Windows 8.1 and AMD FX8350 always at "full speed"

[+Zlip792 MVC]

He said it happened on Fresh Install, which I guess means without any drivers and other stuff etc, just when Windows reboot. But I might took it wrong though. As Andre S. mentioned, if you had driver installed, it could be drivers fault. I recommend installing driver from official sites like realtek hd driver from realtek site rather than gigabyte site.

[B.Jay]

Resetting UEFI tried?

 

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

 

RAM, which kit and module installed?

 

I shouldn't have written a edit...

 

- Reset tried, see post #23 above

(restored to the previous setup so Windows 7 can boot again)

 

- BIOS: Not yet, I'll give that a try. Currently at BIOS F2

 

- 4x 4GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile, DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800?)

 

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 can give you more details as to what that process is doing.

 

Well, if it is a driver (we'll see after the F3H "BIOS" upgrade) then it would already come bugged out-of-the-box as the problem already shows right after a fresh, clean, Windows 8.1/10TP installation where no 3rd party driver is installed at all.

 

Also, you have a point in "why do you expect it to downclock when one core is almost fully loaded" ... but ... that's exactly what shouldn't happen; it should actually "sit there" at 1400MHz across all cores with, let's be generous, 2-3% load (the 13 to 15% I see in Windows 8.1 and 10TP are WAY too high for a idle system)... and that's actually how it is with Windows 7 (after the AMD hotfix and Chipset driver installation) or with a Live Linux system booted.

 

I tried to find the cause for the load on the system process, but that lead to nowhere. All services are consuming no CPU time, the Metro apps are consuming no CPU time, the user session consumes almost no CPU time (1/2% at best). Even the fully-installed Windows 8.1 system showed no CPU time on the Nvidia driver services (wouldn't be the first time for the NV driver to cause an issue). At this point in time I truly have no clue from where the CPU utilization of the system process comes from, but I'm willing to try and dig down on it on the weekend (can Process Explorer sort out what depends on "system" and how much load it causes?).

[B.Jay]

Err.....

 

@+Zlip792

WHERE did you find the F3H firmware for the 990FXA-UD3?

 

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4672#bios <-- Only lists F2, which is already flashed, as the latest BIOS. :|

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Corsair Vengeance, 4x4GB, XMP Profile 1

 

AMD does not support Intel XMP Profile, so disable XMP if present in UEFI and turned on.

 

I found reference of it in Gigabyte forums and it was mentioned, they removed it. It had Updated AGESA code. Let me edit comment with link.

 

From this link, I even found reference for F3i bios, he said you can get it from here: http://esupport.gigabyte.com/Login/Index?ReturnUrl=%2f

 

From reading various forum about F3x BIOS:

 

- It fixed Multiplier issue for person.

- It fixed 1866 MHz RAM on XMP profile issue for one person.

 

So I guess, it has various stuff fixed in it and you should ask them to provide you. Its latest (I know latest is not always better) so it should might fix few stuff for you.

 

Read this through Google translator:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmbforum.gigabyte.de%2Findex.php%3Fpage%3DThread%26postID%3D88419&edit-text=&act=url

[B.Jay]

I found a thread on the Gigabyte forum via Google, but that thread is old (2011) and seems to relate to the 1.0/1.1 PCB revisions of the 990FXA-UD3 and the link to the download on OC.net is dead anyway.

 

To come back to "installing the official drivers and not the ones from the Gigabyte site": That's exactly what I'm doing.

 

The ONLY drivers I use (in Windows 7) that are from Gigabyte are the VIA USB 3.0 driver (at least I can't find any other official download) and the Marvell "Magni" SATA driver (can't find another download as well). Windows 8.1 doesn't seem to require them, and I also don't want to try installing them as the INFs all read "7600", which means they are just for Windows 7.

 

If you actually go ahead and install the Realtek PCIe GBE NIC driver from the Gigabyte website (I made that mistake as I setup the system the very first time - much against better knowledge, but I couldn't be bothered to go and collect all the drivers) you end up with a "bugged" network... while everything seems to work fine attempting to copy a file to another computer (Windows File-Sharing) gives you such an awesome transfer speed that even TCP/IP-over-Bushdrums would be the hell of a lot faster. I actually informed Gigabyte about that problem one and a half year ago, but it would seem they didn't give a rat's ass about it - the bugged NIC driver is still there.

