Mysterious Win 7 Pro 64 Slowdown - Maybe Underclocking Itself?

[johnhoh]

First, within throttlestop try enabling speed shift, c1e, and power saving, then check after a few idle minutes to see if your cpu speed and voltage go down to 800mhz and 0.7v. They should, and if so you are good to go, power saving is working. If not, boot to bios and reset everything to default settings, then boot to windows again, start throttlestop, then check hwinfo64 after a few minutes. If the cpu is still stuck at full speed, then indeed intel power management is off, even though the bios defaults should have turned it on. So go back into bios yet again and make sure the three items I pointed out in post #2 are enabled, then save and reboot and check hwinfo64 again. If after this you are still stuck at full speed, then your slow mode switch is not only forcing thermal throttling on (which throttlestop is now forcing off) but it is also forcing intel power saving (those three bios items) off. This may not be fixable, but something to try in that case is to use an MSI windows utility for bios management, which maybe can enable power saving itself. It may be called Command Center or be called something different, but it will be listed as a utility on your motherboard support page.

 

[johnhoh]

just saw your second post. Imo as long as you can get power saving working again, throttlestop is a permanent fix. The odds that you are going to fry your cpu someday because thermal throttling is now off are about 0.0001%. Of course a brand new board that also has a correctly working slow mode switch is the best case, but it sounds like you'd have to shell out $100 in order to avoid the RMA delay, so why do that.

 

[TDKMate]

First, within throttlestop try enabling speed shift, c1e, and power saving, then check after a few idle minutes to see if your cpu speed and voltage go down to 800mhz and 0.7v. They should, and if so you are good to go, power saving is working. …

Sorry for the delay in getting back. I haven’t been able to be around the computer the last couple of days.

For testing, I figured out I have to kill Throttle Stop’s ‘process tree’ in Task Manager so I can open the user interface. From there, I’d ‘turn off’ Throttle Stop, enable/disable settings, then turn it back on.

In the first couple of ‘play’ tests, enabling Speed Shift, c1e, and Power Saving, would drop things back down to 800 MHz. In clicking each one on/off I discovered that Power Saving was the culprit. With this on, it stays slow, with it off, and it’s fast again.

Then, after a short computer Sleep mode, I noticed two things. First, it wakes at 4.0 GHz and not 4.2 GHz that it was before Sleep. And then when I enable Power Savings in TS, it still drops to 800 MHz but will no longer go back up to either 4.0 or 4.2 GHz when I disable Power Savings like it did before Sleep. It now requires a full reboot to go to 4.2 GHz.

… If not, boot to bios and reset everything to default settings, then boot to windows again, start throttlestop, then check hwinfo64 after a few minutes. If the cpu is still stuck at full speed, then indeed intel power management is off, even though the bios defaults should have turned it on. So go back into bios yet again and make sure the three items I pointed out in post #2 are enabled, then save and reboot and check hwinfo64 again. If after this you are still stuck at full speed, then your slow mode switch is not only forcing thermal throttling on (which throttlestop is now forcing off) but it is also forcing intel power saving (those three bios items) off. This may not be fixable, but something to try in that case is to use an MSI windows utility for bios management, which maybe can enable power saving itself. It may be called Command Center or be called something different, but it will be listed as a utility on your motherboard support page.

I went back into BIOS and did as suggested in Post #2: EIST now on; was disabled. C-State on Auto. C1E now on; BIOS reset turns this off, and it was off. I also went into Power Options and changed Minimum Power from 100% to 5% as suggested earlier.

No change in that when I enable Power Savings in TS, it still drops to 800 MHz. However, now in HWiNFO64, in the Current column for Core Clock, some of the cores will drop from 4200 to as low as 1500 GHz (and in anywhere between), but only occasionally and only for brief moments. It’s for a few seconds and it could be any random core(s). And that’s when I’m not doing anything with the computer but watching (I do have TS, HWiNFO64, Task Manager, Outlook, and Firefox open/running) .

It’s an improvement for sure.

Somehow I didn’t log when it happened, but somewhere in this mix, HWiNFO64’s Minimum column dropped from 4.2 GHz to 800 MHz. Another good sign.

I Googled MSI’s Command Center and watched a YouTube video that popped up in the search. It talked about setting the Core Ratios, Fan control, and a ton on Overclocking and memory settings and the like but nothing on power saving.

I viewed the manual (https://us.msi.com/files/pdf/COMMAND_CENTER_User_Guide_EN.pdf) and didn’t see mention of power savings.

I D/Led the utility and the Read Me file description is:

“[ Command Center ]
Support OS : Windows 7/8/8.1/10 (32/64bit)
1. utility for msi products to overclock & greenpower
2. note:need install Intel ME driver to enable CPU overclock”

I have no idea what “Intel ME driver” (or how to figure out if it’s installed already) and I’m leery of throwing more drivers in the mix at this time for the simple reason is that I’ve hosed up systems in the past by doing so.

