CPU speeds fluctuate rapidly when gaming

[Omie]

I've noticed that my CPU (i7 7700k) speeds fluctuate a lot when gaming in for example Valorant. In task manager, I see it fluctuating from 2Ghz, to 3, to 4, etc. Is this normal? When gaming though shouldn't it stay locked to my turbo speed? I'm getting massive stuttering in Valorant and wondering if this could be the cause? In my BIOS I have no overclocks and disabled Asus's multicore enhancement as well. CPU core ratio is also set to "auto".

 

My temps are all normal. I did enable asus's multicore enhancement and set cpu core ratio to "sync all cores". When I did that all my CPU cores stayed at 4.5Ghz when gaming and I didn't notice any stuttering. Although not sure if it's safe to have it on. I monitored my temps and my CPU never goes past 70C, GPU doesn't go past 65C.

[SorryBella]

15 minutes ago, Omie said:

When gaming though shouldn't it stay locked to my turbo speed?

In AMD, yes. But in Intel, turbo boosts are limited not by temperatures but by time, usually around 50-58 seconds. MCE disables said time limit and only rely on thermal throttling to slow the CPU down.

 

16 minutes ago, Omie said:

I monitored my temps and my CPU never goes past 70C, GPU doesn't go past 65C.

thats very very safe for the CPU and GPU.

[Omie]

3 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

In AMD, yes. But in Intel, turbo boosts are limited not by temperatures but by time, usually around 50-58 seconds. MCE disables said time limit and only rely on thermal throttling to slow the CPU down.

 

thats very very safe for the CPU and GPU.

Hmm ok, so could the CPU speed fluctuations be the cause of the stuttering I get? I'm debating on just turning on Asus's MCE and setting CPU core ratio to sync all cores. As long as my CPU clocks still throttle down when idle I am ok with it, but not sure if it will.

[SorryBella]

46 minutes ago, Omie said:

I'm debating on just turning on Asus's MCE and setting CPU core ratio to sync all cores.

how many hours do you have youre willing to waste? if the answer is "a lot", then i would highly recommend you to overclock manually and then downvolt it. If you dont, just use MCE.

[SimplyChunk]

46 minutes ago, Omie said:

Hmm ok, so could the CPU speed fluctuations be the cause of the stuttering I get? I'm debating on just turning on Asus's MCE and setting CPU core ratio to sync all cores. As long as my CPU clocks still throttle down when idle I am ok with it, but not sure if it will.

Setting these will be fine.  Even though it won't clock down during idle times the chip won't be chugging down the watts at idle..you can see this for yourself with HWinfo or Afterburner.  You'll only draw big watts when you're under a load.  I ran my 6600K locked at 4.5 for years and she's still kicking in the same board to this day

[Omie]

10 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

how many hours do you have youre willing to waste? if the answer is "a lot", then i would highly recommend you to overclock manually and then downvolt it. If you dont, just use MCE.

Yeah, I dipped into the OC field a while back but just not my thing lol

 

6 minutes ago, YouSirAreADudeSir said:

Setting these will be fine.  Even though it won't clock down during idle times the chip won't be chugging down the watts at idle..you can see this for yourself with HWinfo or Afterburner.  You'll only draw big watts when you're under a load.  I ran my 6600K locked at 4.5 for years and she's still kicking in the same board to this day

I see, my only question is if MCE is enabled + sync all cores, what happens to Intel Speed Step/Speed Shift? If enabled, wouldn't that clock the CPU down when idle? I don't think MCE/sync all core settings override Intel speed step/speed shift unless they are disabled.

[SimplyChunk]

7 minutes ago, Omie said:

Yeah, I dipped into the OC field a while back but just not my thing lol

 

I see, my only question is if MCE is enabled + sync all cores, what happens to Intel Speed Step/Speed Shift? If enabled, wouldn't that clock the CPU down when idle? I don't think MCE/sync all core settings override Intel speed step/speed shift unless they are disabled.

I never used to touch speed step or speed shift options on my MSi board.  Just used to switch it to all core and set the multiplyer to 45.  It took a while of fiddling to find the right voltage (I think when i very first did it to find my settings i followed a tweaktown flow chart on how to overclock the cpu)  But once they were all dialed in it was fine.  Even after having to clear the bios.  It was just..right..set that to that and that to that and i was good to go.

 

You'll find the guide here

https://www.tweaktown.com/guides/7481/tweaktowns-ultimate-intel-skylake-overclocking-guide/index.html

 

[Omie]

4 minutes ago, YouSirAreADudeSir said:

I never used to touch speed step or speed shift options on my MSi board.  Just used to switch it to all core and set the multiplyer to 45.  It took a while of fiddling to find the right voltage (I think when i very first did it to find my settings i followed a tweaktown flow chart on how to overclock the cpu)  But once they were all dialed in it was fine.  Even after having to clear the bios.  It was just..right..set that to that and that to that and i was good to go.

 

You'll find the guide here

https://www.tweaktown.com/guides/7481/tweaktowns-ultimate-intel-skylake-overclocking-guide/index.html

 

Thanks, so I assume you left speed step/shift enabled as that was the default? And I might just do MCE option and call it a day. As long as it doesn't do too much harm to my system lol. My set up is 4 years old now, my 1080ti died on me but my friend let me borrow his 3070, so I'm rocking it with my 7700k.

[Mister Woof]

CPU will speed up/down as needed and it's the way it's supposed to behave