Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Always On?

unclewebb

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 21, 2006
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I've always had this suspicion that Intel SpeedStep is always on regardless of bios settings.

A lot of programs were saying it was On when CPU-z 1.39 kept saying it was Off. Now CPU-z 1.40 shows that it is On even with it turned off in the bios on my Asus P5B Deluxe.

This screen shot was taken with both versions of CPU-z running at the same time.

cpuzjl7.png


It is set to Home/Office Desk in the Power Options -> Power Schemes which is supposed to set it to full speed, all the time but it doesn't seem to.

What's the real truth? Are other users seeing the same thing?
 
Mine (CPU-Z 1.40) shows it running full speed (333*9) and I had the task manager open also sayin that there was 0% cpu usage.
 
I've had issues with CPUz for a while now.

This next screen shot is even harder to explain.

cpuz139nu3.png


With two different instances of CPUz v.1.39 running on my computer at the same time, one version reports SpeedStep is Off and one reports it is On. CPUz on the left is running from a directory on my hard drive and the one on the right is running from a directory on a CD.

Exact same program, both running at the same time but different results. Definitely a head scratcher.
 
With the Speedstep on my old laptop I had to set the power profile to "Always On" to get Speedstep to turn off. The other settings don't turn it off.
 
I have an E4300 on an intel D975XBX2 that does the same thing, even with EIST disabled and power mode set to always on. I also have an X6800 on an EVGA 680i and it doesn't exhibit this behavior at all.
 
I was going to write the same thing.. I just put together my e6600 machine and everytime I load CPUZ it shows me running at 2325 when the bios says that I'm at 3.2..

I'm a bit confused..
 
I'm almost positive Speedstep is on despite being disabled in the BIOS, primarily because I've noticed that the harder I work my system, the faster it feels in general Windows tasks -- if both cores are being stressed at about 80% or so, like when I'm encoding video, it seems that windows open, close, resize, etc much more quickly then if I have nothing running in the background. I've considered that it might be a placebo effect, but even taking that into consideration it seems far more responsive and quick then could be accounted for by delusion.

This is with an e4300 and a rev 3.3 DS3.
 
alwaysonlz7.png

Always On didn't do it for me either.

What I'm trying to get at here is that just because you turn SpeedStep off in the bios and just because you turn SpeedStep off in Power Options and just because CPU-z shows you that you are running at full speed doesn't mean anything.

If CPUz can show that SpeedStep is both on and off at the same time on the same computer then maybe we shouldn't all be blindly trusting it just because it shows us a number that we like to see.

Try the RMClock Utility and see what it says. When it comes to SpeedStep, maybe it's right and CPUz is wrong.

On the Advanced CPU Settings it has an option to toggle EIST but on my E6400 it is locked in the ON position. Can anyone get to this option or are all C2D processors forced to run SpeedStep whether they like it or not.

The thing that I noticed that first made me suspicious was that the Kill-a-Watt meter I use to measure power consumption showed no change when some programs like Cpuz would show SpeedStep kicking in. Is the real reason there no difference in power consumption at idle because it is always enabled by Intel with no way to turn it off?
 
Mine does the same thing when using RightMark CPU clock... It says that EIST is on, and is grayed out. I'm going to be extremely angry if the CPU I just purchased keeps throttling back.

CPUz shows my completely stock not yet overclocked system at 1600mhz. RightMark CPU Clock shows it at 1600mhz but throttled at 2325mhz.

EIST is disabled in my bios and my power options are at always on. What is going on here??
 
Wow.

How is this a recent discovery? I would think that by now, a lot of C2D owners would have realized that the Intel SpeedStep is unchangable to default to always on. That's weird that up until now, only several have noticed.

I myself as a future buyer of the c2d would like to know what's going on as well..
 