I did look at Install Programs and an Intel Management Engine is installed, so maybe that’s the Intel ME driver.

Maybe I’ll take the chance and install Command Center tomorrow (no time tonight) and see what I can find. I just don’t want it to start automatically installing any ‘necessary components’ without my permission.
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[johnhoh]

You are right about the ME (mgt engine) driver, it should be installed already.

Its probably best to avoid sleep mode for now as its pretty normal with core-level tweaks like TS for the machine to act unpredictably after waking from sleep, so stick to just cold booting until you iron all this out further. Same goes for 4ghz vs 4.2ghz, either one is fine, no biggie. May be good to leave the TS power saver box unchecked too as I understand it can produce a fluctuating multiplier, so just focus on varying combos of eist, c-state, c1e, windows min cpu power state, and of course TS BD prochot.

The goal right now is to be able to reliably, every time, know that you can cold boot using some combination of settings that results in hwinfo showing (after a few minutes of use) a minimum of 800mhz AND a maximum of 4ghz for all four cores. You will have to try using both/either TS and bios. As a starting point in bios I'd go with c1e disabled, c-state on auto, eist (stands for enhanced intel speed step btw) set to on, and within windows power set min cpu power at 5%, and use just bd prochot within TS. If that produces high speeds but it never gets down to 800mhz, try eist in TS as well.

 

[TDKMate]

OK, sounds good, johnhoh. After the latest round of tweaks above, coming out of Sleep has been good to go, so that’s one more ‘good news’ item. I’ll mix up settings for a few days and see what happens, but so far checking Power Savings in TS sets it back to slow mode. So I’ll hold off until other things work good.

I don’t mind 4.0 GHz at all, actually, as it’s fine for my typical daily stuff. I will prefer 4.2 GHz when I do photo and home movie editing, naturally. And it’s been at a Max of 4.2 GHz also since the last round above.

The funny thing is that this ‘stock’ 4.2 GHz feels good, even peppier than the OCed 4.5 GHz. For one thing, VLC instantly plays my home movies now instead of giving me a grey screen for a second or three and then slowly pixilates into a video. Windows Explorer shows directories and folders a little quicker, too. When you have one drive open, then open another instance of WE on another drive with a lot of files, the green bar on top took noticeably long to complete. Now it’s a lot zipper. And, though not scientific, when I watch a DIY YouTube video or the like, they also ‘come alive’ faster too.

So I think this box just didn’t like the Game Boost OC. (I didn't manually set any OC stuff, just used the Game Boost dial.)

I’ll experiment a little more and post back with some hopefully ‘final’ results.
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[TDKMate]

I *thought* you could just drag a program into the Startup folder, like Word, Excel, whatever, and it would start when the computer started. So I figured I’d just have HWiNFO64 startup and save a couple of keystrokes. Well…there’s no Startup option showing when I hit the Win Key. So I Googled it and the tip was to just put a prg in the Startup folder in Windows Explorer. I did that and HWiNFO64 does not startup.

Any ideas on how to get HWiNFO64 to startup as a normal program and not a task? No biggie, but it would be nice to know how to do this.

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On an update on the Slow issue: I feel like I’m chasing my tail. I made a couple of BIOS changes first thing this morning and when I started (manually) HWiNFO64 I noticed right off that the Min spec was 4.2 GHz instead of the 800 MHz it has been. It has been staying at 800 MHz.

I started undoing the BIOS changes one at a time, only getting to one, no change, before figuring out I better make a formal log (my memory is getting clouded making so many changes).

Then I noticed that the Min spec started creeping down but slowly. So leaving it at idle for an unattended 30 minutes, two cores were at 800 MHz and two at 1000 MHz. And looking just now, only one is at 1000 MHz.

OK, I’m off to reset everything I did this morning and start over with a check list…
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[johnhoh]

try cpuid-hwmonitor or OCCT. Although hwinfo64 should have a "start w windows" checkbox somewhere in it too.

EDIT: it appears hwinfo64 does not have a box to check that makes it start with windows. Weird.

 

[TDKMate]

Sorry, I hadn't realized how much time has past since my last post. Things have been really nuts and busy here and I lost track of time...

I haven't found the right combination of settings to 'set it and forget it' in that I can get it to run at 4.2 GHz, but constantly with no throttling down at idle. That really heats this little room up pretty quick and it's not even summer yet.

However, what seems to work is after I boot up, with ThrottleStop automatically starting as suggested above, then stopping the ThrottleStop task in Task Manager, then the Current column in HWiNFO64 will now throttle down during light use and at idle. Otherwise the Current column stays at 4.2 GHz.

With spring and summer here, I just don't have the time to be 'playing' with this. When I do get time at the computer, I need to use it, not work on it.
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So, this morning I finally broke down and ordered another motherboard. Oddly, Amazon was $40.00 less than Newegg. So we'll see how that works out.