ASUS Z10PE-D8/D16 WS, Intel Turbo Boost, Possible? How?

[Takuan]

Specs:

ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS

ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS

Intel E5-2699 v3 (dual)

Samsung DDR4 (16GB x4)

--- Also tried with 8 sticks.

 

Memtest86 full PASS.

Windows 7 and 10 (dual boot)

--- All hardware in Device Manager shows up perfectly.

Latest MB BIOS 4301

 

I am having trouble getting the system to perform as expected as I cannot get it to boost at all. Max 2.3 GHz on all cores in both CPUs no matter what. After fiddling with the BIOS for a few days, searching the net etc. I have gotten it to perform better, but still none of the CPUs are turbo boosting - ever! I seem to have tried "everything" in the BIOS, but I still cannot get the CPUs to boost at all.

 

After loading windows and runing CPU-Z (stress test) and using Hardware Monitor the CPUs both show a load of 100% but none of them show higher than 2.3 GHz.

 

If this is how this motherboard (D8) is supposed to function, then why make CPUs with a base clock of 2.3 GHz and a Turbo Boost of 3.6 GHz? If the dual CPU motherboards doesn't support Turbo Boost? How is it possible to take full advantage of the CPUs and their Turbo Boost? It seems to me that this is a crazy loss of potential power as it just doesn't get utilized.

 

Perhaps the ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS behaves in the same way?

 

Can someone please shed some light on this issue, as it seems ridiculous to put such expensive CPUs in this motherboard, if the full potential cannot be utilized.

 

Thank you very much.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Just lock the multiplier to 36 which should fix your problems, also if you want you can set a static volt for abit of undervolting, and it is a borderline server board but for consumers so there should be some extra options you get in the bios unlike in servers

 

iirc these boards have a xeon boosting feature or something, i suspect its just playing around with the bclk to get a slight boost so try using that and see if freq or atleast performance increases

[Takuan]

2 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Just lock the multiplier to 36 which should fix your problems, also if you want you can set a static volt for abit of undervolting, and it is a borderline server board but for consumers so there should be some extra options you get in the bios unlike in servers

 

iirc these boards have a xeon boosting feature or something, i suspect its just playing around with the bclk to get a slight boost so try using that and see if freq or atleast performance increases

Thank you. I know how to overclock using ASUS' boards, so I do follow you on the multiplier suggestion, unfortunately I have not been able to find such an option in the bios. If so, that would have been easy, but with the options available, my problem persists as described in my first post. On i.e. ASUS X99-E WS there is an option to enable/disable Turbo Boost, but such an option is not in the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS BIOS, or at least I cannot find it. I am also looking for stability, so I don't want to overclock using the BLCK setting. I simply want to utilize the natively built-in Intel Turbo Boost of 3.6 GHz of the CPUs. As mentioned in my first post, I cannot find the option to do so. So either this board does not support Intel Turbo Boost, or I am simply missing something.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Well it is x99 so i guess you could try a turbo mod so the xeons will turbo all the time, i think it involves just removing a microcode called 6f2 from the bios via mmtool iirc though youll have to search for a tutorial on it, since were dealing with an asus board and not a chinese salvage board it should be just as easy as mod bios and flash with the asus update utility

 

I was gonna go mod the files for you but it kept coming up with an "error in saving" although the file did save, id rather not accidentally brick your board, its still pretty easy to unbrick though cause for some reason asus kept using removable bios chips till x99, after that seems like theyve moved to soldered ones, also these bioses are decently large so using a propgrammer like ch341a will still take awhile, for a 1mb bios it already takes like 25s, times that by 16 and now youll be waiting for ~7 minutes

[Takuan]

18 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Well it is x99 so i guess you could try a turbo mod so the xeons will turbo all the time, i think it involves just removing a microcode called 6f2 from the bios via mmtool iirc though youll have to search for a tutorial on it, since were dealing with an asus board and not a chinese salvage board it should be just as easy as mod bios and flash with the asus update utility

 

I was gonna go mod the files for you but it kept coming up with an "error in saving" although the file did save, id rather not accidentally brick your board, its still pretty easy to unbrick though cause for some reason asus kept using removable bios chips till x99, after that seems like theyve moved to soldered ones, also these bioses are decently large so using a propgrammer like ch341a will still take awhile, for a 1mb bios it already takes like 25s, times that by 16 and now youll be waiting for ~7 minutes

The chipset is not X99 on the Z10PE-D8/D16 boards. They use C612, so I am not sure what you are suggesting. I am still looking for the holy grail on enabling the Intel Turbo Boost on this board, or if such a feature is not possible or not available then a confirmation of this from somebody with experience on this board would be greatly appreciated. It just seems crazy to me, that a board supporting dual CPUs would not support Intel Turbo Boost, as that would throw a lot of potential performance in the bin.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

17 minutes ago, Takuan said:

The chipset is not X99 on the Z10PE-D8/D16 boards. They use C612,

Whoops i forgot about that xD

 

i think you can just use throttlestop and manually set multiplier to 36

[Takuan]

2 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Whoops i forgot about that xD

 

i think you can just use throttlestop and manually set multiplier to 36

I cannot find any multiplier option in the BIOS. Either this board does not support Intel Turbo Boost (would be nice if someone who knows this could either confirm or deny it), or I am missing something somewhere in the BIOS.

[unclewebb]

@Takuan For turbo boost to work correctly, make sure the core C states are enabled in the BIOS and set the turbo power limits to the max which is usually 4095W.

