Windows 8.1 and AMD FX8350 always at "full speed"


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Hi Neowin...

 

So I finally jumped the gun and upgraded to Windows 8.1 (from Windows 7), and now there's something strange going on, I'm out of ideas and could use some help with this.

 

System sits there idle. When looking at the "Performance" tab of the Task-Manager I see the CPU (AMD FX-8350 "Vishera" on a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3) _constantly_ running at max. 4.2GHz Boost State instead of it stepping down/up in clock speeds (only the first two cores of the first "module"... the others show "parked"). What's even more puzzling is that there's absolutely nothing that would load the CPU. I see ~1% CPU load from the user session and the "System" process consuming about 13% (rather constantly, though it jumps to 15% randomly but rather infrequently). What also gets me is that the kernel times are as high as the load (in the graphs).

 

The dynamic CPU clock (or "Cool & Quiet" as AMD likes to call the feature) was actually working in Windows 7, of course with the corresponding hotfixes.

 

I did a clean install, this was not a in-place upgrade. I installed all necessary drivers for the motherboard (AMD Chipset drivers, Realtek PCIe GbE driver, Realtek HD Audio driver - didn't install the VIA USB 3.0 driver or Marvell SATA controller driver as they seem to be for Windows 7 but not Windows 8.x so these two devices run with the Microsoft supplied drivers), Nvidia drivers, Logitech SetPoint and ran Windows Update to have the system up-to-date.

 

Just as a sidenote: Hyper-V is NOT enabled (I know that activating Hyper-V would disable "speed-stepping" and therefore make the CPU run at its max. non-boost clock)

 

Just for reference: Booting a live Linux thumb drive confirms that the CPU is actually ramping the clock according to the load.

 

Anyone got a idea what could be wrong (if anything) and where to start to straighten it out? Can't be that this is supposed to be normal when it worked the way it should in Windows 7.

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Download CPU-Z and see what that shows you.

 

I've seen other topic in overclock forums that Windows 8(.1) task manager shows incorrect speeds.

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Here is a couple things I found, hope it helps:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1202751/amd-fx-cpu-throttling-fixes-please-sticky

Also, Windows 8.1 is more intertwined with your BIOS as opposed to Windows 7.  Maybe take a look @ these settings:

https://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2955065218226057672/2/

 

I took a look at your links and I can verify that all options are set correctly...

 

APM enabled

C1E enabled

C6 enabled

CnQ enabled

"High Performance Computing Mode" disabled

^-- This is "Gigabyte new-speak" for "Turn _OFF_ turbo boost P states" - enabled would mean I disabled the turbo states

 

The BIOS does not have a "Load line calibration" option or anything else I could relate to it.

 

It's also not a "Thermal throttle", the CPU actually shows 41?C (Noctua NH-U12S cooler) at the time of writing from the internal temp diode.

 

Make sure your power plan is on Balanced and not High performance.

 

It's set to "Balanced" and the only things I customized are:

 

- Turn screen off after: 30 minutes

- Turn hard drive off: Never

- Save energy: Off

 

CPU-Z EDIT

 

Downloaded and ran CPU-Z - and it confirms the reading from the Task-Manager.

However, since CPU-Z is a lot faster at updating the reading I see it actually jumping between 4.0 <-> 4.2GHz, though it spends more time in 4.2GHz than 4.0GHz. So, this actually confirms that Task-Manager is about right (it's just a few Megahertz out, seems the clock rate is calculated from some reference; kinda inaccurately).

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It's set to "Balanced" and the only things I customized are:

 

- Turn screen off after: 30 minutes

- Turn hard drive off: Never

- Save energy: Off

 

CPU-Z EDIT

 

Downloaded and ran CPU-Z - and it confirms the reading from the Task-Manager.

However, since CPU-Z is a lot faster at updating the reading I see it actually jumping between 4.0 <-> 4.2GHz, though it spends more time in 4.2GHz than 4.0GHz. So, this actually confirms that Task-Manager is about right (it's just a few Megahertz out, seems the clock rate is calculated from some reference; kinda inaccurately).

Check Minimum Processor State of your power options. Mine is set to 5%. With Cool & Quiet, you should still be downclocking below 4GHz when not on load. On my 8320, it's 7x200=1.4GHz

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Check Minimum Processor State of your power options. Mine is set to 5%. With Cool & Quiet, you should still be downclocking below 4GHz when not on load. On my 8320, it's 7x200=1.4GHz

 

5% minimum, 100% maximum, "Active" cooling - and it's happily jumping between 4 <-> 4.2GHz with, according to the graphs, CPU#1 almost fully loaded (load and kernel-times) at 70% to 100%, CPU#0 peaking between 20% to 50%, CPU #2 and #3 randomly peaking between 5% to 20% (eyeballed from the graphs).

