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I have a Core i3-530 mildly overclocked to 3.16GHz (stock fan and voltages). I'm running a Gigabyte H55M-D2H motherboard. I still play Finaly Fantasy XI and yes, I use the IGP which actually works decently well for the game. When I have EIST, C1E, and C3/C6/C7 enabled in the BIOS, every now and then the game would stutter When it stutters, the CPU usage drops and the FPS drops. Each stutter lasts for 0.5 to 3 seconds or so. I did a bunch of tests to figure out what was going on. The following results were the ones I found interesting:
1) The stuttering only occurs when in windowed mode, if I play the game full screen, no stuttering.
2) I installed a discrete GPU and disabled the IGP, but left EIST, C1E and C3/C6/C7 all enabled. The stuttering went away in windowed mode.
3) I reverted back to the IGP and disabled C3/C6/C7 only (left EIST and C1E enabled), stuttering went away in windowed mode.
So I'm wondering what C3/C6/C7 mode is doing to the Core i3? One guess is that whatever C3/C6/C7 is doing to the CPU is adversely affecting the GPU as well since they are more tightly integrated on the Clarkdales. Also, I'm guessing the thing causing C3/C6/C7 to kick in playing the game in windowed mode because of some overlay issue. So here are some questions I have
1) do you think this is something that can be fixed by an Intel IGP driver or am I going to have to leave C3/C6/C7 disabled to play the game?
2) Does leaving C3/C6/C7 disabled have any drawbacks?
3) And as a unrelated question, after fiddling with my OC settings, I noticed my QPI speed has decreased from 2.93GHz to 2.66GHz according to CPU-Z. Will this have any adverse affects?
I bumped up the base clock from 133 to 166 and
- changed the CPU multiplier from 22 to 19
- changed the mem multiplier from 10 to 8 , to maintain 1333MHz memory
- changed the QPI multiplier from 44 to 32, this was the highest I could go without going over the stock QPI frequency, is it ok to go over the stock QPI frequency?
1) The stuttering only occurs when in windowed mode, if I play the game full screen, no stuttering.
2) I installed a discrete GPU and disabled the IGP, but left EIST, C1E and C3/C6/C7 all enabled. The stuttering went away in windowed mode.
3) I reverted back to the IGP and disabled C3/C6/C7 only (left EIST and C1E enabled), stuttering went away in windowed mode.
So I'm wondering what C3/C6/C7 mode is doing to the Core i3? One guess is that whatever C3/C6/C7 is doing to the CPU is adversely affecting the GPU as well since they are more tightly integrated on the Clarkdales. Also, I'm guessing the thing causing C3/C6/C7 to kick in playing the game in windowed mode because of some overlay issue. So here are some questions I have
1) do you think this is something that can be fixed by an Intel IGP driver or am I going to have to leave C3/C6/C7 disabled to play the game?
2) Does leaving C3/C6/C7 disabled have any drawbacks?
3) And as a unrelated question, after fiddling with my OC settings, I noticed my QPI speed has decreased from 2.93GHz to 2.66GHz according to CPU-Z. Will this have any adverse affects?
I bumped up the base clock from 133 to 166 and
- changed the CPU multiplier from 22 to 19
- changed the mem multiplier from 10 to 8 , to maintain 1333MHz memory
- changed the QPI multiplier from 44 to 32, this was the highest I could go without going over the stock QPI frequency, is it ok to go over the stock QPI frequency?