How to keep the OC speed from dropping too often

[danvis]

Hello guys,
I own I5 2500K with an Asrock Z68 pro 3. Let me clarify I have limited, but still some, experience with OC.
I OCed my processor to 4.2GHz quite easily, and it's working stable under stress (Prime 95 test, it stays stable on 4.2GHz).

My issue is that way too often the speed drops to the 1.6GHz~, which I'm guessing is the speed for idle uses or low-on-resources tasks, even though I have the need for it to be higher, like when opening a new browser page with several pages etc etc. My question is, is there something I can do to limit this dropping that it will happen less frequently or maybe change the value to something higher like 2.5GHz or change the priority of idle tasks vs. stress tasks?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

 

[rayraysfunhouse]

Have you disabled all the power saving features in the bios?

 

[danvis]

Hey, thanks for the answer.

If I would - wouldn't that mean that it will stay permanent on 4.2GHz? That's pretty high power consumption, and I don't want the CPU to draw that much power when in idle mode, I just want to tweak that idle mod a bit.

 

[Witchdoctor]

Can't have your cake and eat it to, either leave them on or turn them off

Not aware of any feature on that particular board that would let you set idol clocks

 

[Johan45]

You can try setting windows to performance mode, don't know if that'll solve your issue. Yopu're right disabling power features in bios will have you running full tilt all the time.

 

[Theocnoob]

You can't alter the "resting clock". Just the loaded clock. So if your CPU rests at 1600Mhz you can't change that, you can only OC the "under load" clock to whatever you want.

 

[unclewebb]

If you are interested in fast off idle performance as well as low idle power consumption then I recommend that you go into the Control Panel - Power Options and select the High performance profile. Make sure the Minimum processor state is set to 100%. When set up like this, to achieve low power consumption when lightly loaded or idle you will need to go into the bios and enable the low power core C States C3 and C6. After you do this, you will get less power consumption than the Balanced profile can achieve and your CPU will get up to full speed much quicker. When a core enters C6, power consumption of that core approaches zero so the reported voltage or MHz are meaningless in this state.

Many people continue to recommend the opposite. They like to disable the low power C States in the bios and then they recommend switching to the Balanced power profile. If you are interested in performance and minimizing power consumption, enabling the low power C States will win every time. After you have enabled the C States, switching to the Balanced profile will not reduce power consumption but the Balanced profile can increase latency which is noticeable when SSD testing.

Some monitoring software exaggerates the percentage of time your CPU spends at 1600 MHz when it is idle. Try downloading RealTemp and you will have a very accurate look at what your CPU multiplier is really doing. RealTemp uses high performance timers within the CPU and includes the C States when it determines your CPU multiplier. It also follows the Intel recommended monitoring method. Some monitoring software prefers to keep it simple and only reports a high multiplier or a low multiplier and ignores everything else in between and also ignores the C States.