Rendering + Gaming: Multicore Enhancement vs Sync All Cores vs Intel Specifications

[rogforum]

Asus Hero VI
Bios 1603
i7 4790K

Basically I'm wondering what the practical difference is between:

• Multicore Enhancement ON
  
• Multicore Enhancement OFF but Sync All Cores ON
  
• following Intel Turbo Specs (each core with its own Turbo setting)
  

I'd like to oc the 4790K on my Hero VI. My cooling solution is extensive air cooling and I'm not looking to push the hardware to the limit. Instead, I'm looking for a stable 24/7 oc setting for home entertainment, gaming and video rendering. I have read pretty much every guide there is and thanks to this forum I have achieved different kinds of oc variants.
Now I'm wondering which variant is actually the best for my situation and unfortunately I haven't found ANY guide that really goes into this. The only article I found on Multicore Enhancement for example, is this one: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6214/multicore-enhancement-the-debate-about-free-mhz

I'm going to list what I need and what I think the best option is. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

• Home Entertainment: means the CPU and cooling needs to throttle down when watching a movie. So I need EIST and C States. I also need to set Processor Energy States in Windows Energy Management.
  
• Rendering: most rendering programs use multiple cores really well. I'm not sure if slightly oc'd synched cores or slightly oc'd cores non-synched (Intel) are better.
  
• Gaming: most games still can't use multiple cores well. So here the difference between 4 slightly oc'd synched cores (Asus Turbo variant) and 1 heavily oc'd core with 3 lesser oc'd cores (Intel Turbo variant) might be huge. My guess is that if a program can utilize multiple cores well, it might benefit from synched cores. If it doesn't know how to utilize them well or runs on only 1 core, 1 heavily oc'd core is better, IF the program actually uses that core.
  

So what do you think? I don't really care about benchmark scores, which unfortunately most OC guides aim for. I'm talking real life 24/7 benefits in rendering and games. And since you can't rely on games to actually make the best use of multiple cores, it might be a big difference in how you set up your cores. Actually it might be more important than the additional MHz you get out of OCing.

[Nate152]

Most of the newer games can use 4 cores and there are a few that even take advantage of hyperthreading (8 threads). Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 are two games that take advantage of hyperthreading and there may even be a few more.

I say sync all cores and overclock it as far as you can with comfortable temps. I run my cpu constantly at 5.0GHz with all cores synced and hyperthreading enabled. My board doesn't have the multicore enhancement feature but I would leave it enabled.

What cpu cooler do you have? I can help you overclock your cpu if you'd like some help.

Click on the picture a couple times so you can read it.

[rogforum]

I am stable using Adaptive Vcore and 4.7 Sync Cores. Unfortunately I can't rely on this and need to find stable voltage manually due to this:
https://communities.intel.com/thread/54032?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1800828/intel-temperature-guide.html
I reached 100° instantly on Prime newer thant 2.6. Even without any OC I'm reaching almost 100°!

According to this thread http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2361942 a lot of rendering programs (like Handbrake, which I use) and even some games make use of AVX.
So I'm perfectly stable on 4.7 and even higher up to 4.9 without going to 1.4 Vcore and have really nice temperatures - as long as no application uses AVX. As soon as these instructions hit, my CPU is about to kill itself.

I'm afraid I have to set voltage manually, can't make use of Adaptive voltage at all and maybe I even have to forget about the slightest OC.

This is a real downer for me and not at all what I had in mind when I bought this mainboard and processor...

[Nate152]

If you can hit 4.9GHz under 1.40v with comfortable temps that's great, you have a very good overclocking cpu. The AVX insructions does shoot temps through the roof, you could give the realbench stress test a try I know your temps will be lower using that.

http://rog.asus.com/rog-pro/realbench-v2-leaderboard/

Try and stay away from programs that use the AVX instructions. I'm not aware of any game that uses AVX but if there are some that do, temps shouldn't be real bad as a game doesn't put 100% load on your cpu.

You could try using offset instead of adaptive if it's giving you trouble or just let it in manual mode like I do. 🙂

You could try updating the bios to the latest version if you didn't already to see if it helps with the adaptive mode.