options: 1-Core Ratio Limit through to 8-Core Ratio Limit all of which were set, unchangeably, to Auto. (Surely all these sub-options would have been Auto anyway if I had just kept Performance Core Ratio at Auto? Essentially I didn't change anything.)

Anyway, I saved and exited the bios, and restarted.

Opening HWiNFO I immediately saw a couple of cores hitting 5Ghz!
I also saw that PL1 and PL2 had both been raised from the default of 190W to 4095W, and Current CPU Core/Cache Current Limit raised from 364.0A to 511.75A .

I guess this is all good. But it's weird, isn't it?
Why did simply opening up the Performance Core Ratio options - and then not actually changing anything, as far as I know - have this significant change?

Does this make any sense?

[Ribellu]

You have to go back to one of the two very first BIOS to have a core on the maximum frequency of 5Ghz.

[jamieboo]

Ribellu wrote:
You have to go back to one of the two very first BIOS to have a core on the maximum frequency of 5Ghz.

Thanks Ribellu, but I definitely had two cores occasionally hitting 5Ghz just a couple of months ago on 1304.

But what about the odd behaviour I just posted about?
Why did simply opening up the Performance Core Ratio options - and then not actually changing anything, as far as I know - have this significant change?