 

So... yes, I actually use the drivers downloaded from Realtek (Network, Audio) and AMD (Chipset) and Graphics (Nvidia), I just don't have any other downloads for the VIA USB 3.0 driver and the Marvell SATA driver.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

I found a thread on the Gigabyte forum via Google, but that thread is old (2011) and seems to relate to the 1.0/1.1 PCB revisions of the 990FXA-UD3 and the link to the download on OC.net is dead anyway.

 

To come back to "installing the official drivers and not the ones from the Gigabyte site": That's exactly what I'm doing.

 

The ONLY drivers I use (in Windows 7) that are from Gigabyte are the VIA USB 3.0 driver (at least I can't find any other official download) and the Marvell "Magni" SATA driver (can't find another download as well). Windows 8.1 doesn't seem to require them, and I also don't want to try installing them as the INFs all read "7600", which means they are just for Windows 7.

 

If you actually go ahead and install the Realtek PCIe GBE NIC driver from the Gigabyte website (I made that mistake as I setup the system the very first time - much against better knowledge, but I couldn't be bothered to go and collect all the drivers) you end up with a "bugged" network... while everything seems to work fine attempting to copy a file to another computer (Windows File-Sharing) gives you such an awesome transfer speed that even TCP/IP-over-Bushdrums would be the hell of a lot faster. I actually informed Gigabyte about that problem one and a half year ago, but it would seem they didn't give a rat's ass about it - the bugged NIC driver is still there.

 

So... yes, I actually use the drivers downloaded from Realtek (Network, Audio) and AMD (Chipset) and Graphics (Nvidia), I just don't have any other downloads for the VIA USB 3.0 driver and the Marvell SATA driver.

 

Sane thing and I also find difficult finding third party USB 3.0 controller and Marvel SATA controller latest drivers. So ignore, they are not so important either.

[Andre S. Veteran]

Also, you have a point in "why do you expect it to downclock when one core is almost fully loaded" ... but ... that's exactly what shouldn't happen; it should actually "sit there" at 1400MHz across all cores with, let's be generous, 2-3% load (the 13 to 15% I see in Windows 8.1 and 10TP are WAY too high for a idle system)... and that's actually how it is with Windows 7 (after the AMD hotfix and Chipset driver installation) or with a Live Linux system booted.

 

I tried to find the cause for the load on the system process, but that lead to nowhere. All services are consuming no CPU time, the Metro apps are consuming no CPU time, the user session consumes almost no CPU time (1/2% at best). Even the fully-installed Windows 8.1 system showed no CPU time on the Nvidia driver services (wouldn't be the first time for the NV driver to cause an issue). At this point in time I truly have no clue from where the CPU utilization of the system process comes from, but I'm willing to try and dig down on it on the weekend (can Process Explorer sort out what depends on "system" and how much load it causes?).

My point is that trying to fault the power management for your high CPU clock is a dead end because the power management is only doing its job here. It's perfectly normal to see high CPU when one process is using 100% of one core. That's only ~13% of the total CPU but that's because you have 8 cores and 100 / 8 ~= 13.

 

You said that System.exe is causing all that CPU utilisation so use Process Explorer to figure out what it's doing. Check out the superuser thread I linked to for some instructions.

[B.Jay]

One last reply for the day ....

 

Zlip792, following your link leads to the login-page of the Gigabyte eSupport site.

 

Logging in only leads me to the customer support interface. Clicking the "Downloads" on the login-page and going through the selection (Motherboard -> AM3+ -> GA-990FXA-UD3) kicks me back to the official BIOS download page where F2 is the latest enlisted BIOS version.

 

Looking a bit closely through the thread from the Gigabyte Forum, I think that's a red herring. On the second page of that thread one user mentions "BIOS F4", and if you carefully compare the date of the post to the release date of the F4 BIOS of the 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.0/1.1 they are talking about a release meant for the PCB rev 1.x.

 

There is no more recent BIOS than the F2 for the rev 4.0 990FXA-UD3 ... you can't flash the BIOS from another PCB revision (if you somehow could, that would be a hard brick) or another board (i.e. 990FXA-UD5/7).

[+Zlip792 MVC]

One last reply for the day ....

 

Zlip792, following your link leads to the login-page of the Gigabyte eSupport site.

 

Logging in only leads me to the customer support interface. Clicking the "Downloads" on the login-page and going through the selection (Motherboard -> AM3+ -> GA-990FXA-UD3) kicks me back to the official BIOS download page where F2 is the latest enlisted BIOS version.

