Shiny new i7-3970x without turbo boost??

Hi Garycase,

I believe this is a driver issue of some kind. I have 2 hard drives, one for overclocking, and another for my main os that I use daily.

Turbo boost works just fine in my main os, however there is something wonky on my overclocking test drive.

I will give you the points because worst case I can simply do a clean install on the overclocking drive and all should work peacefully :-)

To answer your question about why I would choose the 3970x: I am a (very humble) hardcore overclocking enthusiast. I say humble because I never post on forums and such about my uber l33t overclocked rigz (haha). I built a rig with essentially 880 rad with 12 fans (8 push pull, 4 single push), dual zones "hot zone and cold zone" with 2x dual pumps (4 total) and a dual rez. My board is completely blocked, but I didn't block my dual 690 cards because they stay pretty cold as long as Precision X is setup with a fan profile. I've been running my 3930k at only 4875 Mhz (only, hehe) for the past year or so (I think it's been over a year now), and I wanted to push the 3970x as far as I could on my setup. I'm confident I'll be able to reach 5, but I'm kind of hoping for 5.2ish...  who knows. :)

In addition I run a RAID 10 setup with 8 SSDs (actually I think you were the one who pointed me to the LSI 9265-8i card a loooong time ago...) and I get about 2000MB/s with it bursting at 4800 MB/s with it!

My next project is a 32 SSD drive array in raid 1+0+1+0...  oops did I say that out loud?

<3 Technology! lol

Thanks for the help!

Thanks again for the help!!

I'll post back if I figure out what the real issue was.

I almost asked if you were overclocking the processor -- this can definitely interfere with TurboBoost -- I suspect you know the details of just how it interacts far better than I, as I am not an overclocker :-)

One thing it clearly isn't is the BIOS version => clearly your system is fine with regards to that; since you have a non-overclocked OS version that the CPU works perfectly on, including TurboBoost.    I suspect it is, as you've noted, a driver issue with the overclocking setup.    Are you using any motherboard-specific "tweaking" software?    ... if so, perhaps it interferes with the TurboBoost settings in the CPU.

Nice storage setup, by the way -- that's a VERY impressive storage bandwidth.   And quad-SLI (dual 690's) with those GPU's is the most serious graphics horsepower I've seen on a system !!     I presume you use this system for a bit more than your daily e-mail :-)  :-)

[I suspect ANY gamer would love to spend some time with that rig !!]

Thanks garycase, yes I use my computer all the time, since I do programming and web-dev too, and yes gaming is very immersive! It's the most important tool I have (and the funnest one). Other people spend 5000 on a big screen TV or a sports car project, I don't own a TV ;-) One reason for the 690 is because it has to handle the resolution of multiple monitors.

To make what I said clearer: The turbo boost settings work in the SSD array and my backup drive, but not on the overclock testing SSD, it does funny things with the multipliers, moving them around on me and such. I definitely suspect you are correct about the driver / software issue on that drive and will be hunting it down later today...  I'll post once I fix the issue and try and figure out exactly what it is. It's like that drive is haunted.... better not let it get into the wild! ;-)

I'm just really happy I don't have to spend 6 hours disconnecting my liquid cooling tubes, dealing with the minor fluid XP leaks while plugging things up (I in no way want to remove all that fluid, only to put it back and remove the air again), then removing the CPU and putting my tubing back together again...   hind sight in designing a liquid cooling system is always 20/20 haha...

The final result:

A program called "Real Temp" that was messing with the numbers. I updated to the most recent version and the issue went away...

Glad you found it.    Just for grins, what kind of temps do you run on your CPU when you're running at stock speed?     With that cooling arrangement [almost sounds like a refrigeration system !! -- all you need is a compressor and a bit of Freon :-) ]  you must have a VERY cool running CPU.      ... and how warm does it get when you really push the overclock?

You know I don't normally complain, because I'm just not that type of guy, but it does annoy me that intel hasn't released an unlocked xeon I can use in an sr-x mobo yet, because that totally killed my dreams of trying a dual compressor -50c overclock rig.... I mean wow, the thought of 16 cores at 5 Ghz or something, would be so incredible...

When I first installed the CPU I was getting 26c from the bios monitor. My room ambient temp is always 70-75F sometimes peaking at 77 or 80F during really hot days or when I forget to open the window / engage the central air. Remember that with liquid cooling the liquid will always be above ambient temp by a bit, mostly because of heat from the computer and even the pumps...  the ideal environment is 65 ambient, but I like warm weather :-)

Since Intel doesn't really supply a reliable temp monitor in the CPU cores, temps are my enemy and I always keep it below 75C when running prime95 and really pushing an OC, because then I know most tasks, even gaming, will run cooler. My target for 24/7 is 70c, maybe peaking at 71 or 72 for a single core... but heat is a killer for sure! This way if a core is running 5C hotter than it says, I wont go above 80C

You said you never got into overclocking? Why is that if I may ask?

This was taken after the build, it's changed a little but not much since then.
IMG-1820.jpg

Wow -- that's a heckuva cooler.    I don't overclock simply because I'm quite satisfied with the performance of modern core architecture CPUs.    If I need more power, I'll just buy a higher-end machine perhaps a dual-CPU Xeon board with a pair of hex core Xeons :-) ].

My #1 goal is absolute rock-solid stability ... and running at stock speeds on high quality hardware tends to achieve that.    Also, I'm not a gamer -- I suppose if I was I'd also be an overclocker :-)

Yeah, I can totally see that side of things. When in a favorite game with my buddies on teamspeak, the moment when we could have won the battle... "hey, where'd dr34m3r go"?

...BSOD...  Haha. Thankfully that doesn't happen very often.