On D975XBX2 board, there is a bug with the C1E always enabled even if we disabled it in the BIOS. I may not be surprised if other boards exhibit a similar problem and even Intel doesn't acknowledge the bug :(
 
On my P5W DH, my E6600 is always at full speed. I have it set to Home/Office Desk in the Power management. On my DS3, Speedstep changed my speeds.
 
I'm crippled as well. I disabled speedstep in the bios yet my 3.0GHz E4300 flounders around at 1.6GHz when I'm rendering in 3dsmax or ripping a DVD with DVDShrink. This is BS.
 
On D975XBX2 board, there is a bug with the C1E always enabled even if we disabled it in the BIOS. I may not be surprised if other boards exhibit a similar problem and even Intel doesn't acknowledge the bug :(

Hmm, that's good to know, thanks.
 
How do we go about fixing this? I JUST BOUGHT my evga 680i a1 board.. I also bought the e6600..

I sure as hell didn't pay around $500 to have this thing throttle back on me. I want it at its top speed at all times. You think it's the chips or the motherboards? I will RMA whichever one it is..
 
I had another look at this and the throttling at idle seems to be controlled by both Enhanced Intel SpeedStep ( EIST ) and the Enhanced Halt State ( C1E ) setting.

Turning off EIST and C1E has RMClock and all versions of CPUz reporting that my computer is running at full speed at idle. I thought only SpeedStep was controlling things but it turns out they are working together as a team.
 
I had another look at this and the throttling at idle seems to be controlled by both Enhanced Intel SpeedStep ( EIST ) and the Enhanced Halt State ( C1E ) setting.

Turning off EIST and C1E has RMClock and all versions of CPUz reporting that my computer is running at full speed at idle. I thought only SpeedStep was controlling things but it turns out they are working together as a team.

You always turn EIST and C1E off if possible, otherwise it throttles back.
Thats nothing new.

I have heard a few other people mention this bug over at XS.
One guy fixed it by going back to an older BIOS.
 
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Try the RMClock Utility and see what it says. When it comes to SpeedStep, maybe it's right and CPUz is wrong.

On the Advanced CPU Settings it has an option to toggle EIST but on my E6400 it is locked in the ON position. Can anyone get to this option or are all C2D processors forced to run SpeedStep whether they like it or not.

I screwed around with this and managed to get my clock speed back up to 9X. I'm not sure what I disabled to get it to work, but as this guy said, EIST was locked in the on position and there was nothing I could do there.
 
To stop this behavior, we must disable both EIST and C1E. Both do the same thing as a team. C1E is just a halt state to save power.
 
Leave it on unless it is causing instability in overclocking. It saves power, and you won't notice anything in performance.
 
I'm almost positive Speedstep is on despite being disabled in the BIOS, primarily because I've noticed that the harder I work my system, the faster it feels in general Windows tasks -- if both cores are being stressed at about 80% or so, like when I'm encoding video, it seems that windows open, close, resize, etc much more quickly then if I have nothing running in the background. I've considered that it might be a placebo effect, but even taking that into consideration it seems far more responsive and quick then could be accounted for by delusion.

This is with an e4300 and a rev 3.3 DS3.

On none of my systems is this true. Speedstep is always turned off on mine and the CPU frequency is constant on all the boxes.

P5W DH (Pentium Extreme Edition 965)
eVGA 680i SLI (Core 2 Duo E6600)
Striker Extreme (Core 2 Quad Q6600)

None of those combinations show Speedstep being active at anytime. For systems where it is always left on, it is more than likely the motherboard doing it rather than the CPUs.
 
This isn't exactly the same problem as you guys are reporting, but I can only get EIST to work properly when I am NOT overclocked. I suspect a BIOS limitation with my P5B-E. CPU is E6300.

Since it is summer and I wanted to reduce heat output from the PC, I set it back to stock speeds of 1.8x GHz. When not fully utilized, it runs at 1.6GHz. Works great, but would be nice to use this feature while overclocked as well.
 
If you have EIST and C1E enabled in the bios and you go into the Control Panel and click on Power Options and set it to Minimal Power Management it should throttle itself back by switching the multiplier to 6X at idle even when you're overclocked.