 

EDIT: To look at it from another perspective: When I introduce load ("cpuminer" in benchmark mode) to make the cores get into gear one thing I notice is that on ALL cores the load equals the kernel-times (or vice-versa) ... back in Windows 7 the kernel times were just a fraction of the display in the load graph (5% at best) ... in Windows 8.1 the kernel times are as high as the actual load.  Also, while "cpuminer" is running the clock goes down to 4 GHz (non-boost) and all 8 cores start doing work - none of them is "parked" anymore.

 

When I look at the "Processes" or "Details" tab I see the "idle" task at 87%, "system" at 12% and 1-3% from misc processes under my user account.

 

I really don't get why the CPU is sucking up juice for nothing ... there's absolutely no load ... *headwall*

 

Slowly that WIndows 7 installation DVD starts to look really good again. *hides* ;)

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Go to Task Scheduler and disable Idle maintance, see if that helps. Don't keep it disabled after that, this is just to see if that's the one causing your problems. If so we need to find out why is it doing that.

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I'm not sure if Microsoft has already patched it... but when I got my FX-8150, the performance/power management on Windows 8 was way better than on Windows 7.

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I'm not sure if Microsoft has already patched it... but when I got my FX-8150, the performance/power management on Windows 8 was way better than on Windows 7.

 

There were 2 hotfixes for that a long time ago. A couple of months after the 8150 came out. Core parking didn't work due to the architecture of the modular design AMD uses.

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There were 2 hotfixes for that a long time ago. A couple of months after the 8150 came out. Core parking didn't work due to the architecture of the modular design AMD uses.

 

Thanks, didn't know that.

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Go to Task Scheduler and disable Idle maintance, see if that helps. Don't keep it disabled after that, this is just to see if that's the one causing your problems. If so we need to find out why is it doing that.

 

Okay, went into the Task Scheduler and disabled the idle maintenance entry - and rebooted.

 

No Go.

 

The problem already exists right after logging in - Task-Manager shows the same "picture" right away (CPU#1 at almost full load, CPU#0 with less load and so on ... see above) and CPU-Z only confirms it.

 

I'm not sure if Microsoft has already patched it... but when I got my FX-8150, the performance/power management on Windows 8 was way better than on Windows 7.

 

Yeah, at that time the hotfix for the "AMD Bulldozer" CPUs weren't released - Windows 8.0 was the only Windows version to correctly handle the Bulldozers. Later on Microsoft updated the hotfix to support the "Piledriver" FX8xxx, FX9xxx, FX6100 and some "Piledriver" based Opteron and they added a second hotfix to support the AMD core parking feature (putting the core to sleep when not needed) - though none of them were distributed through Windows Update; you had to request them from Microsoft Support for manual download and installation (yay, Microsoft).

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Can You maybe do a screenshot of the Task manager (process tab)? Something is eating up a core but hard to say what exactly. To be honest I've never seen this problem before. :huh:

 

I've seen Intel iGPU's (drivers to be exact but Intel graphics drivers have always been bad, almost as bad as AMD's graphics used to be) do this but we don't have that so I'm confused lol.

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Can You maybe do a screenshot of the Task manager (process tab)? Something is eating up a core but hard to say what exactly. To be honest I've never seen this problem before. :huh:

 

I've seen Intel iGPU's (drivers to be exact but Intel graphics drivers have always been bad, almost as bad as AMD's graphics used to be) do this but we don't have that so I'm confused lol.

 

Sorry for the delay, had to take a phone call...

post-201818-0-40151800-1414574678.png post-201818-0-36465800-1414574692.png

 

As you can see in the screenshot of the graphs it's eating the most of "CPU#1" and the better part of "CPU#0".

 

Since I seem to have caught it at "4GHz" ... the reading in the Task Manager jumps between 3.92/3.96GHz and 4.16/4.19GHz (already said that Microsoft can't do math ;))

 

EDIT: You need the rest listed under the "Processes" tab? If yes I can do 3 or 4 screenshots so it shows the whole list.

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Just to "kinda" wrap it up...

 

I tried enabling "Hyper-V" and that, at least, leads to the expected result; the CPU runs "locked" at 4GHz non-boost clock. While this verifies that Windows seems to correctly set the CPU and chipset, it doesn't really solve the core problem at hand.

 

I also gave the W10TP a spin (imaged Windows 8.1, clean-installed W10TP and updated to the newer TP build) and the problem remains ... Windows keeps on maxing the CPU clock, regardless to the powerplan settings, when the system is idle instead of lowering it down. It already behaves that way right after the initial installation is finished and there has been no change to the system defaults (read: first log-in to the desktop, open Task-Manager, and "dejavu").

