Problem with turboboost and energy saver.

#1

Hi, I just noticed by watching at real temp that my Z820 (24 cores 2.4ghz) almost never go over 2.4ghz. I am rendering right now in Adobe Media Encoder and it settle at around 2.1ghz. Most of the time, the cpu will hang between 1.6ghz and 2.2ghz while working in After Effects.

At first I though that the tech people had disabled turbo-boost for more stability but I saw my CPU go to 2.8ghz once.

This CPU is suppose to reach 3.5ghz when using a single core. After Effects use a single core (multi-cpu pref disabled) and I never see that kind of speed.

Any suggestion? The BIOS of the z820 is quite strange and I did not see any CPU settings in it.

thanks

#2

It is possible you are limited by your harddrive speed. run the cinebench single threaded task and see what it does.

#3

Thanks for the reply, I will try the test as soon as I arrive job in 3-4h.

#4

Im running cinebench single core right now. Results are bad. From 1.9ghz to 2.1ghz. The Intel turboboost monitor app is sticking to Energy Saver.

Did an AE test, made some Fractal Noise with high settings. in 8bit, I got so far as 2.8ghz, but in 32bit, 2.4ghz was the max.

#5

Update;

Power options in Windows was at balanced. After switching it to performance I dont get the very low Ghz anymore. Good. However, now in Cinebench single core, 2.9ghz is the max. That cpu is suppose to reach 3.2ghz in turboboost. Should I investigate it or is the 3.2 is just an ideal reference number that can fluctuate from cpu to cpu?

#6

what single and multi cpu scores do you get? its possible it is getting the speed it should and the reporting is inaccurate.

#7

Single cpu 96, multi cpu (21 cores, 3 disabled because of QT crashing) 1291.

#8

By those numbers, I would estimate your single core speed is roughly 3ghz. The more worrying thing is that 21 cores @2.4ghz should be getting around 2200-2500 on the multi core test, not 1291. I doubt that thing is running at full speed on single or multi cores.

My first hunch would be a wrong multiplier / ram speed.

Just to be clear, this thing is dual 12 core xeons and youre not counting hyperthreading right?

#9

@Earwax69
There’s something wrong there. That’s the score I get with a single 8core machine, even the single thread score seems a little bit low.
I imagine you have payed a lot for your workstation, so contact HP warranty support and get your machine fixed.

#10

There’s nothing “wrong” going on here and the workstation is perfectly fine. As has been pointed out already there are BIOS and operating system level settings that affect the clock of the processor (not everyone wants a machine sucking as much power as it can). Also take the processor specifications with a grain of salt. It’s very unlikely that you’ll ever see the advertised maximum boost frequency because that’s assuming all other cores are completely dormant and the boost is only for a very short duration (a few seconds).

Intel clearly states this when you look deeper at the technology. This is directly from the Intel website, “Note: Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 allows the processor to operate at a power level that is higher than its TDP configuration and data sheet specified power for short durations to maximize performance.”

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/turbo-boost/turbo-boost-technology.html

So don’t expect to get that full boost for a twenty minute job, it’ll boost for a few seconds and then drop back down to what it can sustain thermally. All other cores being completely dormant is very unlikely, for example applications might have a thread that handles the viewport and a thread that handles IOPS which will often be doing things in the background. There’s other stuff often running in the background like virus scanners, automatic updates, automatic backups, etc. Even if the other cores are only a few percent busy they’re still doing something and shutting them off to speed up one core would be slower than letting the other cores do their thing and limiting the boost.

I don’t know if it still works or can be downloaded but Intel used to have a monitor to let you know exactly what was happening with the boost. Maybe there are third party applications now that will do the same thing.

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/cs-031089.htm

#11

The machine is a dual E5-2695 2.4ghz with 96gb of ram. 3 cores are disabled to avoid problems with Quicktime (with variable results).

I do know that rendering in Lightwave is exactly 2x faster than with a Mac Pro 12 cores 3.1ghz 2013.

But maybe things have degraded since. Few techs have played with the machine as I had corrupted RAM problems.

I am going to enable my 3 disabled cores and run Cinebench again.

Update: Ok, yes, that was wrong. Now with 24 cores enabled, 48thread, I get 2775. Single core 107. That’s a lot better. WTF though, how can disabling 3 cores suck half my power? I though hyperthreading just added 5 to 10%…

Problem is, Quicktime refuse to export if I dont disable some cores. Half my job is in After Effects and I need to render quicktimes constantly. This is a known problem and Apple clearly dont give a damn.

#12

Can someone explain to me why by disabling 4 cores on 24 my cinebench results drop from 2775 to 1100?

MsConfig cpu limited to 20 cores. I guess that include hyperthreading.

#13

My only suggestion is that when you set the number of cores manually, it also sets some other items to manual mode such as memory or multiplier speeds.

#14

Wish Quicktime was working properly… what a letdown. You pay tons of money to get the best workstation and the most basic software on it make it almost unusable.

#15

Is it really not an option to just output something else then fling it through an alternative encoder? Personally I would fire stuff out as animation codec mov or another lossless format and then setup a watch folder so the encoder automatically starts squashing down whatever appears in the folder. The main concept encoders work quite well.

#16

Thats a good idea and I will check the MainConcept encoder. However when the 24 cores are enabled, even Animation mov will crash. H264 is the worst, but others codecs crashes randomly. Output module failed error.

If I render half resolution, no problems. Only HD crash.