400 MHz X 6 may not be low enough for you but it's better than 400 X 8 or 400 X 9.

Most users aren't going to get a lot of real world benefit from EIST or C1E. They are designed to reduce the MHz at idle but no one has heat issues at idle anyhow. They are also designed to save power but on my P5B Deluxe it doesn't make 1 watt of difference whether it is on or off as measured at the plug.

CPUz 1.40 seems to report throttling more accurately than previous versions. You can also use RMClock to turn C1E on or off.
 
Where in the BIOS do you find C1E to turn it off?

I'm running Intel's "Bad Axe", have turned off EIST but cant find C1E. Can it be called something else? I've checked under every option and cant find it. What exactly is it?

Also, if the latest version of CPU-z is meant to show throttling, than do we assume it's right or wrong that the E6600 is not always running a "full capacity"? Like most others posting here, that's what I want and need to be sure of, though older versions of CPU-z are showing that it is.

Thanks.
 
My testing seems to show that CPUz 1.40 is more accurate at reporting throttling than previous versions.

Run RMClock to confirm what it's showing you.
 
Yeah, I know it does... that's why I need to find out where C1E is so I can disable it, because if the CPU is being throttled, I want to stop it.

So where exactly is C1E and can it be called anything different?
Because I've not been able to find it in the bios.
 
If it can not be found in the Badaxe bios you can always use RMClock to turn it off. That program will start up with Windows if you tell it to.
 
If it can not be found in the Badaxe bios you can always use RMClock to turn it off. That program will start up with Windows if you tell it to.

Ok, so are you saying that in order to disable the C1E feature, that it would have to be done every time Windows boots, hence have the program to run upon every startup?

Or does it just stay disabled once you disable it in the prog?

Have no idea why I cant find it in the bios. Probably being called something else.
 
I read on other forums of people having trouble finding a C1E option with their badaxe boards so there may not be that option.

To turn off C1E using RMClock you would need to run the program, which could be set to turn off C1E upon Windows startup. You can set it to minimize to the system tray and then after boot up you could exit from RMClock and C1E would remain turned off.

I don't know if there is an easier way or simpler program to do the same thing.
 
I can confirm with cpuz 1.40 that C1E off (evga 680i A1) it doesn't throttle down, but with it on, it does, just like it's supposed to.
 
With the MSI P6N you hit F4 in the CPU feature menu you can select disable C1E.
 
unclewebb

I read on other forums of people having trouble finding a C1E option with their badaxe boards so there may not be that option.

To turn off C1E using RMClock you would need to run the program, which could be set to turn off C1E upon Windows startup. You can set it to minimize to the system tray and then after boot up you could exit from RMClock and C1E would remain turned off.

I don't know if there is an easier way or simpler program to do the same thing.

Awww... you're kidding me...

It figures that on Intel's board, the company who makes the CPU that they'd friggin' do that.

Thanks for the info though. If you happen to find out if there is a way on the Bad Axe that someone has found, please let me know.

Does RMClock also do CPU monitoring as well?

Edit: guess I should ask: does the "throttling" of the CPU have any actual effect on performance, either on system in general or in gaming?

I, like others, would prefer the CPU to run full all the time - like someone else stated, heat issues are not a problem these days - but in case I cant get C1E off and/or it doesn't change anything when/if I do, I'd like to know if there's any performance being missed-out-on.

Thanks again for all your help.
 
Hey bro, I'm sure there is a way to cut off the C1E thermo thing in BIOS on the "BadAx). I have 2x P5B Deluxes, a Biostar TForce P965's, AW9D-MAX and an "interim" board Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA and I'm pretty sure all of them have a disable thing in BIOS. You've just got to find out what and if it's called something else. Good luck and please post it. I've heard the BX was a good mobo and, who knows, I may wind up with one. (I want one of those el cheapo Q6600's come Q3)
 
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