 

Looking a bit closely through the thread from the Gigabyte Forum, I think that's a red herring. On the second page of that thread one user mentions "BIOS F4", and if you carefully compare the date of the post to the release date of the F4 BIOS of the 990FXA-UD3 rev 1.0/1.1 they are talking about a release meant for the PCB rev 1.x.

 

There is no more recent BIOS than the F2 for the rev 4.0 990FXA-UD3 ... you can't flash the BIOS from another PCB revision (if you somehow could, that would be a hard brick) or another board (i.e. 990FXA-UD5/7).

 

You can see from two posts, he clearly mentioned F3h and F3i for Revision 4.

 

 

 

Another forum and another evidence that Beta BIOS for revision 4 does exist: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=15069.0

 

Its nearly 4 AM here, so this is my last reply. You best bet is to ask Customer Service in Gigabyte to give you Beta BIOS or ask in non-English forum "roadrunner" user to give you F3i BIOS.

[B.Jay]

Okay, thanks to Andre S. I managed to identify the root cause of the CPU load by using Windows 10TP: It's the xhcdrv.sys (part of the USB 3.0 stack) loading the CPU at 8/10%. Combined with the load coming from ntdll.dll and other random processes/services this amounts to the 13/15% overall CPU load and therefore insanely high CPU clock rate.

 

Since I was testing with my secondary box (the FX8150/970A-UD3) I shut down the system and pulled the PCIe USB 3.0 expansion board out (featuring a VIA USB 3.0 chipset - it's even the same chip Gigabyte uses on the 990FXA-UD3 r4) and booted up again... now the load has vanished. The CPU happily sits there at its lowest idle clock.

 

Now this begs the question: How to fix the problem?

 

The VIA USB 3.0 driver I have is for Windows 7. Windows 8.x and 10TP come with the USB 3.0 stack being a integral part of the OS, and I can't find any updated driver downloads on VIA's site or VIA Arena (there's not even any mention of USB 3.0).

 

This also explains why I'm seeing the problem on the FX8350 (has USB 3.0 on board), FX8150 and Phenom II X6: the later two have a PCIe USB 3.0 host controller expansion while the old Phenom II X4 only has on-board USB 2.0 and no expansion card at all.

[B.Jay]

SOLVED!

 

I found the "VIA Labs VL805 USB 3.0 Controller Driver 4.70C" on Softpedia and downloaded the driver package for the VL805 chip. Installed it (is compatible with up to Windows 8.1 - Windows 10TP "swallowed" the driver without complains) and rebooted ... now everything's fine.

 

System shows "0%" load right after logging in and a CPU clock of 1.4GHz (YAY!) - CPU-Z confirms that it's also across all cores.

 

So... thank you Andre S. for the hints into the right direction to track down the source of the load, and thank you Zlip792 for the hint about the Beta BIOS... I'll try to obtain a copy before re-installing Windows 8.1 on my main FX8350 again.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

SOLVED!

 

I found the "VIA Labs VL805 USB 3.0 Controller Driver 4.70C" on Softpedia and downloaded the driver package for the VL805 chip. Installed it (is compatible with up to Windows 8.1 - Windows 10TP "swallowed" the driver without complains) and rebooted ... now everything's fine.

 

System shows "0%" load right after logging in and a CPU clock of 1.4GHz (YAY!) - CPU-Z confirms that it's also across all cores.

 

So... thank you Andre S. for the hints into the right direction to track down the source of the load, and thank you Zlip792 for the hint about the Beta BIOS... I'll try to obtain a copy before re-installing Windows 8.1 on my main FX8350 again.

 

Its Solved... I really liked solved issues, it helps many user like myself.. Great!!! Enjoy now..

 

Don't forget to mark Andre S. post as Answer.

[B.Jay]

Its Solved... I really liked solved issues, it helps many user like myself.. Great!!! Enjoy now..

 

Don't forget to mark Andre S. post as Answer.

 

I like solved issues as well... though this reminded me about the days of the VIA chipsets (AMD Athlon/XP)... seems the quality of VIA's drivers hasn't substantially improved much in the last decade.

 

What's even more weird... apart from the driver download at Softpedia VIA is now "hiding" their official downloads on the VIA Labs site where the download speed is just ridiculously slow (~15KB/s).

 

Anyhow, Windows 8.1 is installed again on the FX8350 and things are fine. Only need to install a handful of programs so I can be back to "productive" state coming monday.

 

Also marked Andre S' post as the answer now (forgot about it) - the hint about process explorer lead to the right tool to pin-point the exact source of the elevated CPU load.

 

Thank again guys for helping sorting out this weird problem.