Stress software not seeing overclock

[RetiZ]

Hi all,

I have an MSI PRO Z690-A DDR5 motherboard with the i5-12600K CPU. I've used the BIOS to overclock the P-cores to 5.2ghz and the E-cores to 4.2ghz.
Using CPUID HWMonitor I can see that the frequencies jump between 801mhz up to 5210mhz (Power is set to ultimate performance with CPU state of 5%-100%).
This is all well and good.

The problem is that when I go to stress test the CPU, trying both HeavyLoad and CPU-Z, I can see using HWMonitor that the CPU frequencies don't go above their advertised Turboboost frequencies of 4.9ghz on the P-Cores and 3.6ghz on the E-cores.
Why does the stress test not use the CPU frequencies that I have set? I can see that in normal use, the OS does utilise the overclocked frequencies, but for some reason the stress test software does not.

Has anyone seen this before?

Thanks in advance

[unclewebb]

@RetiZ

 

Use HWINFO and see what it reports for the reason for throttling. If it reports power limit throttling, check what your turbo power limits are set to in the BIOS. Default power limits can interfere with maximum performance. 

[RetiZ]

55 minutes ago, unclewebb said:

@RetiZ

 

Use HWINFO and see what it reports for the reason for throttling. If it reports power limit throttling, check what your turbo power limits are set to in the BIOS. Default power limits can interfere with maximum performance. 

Thanks for your reply.
How do I use it to check what is throttling it? I've run it but can't see anything obvious, though I'm not entirely sure what to be looking for haha.
I can see LLC/Ring Maximum: 4900.0 MHz = 49.00 x 100.0 Mhz. Should that be 52.00 x 100.0 MHz instead?
report.LOG
I've attached the report it generated if that might help? It's a txt file so just change to .txt

[RetiZ]

I just found this:

Ring limit reasons: Ring interconnect frequency clipped due to package-level PL2, PsysPL2 or PL3 power limiting

Ring: Max VR Voltage, ICCmax, PL4. Ring interconnect frequency clipped due to electrical design or other constraints. Eg maximum electrical current consumption

 

IA limit reasons: IA cores frequency clipped due to thermal velocity boost

[RetiZ]

Ok so I had a mess about with the OC settings. I changed the ratio back to 100 and set the OC to be on all cores rather than offset. Now the cores are set at their OC settings, 5.2 on the P-cores, 4.2 on the E-cores, but they're not budging below those frequencies. So when the PC isn't busy, the frequencies are still the same and no longer drop down even though the OS power settings are 5%-100%.
Although now the stress test is utilizing the OC frequencies lol. But the temps are crazy. It's idling at like 52c instead of the 30c before, and 2 secs of stress test brings it up to like 95c.

 

 

I think the problem was that I was increasing the turboboost speed to OC.
If I manually set the cores to run at a set frequency, the frequencies don't change when the PC isn't busy. They sit at that high frequency which causes temp problems

[RetiZ]

Sorry for so many replies to this, but I think I solved the problem.

Because the OC was done via the turboboost offset and the auto offset did:

Core 1: 52

Core 2: 51
Core 3: 51

Core 4: 50

Core 5: 49 etc etc...

When I went to stress test it, it went by the lowest core and didn't go above that for some reason.
Now I have manually set each P-core to be 52 and each E-core to be 41, instead of letting the BIOS set offsets.
Now when I stress test it uses the actual frequencies I set!
So it's working now. When it's not busy it still drops to 798mhz and goes to 5.2ghz when it is busy! Also temps are ok. Idle at 30c and 74c when under heavy stress.