No idea what's happening.

pgwalsh

pgwalsh

Gawd
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Messages
698
Hi all.

I've been trying to overlock my 2600k and can't seem to do it properly or something is being reported wrong. I don't know if it's my BIOS or my reporting tools. What's happening is I'm setting up my CPU frequency etc to 4.4Ghz and I have turbo off, but my software is reporting 5.9Ghz. I've tried several different apps and they all report the same. I'm using an Corsair H100 cooler. I'm running Linux Mint 17.

I've read a lot of different forums including this one and followed what others have done, but then I get this crazy reporting of 5.9. I feel like the BCLK and Turbo are not behaving properly in the bios. At 4.3 idle the cooler fans are normal, but once I start encoding with Handbrake, that's when the CPU spikes and shows that it's going to 5.9. However at IDLE I see it at 1.6.

Here are the specs:

GA-Z68XP-UD3 with U1J(UEFI BIOS)
Intel Core i7 2600K
Coarsair H100
Corsair Carbide Series 400R Mid Tower
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile PC3-12800 16GB
Samsung 840 SSD

Advanced Frequency Settings:
CPU/PCIe Base Clock 100.00MHz
Processor Graphics Clock: 1350 Auto
CPU Clock Ratio: 34
Extreme Memory Profile: Disabled
System Memory Multiplier: 13.33 Auto
Memory Frequency: 1333MHz

Advanced CPU Core Features
Internal CPU PLL Overvoltage: Enabled
Intel Trubo Boost Tech: Disabled
CPU Core Enabled: 4
Hyper-Threading: Auto
CPU Enhanced HALT (C1E): Disabled
C3/C6 State Support: Auto
CPU Thermal Monitor: Auto
CPU EIST Function: Auto

Advanced Voltage Settings
CPU Vcore: 1.350V
Dynamic Vcore (DVID): 0.000V Auto
QPI/Vtt Voltage: 1.050V Auto
CPU PLL 1.805V
System Agent Voltage: 0.935V
DRAM Voltage: 1.500V Auto
DRAM Voltage Referencee: 0.750V Auto
DRAM Termination 0.750V Auto
Data Reference (CHA) 0.750V Auto
Address Reference *(CH A) 0.750V Auto
Data Reference (CH B) 0.750V Auto
Address Reference (CH B) 0.750 Auto

BIOS Features
Limit CPUID Maximum: Disabled
Execute Disable Bit: Enabled
Intel Virtualization: Enabled.


The bios is reporting the following:
BIOS Version U1J
BCLK: 100.31MHz
CPU Freqency: 4312.73MHz
Memory Frequency: 1337.58MHz
CPU TEMP: 37.0 C


Any guidance or help is appreciated.
 
Ok.. Well I think I may be onto something. Linux has software scaling and when I looked it has a max of 5.9GHz and a min of 1600GHz. :eek: Now I have to figure out how to change these settings.
 
The software scaling just uses the values obtained from the hardware, afaik.

I don't know about Intel but, on my AMD system, if I have AMD Cool 'n' Quiet enabled then /proc/cpuinfo will lie about my frequencies (It'll tell me the default bclk*multi, which ends up being a lot lower than my actual frequency since I increased my bclk. I know it's lying because of this line in dmesg: "tsc: Detected 4895.694 MHz processor", whereas cpuinfo says 3600MHz under load). After disabling that, I get the actual frequency in cpuinfo, but I leave it enabled since it doesn't really affect stability.

How exactly are you setting it to 4.4GHz? 34 * 100 = 3.4GHz, and I don't see any other settings that would change that number...but then I've never messed with overclocking on an Intel motherboard before.
 
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actually it's 44. I must have just typed the wrong number.

Should I be disabling EIST? I figured if I did that then it would run full speed all the time.

My temps right now are around 50 to 52º.
 
If it's the same as C'n'Q, then it would run full speed all the time (why I re-enabled it). My temps don't increase, however, unless the CPU is under load (regardless of whether C'n'Q is enabled or not). That may be a characteristic of this particular model APU, or AMD processors in general--regardless, Intel processors may behave differently.

You could try it at a lower voltage/clock first if you're worried about temps.
 
Nobu said:
If it's the same as C'n'Q, then it would run full speed all the time (why I re-enabled it). My temps don't increase, however, unless the CPU is under load (regardless of whether C'n'Q is enabled or not). That may be a characteristic of this particular model APU, or AMD processors in general--regardless, Intel processors may behave differently.

You could try it at a lower voltage/clock first if you're worried about temps.
Click to expand...

Ok... Once this encoding job is done, I'll give it a shot. I'm not bothered by 50º temps.

Thanks for your help.
 
No problem. Found a post on overclock.net that's somewhat related:
dinosaur said:
In fact Linux (tested with v3.4 and v3.5) seems to completely *ignore* the C-state settings in the BIOS (i.e. when all C-states are disabled in the BIOS, Linux is still using them) and also it ignores the change of the multiplier that was set from the BIOS (for example from x33 to x40), using only the hard-coded ACPI P-states for frequency scaling.
Because of the latter reason (hard coded ACPI P-states), I had to disable Intel Enhanced Speedstep from the BIOS, which prevents Linux from using it and from locking the CPU to its stock x33 multiplier (you can also compile the kernel without Speedstep support and it will have the same result than disabling Speedstep from the BIOS).
Click to expand...
He then goes on to describe how you can effectively force the CPU to stay in Turbo mode. Thought you might be interested.

Edit: (searched "EIST intel overclock linux" minus quotes, in the goog. First page...I attribute it to years of searching for solutions to my Linux woes. lol)
 
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I figured it was reporting the wrong information. What you've posted exceptionally confirms this because no way am I going to get a 5.9GHz overlock, unless, of course, the overlocking gods are in my favor.

I'll play with disabling EIST. I could recompile a kernel, but always a pain when you have a new one. Maybe I'll write a bash script that'll have my defaults.

One nice thing is that the current overlock is really speeding up my encoding jobs and that's what I wanted.
 
If you want it to run Turbo all the time, just add "intel_idle.max_cstate=0 processor.max_cstate=1" to your kernel command line (in your grub config, or whatever you use). Same result as removing ACPI_PROCESSOR from the kernel, without losing the other important features (like thermal zone throttling); paraphrasing him, here. If you want correct information reported from tools like /proc/cpuinfo, I'm not aware of a solution other than to disable SpeedStep (EIST).

I just figure it's not important, unless I'm benchmarking and want an accurate representation of the platform I'm using. Of course, it's fun to show people how my '4c' "3.2GHz" processor can come close to a 4c/8t 2.72GHz I7-3720QM or even a 4c/8t 3.40GHz I7-3770 in single-threaded workloads (cinebench R15.0; 114 vs 122 and 138, resp.). In multi-threaded workloads it's only 50% the speed of the i7-3770, which is about right for half the cores...well, for a 3.2GHz processor, anyway. lol
 
Nobu-

Thank you for your help. Currently I have fixed the issue with cpufreq-set --min and --max. Everything seems to run the same, but it displays the frequency arbitrarily I guess. This problem has been noted by other Linux Mint users, but for each person it's slightly different. That beings said, it's not happening in Ubuntu 14.04, so it's a Mint kernel issue.

I knew a guy from Japan whose name is Nobu.

Cheers

Peter
 
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