 

I now upgraded the system to Windows 7 and everything is back to normal in terms of CPU clock scaling.

 

That being said, a further test with Windows 10 TP on a FX8150 (Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3) and Phenom II X6 1100T (Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 ("UEFI" revision)) shows the same thing as with the FX8350 ... the CPUs run at max boost clocks at idle. The only system to do as expected is a "old" Phenom II X4 965 BE, this one scales down to 800MHz idle clocks and only ramps up to full speed when load is introduced.

 

Since there seems to be no known fix to the problem I'll stick to Windows 7 for the time being and consider my options... I'm almost tempted to say that Windows obviously has run its course and that Microsoft seems to have fired the wrong guys and only kept the crayon-clowns who "dreamed up" that moronic "Modern" UI (which they even continue "loud-and-proud" - like a rainbow parade - in Windows 10).

 

So, case kinda solved - I'm only awaiting a reply from Gigabyte's tech support though I don't expect any real trouble-shooting advise at this point (if there would be anything wrong with the "BIOS" (if we want to be so bold as to call "UEFI" a "BIOS"), or "BIOS" setup, then the CPU scaling shouldn't work in Linux as well, but it does work perfectly well on all three CPUs (FX8350, FX8150, Phenom II X6 1100T) like one would expect) when booting off a Ubuntu Live Linux thumb drive and looking at the frequency readings of the governor ("interactive") in sysfs).

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- Which revision your motherboard is of: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3

- Do you try any Unparking Cores utilities like this https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/ ; I will recommend you to give it a go.

- AMD Chipset driver installed? From this link: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows%208%20-%2064

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- Which revision your motherboard is of: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3

- Do you try any Unparking Cores utilities like this https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/ ; I will recommend you to give it a go.

- AMD Chipset driver installed? From this link: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows%208%20-%2064

 

- Re motherboard revision/s....

 

The Phenom II X4 965 sits on a 870A-UD3 rev 2.1 (Legacy BIOS version)

The Phenom II X6 1100T sits on a 870A-UD3 rev 3.1 (UEFI version)

The FX8150 sits on a 970A-UD3 rev 3.0

The FX8350 sits on a 990FXA-UD3 rev 4.0

 

Of course all motherboards have the latest BIOS/UEFI Firmware available from the Gigabyte website flashed.

 

- Re core (un)parking

 

With Windows 8.1 it didn't make any difference if core parking was allowed or if the cores were disallowed parking. The CPU clock would always "idle" at max boost P state and only take a dip (i.e. down to ~2.2GHz) for a brief moment when a program was launched (i.e. firing up Firefox). Once the load was gone the clock would ramp up again (instead of going down).

 

In Windows 7 (both "AMD" hotfixes installed) it doesn't make too much of a difference. When the cores are disallowed from parking I only see a random 1% spike on core #2 through #7 at idle and 2/3% spikes on core #0 and #1. If parking is allowed cores #2+ are "flat" when the system idles.

 

Another difference is that Windows 8.1 constantly showed a 13/15% load (see the taskman screenshots above; that load came from the "system" process) while Windows 7 shows 0/1% load (again: system sits there idle).

 

- Re AMD drivers

 

For what it's worth I installed the AMD Chipset Drivers (version 14.9 from Oct. 24th) on Windows 8.1/10TP though, to be honest, I'd say they are superfluous. On Windows 8.1/10 it only wants to install the IOMMU Null Driver, the USB 1.1 Filter driver and the various C++ runtimes. The driver package is only of real value in Windows 7 where the setup also installs the AHCI SATA driver, and that speeds up hard drive performance significantly.

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- Re motherboard revision/s....

 

The Phenom II X4 965 sits on a 870A-UD3 rev 2.1 (Legacy BIOS version)

The Phenom II X6 1100T sits on a 870A-UD3 rev 3.1 (UEFI version)

The FX8150 sits on a 970A-UD3 rev 3.0

The FX8350 sits on a 990FXA-UD3 rev 4.0

 

Of course all motherboards have the latest BIOS/UEFI Firmware available from the Gigabyte website flashed.

 

- Re core (un)parking

 

With Windows 8.1 it didn't make any difference if core parking was allowed or if the cores were disallowed parking. The CPU clock would always "idle" at max boost P state and only take a dip (i.e. down to ~2.2GHz) for a brief moment when a program was launched (i.e. firing up Firefox). Once the load was gone the clock would ramp up again (instead of going down).

 

In Windows 7 (both "AMD" hotfixes installed) it doesn't make too much of a difference. When the cores are disallowed from parking I only see a random 1% spike on core #2 through #7 at idle and 2/3% spikes on core #0 and #1. If parking is allowed cores #2+ are "flat" when the system idles.