 

Run HWiNFO and see if it can report the reasons for throttling. 

[Takuan]

21 minutes ago, unclewebb said:

@Takuan For turbo boost to work correctly, make sure the core C states are enabled in the BIOS and set the turbo power limits to the max which is usually 4095W.

 

Run HWiNFO and see if it can report the reasons for throttling. 

I don't seem to have any throttling issues. I simply want to enable the Intel Turbo Boost which both CPUs are cabable of. The problem is, that I cannot find any such option in the BIOS, and the core C states you refer to, are not something I can find either. It would be great if someone who knows this board and/or have experience with Intel Turbo Boost on this board to share their knowledge to either confirm or deny that this board do or don't support Intel Turbo Boost. If it does support it, then please share your knowledge on how to enable it. Thanks.

[unclewebb]

1 hour ago, Takuan said:

I don't seem to have any throttling issues.

HWiNFO can report the reasons why an Intel CPU is not reaching full speed. For turbo boost to work correctly, the BIOS needs to set the turbo power limits correctly. On most CPUs, HWiNFO can report what the BIOS is setting the power limits too. If the BIOS has a bug and is setting both turbo power limits to 0, this tells the CPU not to use any turbo boost. It could be something simple like this that is holding your computer at its default base frequency.

 

This window shows some of the features that the BIOS has enabled. Check the turbo flag.

 

 

The next window shows what the two turbo power limits are set to.

 

 

If your BIOS does not have any options to adjust these settings then it might be possible to use software when in Windows to try and adjust these. 

 

Here is a list of reasons why an Intel CPU may not be able to reach full speed including turbo boost.

 

[Takuan]

After looking more carefully for the options suggested here by you guys, I started changing random settings in order to see if such options would show up. After some tinkering I finally found some grayed out options looking like the above suggestions. After some more random tinkering the grayed out options became active and woop woop, there they were. I will put the solution here for future reference, in case someone else have the same issue:

 

BIOS (4301) settings:

1. Advanced > Asus Turbo Ratio Lock (ATRL) > [Disabled] (this have to be disabled, or the options from 2-4 will not show up as active.

2. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > Power Technology > [Custom)] (this will enable and show more options)

3. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > CPU P State Control > EIST (P-states) > [Enabled]

4. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > CPU P State Control > Turbo Mode > [Enabled]

 

More options become visible when Power Technology is set to [Custom], but the above are sufficient to enable Intel Turbo Boost.

 

All tested and verified with Hardware Monitor and CPU-Z.

 

Thank you to all of you for taking your time to reply. I very much appreciate it.

Thanks again to you all for suggesting what to look for.

 

Woop Woop.

 

NOTE:

Please be aware, that the Xeon Max Turbo boost listed at Intel Ark is the Max Turbo Frequency for a single core only. The all-core boost will always be lower. For reference Puget Systems made a chart of the all-core boost frequencies, which can be found here (scroll down a bit): https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/Xeon-E5v3-All-Core-Turbo-and-Amdahl-s-Law-759/

[hrnbrain]

On 11/27/2021 at 3:32 PM, Takuan said:

After looking more carefully for the options suggested here by you guys, I started changing random settings in order to see if such options would show up. After some tinkering I finally found some grayed out options looking like the above suggestions. After some more random tinkering the grayed out options became active and woop woop, there they were. I will put the solution here for future reference, in case someone else have the same issue:

 

BIOS (4301) settings:

1. Advanced > Asus Turbo Ratio Lock (ATRL) > [Disabled] (this have to be disabled, or the options from 2-4 will not show up as active.

2. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > Power Technology > [Custom)] (this will enable and show more options)

3. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > CPU P State Control > EIST (P-states) > [Enabled]

4. IntelRCSetup > Advanced Power Management Configuration > CPU P State Control > Turbo Mode > [Enabled]

 

More options become visible when Power Technology is set to [Custom], but the above are sufficient to enable Intel Turbo Boost.

 

All tested and verified with Hardware Monitor and CPU-Z.

 

Thank you to all of you for taking your time to reply. I very much appreciate it.

Thanks again to you all for suggesting what to look for.

 

Woop Woop.

 

NOTE:

Please be aware, that the Xeon Max Turbo boost listed at Intel Ark is the Max Turbo Frequency for a single core only. The all-core boost will always be lower. For reference Puget Systems made a chart of the all-core boost frequencies, which can be found here (scroll down a bit): https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/Xeon-E5v3-All-Core-Turbo-and-Amdahl-s-Law-759/

Hi Takuan

I searched for this info and finally arrived here. 

I am aware this thread is kinda old, but if you can provide some info, it would help me a lot.

So let see if I got this right, after tinkering with the bios as above, you got all the cores of the 2 CPUs to run at 100% with Turbo Boost of 3.6GHz?

Thanks in advance.

[Takuan]

On 6/16/2023 at 7:23 PM, hrnbrain said:

Hi Takuan

I searched for this info and finally arrived here. 

I am aware this thread is kinda old, but if you can provide some info, it would help me a lot.

So let see if I got this right, after tinkering with the bios as above, you got all the cores of the 2 CPUs to run at 100% with Turbo Boost of 3.6GHz?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi hrnbrain

 

Unfortunately not. The Xeons as described on Puget Systems' website, acts differently from the i.e. i5 and i7 etc. desktop cpus. Meaning that the xeon cpus will boost to max on a single core only, and boost all cores at lower clocks. The link to Puget Systems explains it and shows the max boost clocks etc.