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OverClock w/SpeedStep?

L

LstBrunnenG

Supreme [H]ardness
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I remember seeing an Intel OCing guide where the first thing the author advised the reader to do was to disable SpeedStep.

One of the things I loved about Socket 939 overclocking (when it worked) was that I could leave CnQ on, scale up the system bus, and the multiplier and voltage on my CPU would automatically drop when I wasn't using it, saving power and heat significantly.

Is it possible to do something similar in Intel setups? Thanks in advance!
 
I have never disabled EIST/C1E when overclocking.
 
I disabled SpeedStep to OC and find the stable maximum.

Then I enable SpeedStep after. No issues at all.
 
SpeedStep has an unfairly bad reputation; everyone seems to think it will prevent overclocking, or even make the computer slow down. I use it myself; however, I believe that on most Intel boards, the voltage does not drop if you set a fixed voltage in the BIOS (which is pretty much required for overclocking). The multiplier will still drop though, which helps a little.

That's not universally true, and maybe the best advice is to turn off SpeedStep while you find an overclock, then try turning it back on and see if it's okay.
 
hrm i may re-enable it now. it sent weird readings to some of my hardware monitoring apps at the time so i nixed it.
 
I'm been running speedstep while overclocked, and never had a problem with it.
 
Yeah speedstep is a hit or miss, as another poster above states. There are some boards that fix the voltage and only change the multi, while there are other boards that change the voltage as well. This may cause instability for an OC.

The real questions is whether or not you run your rig 24/7. If yes, then it really makes a difference to experiment with speedstep. If not, IMO it's not worth the trouble if you're only using your maching for a few hours at a time, as most likely you're not sitting idle looking at your machine and doing nothing so it can drop it's clockspeed by 50%.

Remember speedstep only clocks down when it senses that your processor is idle, if you're gaming alot or encoding, I don't see the benefit.
 
I've been able to keep it on with my last 2 overclocks.

It depends on 2 things.
1. Does your motherboard NOT drop the voltage when the clocks drop. (important) If not... then
2. Do you have a high multiplier (not too close to the 6x min. speedstep) so IF it does drop the voltage you actually go do to a slow enough speed that can get by with less voltage.
 
In my case, if I enable EIST I bluescreen at boot - with it disabled, I can run Prime95 for over 24 hours and have zero unusual/unexplained behavior. I leave it disabled.

If nothing else, I highly reccomend you disable it while you're finding your max stable speed/minimum voltage and then once you're sure you've found those, enable it. If it then causes problems, turn it back off. Why enable a variable you have no control over while trying to find your max - it makes no sense to me...
 
chrisf6969 said:
I've been able to keep it on with my last 2 overclocks.

It depends on 2 things.
1. Does your motherboard NOT drop the voltage when the clocks drop. (important) If not... then
2. Do you have a high multiplier (not too close to the 6x min. speedstep) so IF it does drop the voltage you actually go do to a slow enough speed that can get by with less voltage.
Click to expand...

It's perfectly fine if it does drop the voltage. Lower clock speeds = lower voltage required. If you want to tweak it, use RMClock. I've got it set at the lowest voltage it lets me pick (1.1625V) @ 6.0x and it's perfectly stable. You can also lower the step-up delay and raise the step-down delay. If you don't use such power saving features, you are only wasting energy.
 
Are there any good guides on this? I am very experienced with AMD systems (I have built over 100 of them) but I moved to a Q9550 for my home machine last week since the price was right less than $500 for CPU + 6GB of memory + Asus P5Q pro + Antec 650W ps and also AMD does not have a CPU that is as fast as this at any price. What I am mainly interested in is speedstep + overclocking under linux. One quick question: Is 2.03GHz the slowest speedstep for the Q9550? AMD cpus go down to 1Ghz and have steps every 200Mhz. Is there really only 3 steps?
 
Speedstep has never messed with my overclocking. In fact I rather like the fact that my system runs underclocked when I'm just doing mundane things, and running at full speed when I want it. It's a good way to get longevity out of your oc'ed components.
 
depending on your chip and OC, sometimes speedtest results in a higher than stock speed, even in low power mode. *!*
I think the"low power" multi on i7's is x12, rather than x6 for the core chips...
 
My system runs at around 100W at idle (depending on how many drives are spun down) with speedstep. I would like to keep that since the machine is never turned off but also hit 3Ghz when I am doing heavy processing.
 
C1E is the key to dropping the mulitplier.

So the trick for Intel chipsets is to disable C1E and Speedstep (EIST) and find your OC without the bother of stuff "jumping" around while you test etc. . Then turn them back on to save a bit on the power bill and keep the stress on the hardware to a mininum. Works for most people but no warranty implied.

If you are using some insane CPU voltages you might have issues with EIST working like it should and some bios just do not implement these things well. Sleep modes tend not to work correctly for example when OCing regardless of EIST etc. so as with all things, your mileage may vary.
 
Thank You. Sounds reasonable. It looks like I will have to read the bios section of my manual before I attempt this..
 
What's the difference between C1E and Speedstep then? Right now mine are on without issues. Drops my 3.6 OC to 2.4 at idle.
 
BillParrish said:
C1E is the key to dropping the mulitplier.

So the trick for Intel chipsets is to disable C1E and Speedstep (EIST) and find your OC without the bother of stuff "jumping" around while you test etc. . Then turn them back on to save a bit on the power bill and keep the stress on the hardware to a mininum. Works for most people but no warranty implied.

If you are using some insane CPU voltages you might have issues with EIST working like it should and some bios just do not implement these things well. Sleep modes tend not to work correctly for example when OCing regardless of EIST etc. so as with all things, your mileage may vary.
Click to expand...

Good info Bill thanks. I have been in the "anti-speedstep" camp for a while because back in the day I had a lot of issues with it. It seems that speedstep has really improved lately and should properly raise the multiplier back to normal when I'm demanding processing power.
 
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