 

Another difference is that Windows 8.1 constantly showed a 13/15% load (see the taskman screenshots above; that load came from the "system" process) while Windows 7 shows 0/1% load (again: system sits there idle).

 

- Re AMD drivers

 

For what it's worth I installed the AMD Chipset Drivers (version 14.9 from Oct. 24th) on Windows 8.1/10TP though, to be honest, I'd say they are superfluous. On Windows 8.1/10 it only wants to install the IOMMU Null Driver, the USB 1.1 Filter driver and the various C++ runtimes. The driver package is only of real value in Windows 7 where the setup also installs the AHCI SATA driver, and that speeds up hard drive performance significantly.

 

Can you share your Energy Report produced through this page: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/quick-tip-create-an-energy-use-report-in-windows-7-with-powercfg/

 

Also what about the UEFI status on these power states, enable them.

 

- Cool N Quiet

- C1

- C6

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Can you share your Energy Report produced through this page: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/quick-tip-create-an-energy-use-report-in-windows-7-with-powercfg/

 

Also what about the UEFI status on these power states, enable them.

 

- Cool N Quiet

- C1

- C6

 

Well....

 

I now upgraded the system to Windows 7 and everything is back to normal in terms of CPU clock scaling.

 

I can temporarily plug in another hard drive tomorrow or on the weekend and do the powercfg report with W10TP... I already deleted the Windows 8.1 Macrium image for good.

 

As for the power state settings: Like I wrote a few posts back all of these settings are enabled in the UEFI Setup ... CnQ, C1E, C6 you name it. The only difference in the UEFI setup between Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 is that I run Windows 7 with "Legacy CSD" enabled while Windows 8.1 (as well as the test install of Windows 10TP) was installed "UEFI only" and Secure Boot "disabled" (I don't have the optional TPM module for the 990FXA-UD3 - I'm not supporting "lock-in dongles").

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Well....

 

 

I can temporarily plug in another hard drive tomorrow or on the weekend and do the powercfg report with W10TP... I already deleted the Windows 8.1 Macrium image for good.

 

As for the power state settings: Like I wrote a few posts back all of these settings are enabled in the UEFI Setup ... CnQ, C1E, C6 you name it. The only difference in the UEFI setup between Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 is that I run Windows 7 with "Legacy CSD" enabled while Windows 8.1 was installed "UEFI only" and Secure Boot "disabled" (I don't have the optional TPM module for the 990FXA-UD3 - I'm not supporting "lock-in dongles").

 

Is this issue persist with Fresh install of OS?

 

Resetting UEFI to default?

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Is this issue persist with Fresh install of OS?

 

Yes, the CPU already behaves like that (scaling up to full max boost P state) right after the initial setup is done - "DeJa Vu" right at the moment you land at the desktop for the very first time and open up the task manager (without changing any system settings or installing any drivers first).

 

Like I wrote above, all three CPUs capable of supporting "Turbo Boost" (FX8350, FX8150, X6 1100T) show this odd behavior (though I tested the 8150 and X6 1100T with W10TP only as the Windows 8.1 license was intended for my main 8350 machine), even on slightly different platforms.

 

EDIT: Resetting the CMOS on the FX8350/990FXA so that the system comes up with "factory defaults" would actually cause a whole lot of other problems... the defaults are to disable Turbo Boost, the IOMMU would be disabled (WTF?!), C1E and C6 would be disabled, and the RAM would be reset to DDR3-1333 instead of DDR3-1600 (Corsair Vengeance, 4x4GB, XMP Profile 1) as well. Running with that setup wouldn't make any sense.

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Yes, the CPU already behaves like that (scaling up to full max boost P state) right after the initial setup is done - "DeJa Vu" right at the moment you land at the desktop for the very first time and open up the task manager (without changing any system settings or installing any drivers first).

 

Like I wrote above, all three CPUs capable of supporting "Turbo Boost" (FX8350, FX8150, X6 1100T) show this odd behavior (though I tested the 8150 and X6 1100T with W10TP only as the Windows 8.1 license was intended for my main 8350 machine), even on slightly different platforms.

 

Resetting UEFI tried? Saw edit later...

 

Also tried Beta BIOS F3H for your 990FXA-UD3 rev 4 board?

 

RAM, which kit and module installed? Saw edit later...

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Perhaps I'm missing something, but why do you expect the CPU to downclock when one of its cores is used near 100%? Your problem is that process constantly using that core, not power management. You mentioned this is the "System" process - this could be due a driver. It's not easy to diagnose these issues but you could try uninstalling all the devices you can, booting in safe mode, selectively disabling services, etc. Perhaps Process Explorer (running as admin of course) can give you more details as to what that process is doing. See http://superuser.com/a/527557/215345

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