CPU clock

[JustinWayne]

Hey yall, so my CPU(i7 9700k) for some reason at idle, the clock is all over the place bouncing from say 5.0mhz(my overclock) down to 3.6 to .8. But when any load is put on it settles in at the 5.0. Thermals seem to be good with it never maxing over 65c and averaging 57 on full load. My voltage is 1.36 aswell. It's a recent issue for me so was wondering if yall'd have some imput as to what's going on

[Queen Chrysalis]

What's the issue?  Windows and other system utilities will do a lot without you knowing to  keep everything running as it sees fit. Don't worry about it unless it starts running poorly.

[RONOTHAN##]

You probably have dynamic clock speed or whatever its called set in the BIOS. If it's not causing instability, don't see a reason to disable it, performance will be identical to if that wasn't enabled and you'll get a slightly lower power bill each month (couple of cents at most, but still). 

[JustinWayne]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

You probably have dynamic clock speed or whatever its called set in the BIOS. If it's not causing instability, don't see a reason to disable it, performance will be identical to if that wasn't enabled and you'll get a slightly lower power bill each month (couple of cents at most, but

Hmm, it seems that maybe it was having Intel SpeedStep Technology enabled is what was causing it strongly enough, atleast it seems to have stopped it

[JustinWayne]

12 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

What's the issue?  Windows and other system utilities will do a lot without you knowing to  keep everything running as it sees fit. Don't worry about it unless it starts running poorly.

The main thing was I just adjusted the overclock and it started showing crazy clock speeds in HWinfo, jumping all over the place. It seems that disabling Intel SpeedStep Technology fixed it strange enough 

[Queen Chrysalis]

1 minute ago, JustinWayne said:

The main thing was I just adjusted the overclock and it started showing crazy clock speeds in HWinfo, jumping all over the place. It seems that disabling Intel SpeedStep Technology fixed it strange enough 

 

13 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

You probably have dynamic clock speed or whatever its called set in the BIOS. If it's not causing instability, don't see a reason to disable it, performance will be identical to if that wasn't enabled and you'll get a slightly lower power bill each month (couple of cents at most, but still). 

 

Yeah Speedstep is a frequency scaler.  That's why people advise you to avoid OCing in the OS, and to just do it from the UEFI.  Sounds like you figured it out.

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

That's why people advise you to avoid OCing in the OS, and to just do it from the UEFI

Not actually the reason. With the UEFI you don't have to worry about the software running at startup and running in the background, it'll just always run at your requested speeds without you having to worry about it (plus most in OS overclocking software kinda sucks). Overclocking in the OS is actually a pretty good idea depending on what you're doing, it's a lot quicker to adjust settings, so if say Prime95 crashes for some reason, you can adjust the voltage or the clock speed immediately in order get it to run, then just apply the settings you adjusted in the BIOS when you go to reboot. It's not really good for 24/7 overclocks, but for getting things dialed in it's actually really nice. Plus with competitive benchmarking, a reboot can actually cost you 50MHz when you're sub-zero, and that 50MHz can be the difference between 1st place and 8th place in a benchmark. 

[Queen Chrysalis]

9 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Not actually the reason. With the UEFI you don't have to worry about the software running at startup and running in the background, it'll just always run at your requested speeds without you having to worry about it (plus most in OS overclocking software kinda sucks). Overclocking in the OS is actually a pretty good idea depending on what you're doing, it's a lot quicker to adjust settings, so if say Prime95 crashes for some reason, you can adjust the voltage or the clock speed immediately in order get it to run, then just apply the settings you adjusted in the BIOS when you go to reboot. It's not really good for 24/7 overclocks, but for getting things dialed in it's actually really nice. Plus with competitive benchmarking, a reboot can actually cost you 50MHz when you're sub-zero, and that 50MHz can be the difference between 1st place and 8th place in a benchmark. 

Is that not what I said?  So the UEFI auto OC and software based frequency mods don't interfere with each other?

 

As far as OS OC'ing, I mean, like, yeah it works for insanely niche stuff that no one cares about anymore.  I can't think of anything you'd be doing where you'd need to OC to an unstable frequency for some kind of benefit for a workload that wouldn't just crash your OS at said unstable frequency.  Competitive overclocking is literally just trial and error mixed with a silicon lottery and buying stuff. Honestly, OCing in 2022 is just silly as almost everything turbos to or withing triviality of it's top stable frequency save for liquid nitrogen. 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

So the UEFI auto OC and software based frequency mods don't interfere with each other?

Software based stuff overrides what's set in the BIOS. That's why it's useful, if the settings you set in the BIOS aren't stable and you want to know what direction to go. You still want to copy the settings over into the BIOS, but if 4.8GHz is stable at 1.25v, being able to say increase the voltage to 1.3v and try 4.9GHz without bothering with a reboot is very useful. Also, if it's not stable at 4.9GHz at 1.3v but it doesn't blue screen, you can raise the voltage again to try and get it stable without doing a reboot. It just makes the process take much less time if you know what you're doing and you remember what you set while you're in the OS. You still want to copy everything over to the BIOS once you finish, but for dialing an overclock for daily stable it saves you a ton of unnecessary restarts and spamming the delete key. 

 

It's biggest use is competitive OC (since as you said, daily CPU OC is dead for everything but a couple Intel CPUs), but even for daily OCs back when they made sense (like on 9th gen) it's just so much more convenient 

[Queen Chrysalis]

9 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

but if 4.8GHz is stable at 1.25v, being able to say increase the voltage to 1.3v and try 4.9GHz without bothering with a reboot is very useful. Also, if it's not stable at 4.9GHz at 1.3v but it doesn't blue screen, you can raise the voltage again to try and get it stable without doing a reboot. 

...100mhz...

9 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

it works for insanely niche stuff that no one cares about anymore.  I can't think of anything you'd be doing where you'd need to OC to an unstable frequency for some kind of benefit for a workload that wouldn't just crash your OS at said unstable frequency. 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

6 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

...100mhz...

10 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Yeah, that's how you go about overclocking, going up in 100MHz increments. Increase it 100MHz, test, if unstable add more voltage until temps are too bad or it becomes stable, if it is stable increase the frequency. 

[Queen Chrysalis]

3 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah, that's how you go about overclocking, going up in 100MHz increments. Increase it 100MHz, test, if unstable add more voltage until temps are too bad or it becomes stable, if it is stable increase the frequency. 

Oh for fine tuning, got it.  I was assuming you meant increasing clock by 100mhz for some specific task as if it would be beneficial.  SO, using the OS tuner to find your settings, then implementing them in the UEFI once you determine what your gonna set it to.  Makes sense.  Overclocking in general really doesn't make sense anymore, but I'll cede that contention for another day.