turbo boost Q9450?

[angels355]

Had a friend with a Q9550 and gamer Asus mobo, he was always saying something about it doing the turbo boost without any adjustments from him, it was automatic. The Q9450 is identical basically except for being a little slower. I have a new sealed QX9650 that I haven't touched as was hoping it would sell.

Any way, I got curious, and tried out an old program I used a few years ago called WPCUID, it has two functions, to id the the processor if I recall, and the WCPUCLK portion was for displaying the actual cpu clock speed in real time. Only the WCPUCLK portion was working in W7 64 and that's all I needed. It displayed 2.666~ ghz no matter what FSX flew over. The task manager would say 25% of the quad processor was being used, in other words the first core was close to maxed out while the other three would have regular spikes to max activity. Forgot, have to do Don's fix to have all three other cores working harder.

I was expecting the processor speed to routinely increase/decrease depending on the back breaking processor load I put on it. What is missing to get that turbo boost feature or was I misunderstanding the hardware required for that feature? My mobo is plain vanilla, not adjustable or overclockable, however I was told the turbo boost feature is a built in feature of the processor and doesn't need any outside adjustment. Is this speed stepping? Where am I going wrong?

[fxsttcb]

The Q9450 does not have TurboBoost capability, but is capable of "SpeedStep" throttling. That needs to be enabled in the BIOS to work.
If the fix you are refering to is [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=14, that is from a Jesus Altuve(bojote) post over at avsim...Don

http://ark.intel.com/products/33923/...z-1333-MHz-FSB)

[angels355]

Thanks Don. I have SW Single Processor Mode [Disabled] which means all 4 cores are enabled.

In the bios the cpu temp is 39 degres (probably C), I have that HUGE CM 612 w/ two mobo controlled 120 mm fans. Now going up to 40 deg.

Looking through the mobo bios, I don't see a listing for Speedstep. I've seen it many times on Dells, but not on this plain vanilla Intel

Here are my stats:

DG314PR Intel mobo
Q9450 2.66 ghz Core 2 Quad 12 mb L2 cache
2 x 120 mm fans on a giant Coolermaster 612 copper tube aluminum fin heatsink
4 gb Kingston ram PC2 8500
Asus 559 Ti 1 gb vram, 196 video processors
WD Caviar Blue 500 gb HDD (Linux),1 TB WD Caviar Black HDD 6 gb/sec W7 HP 64 bit
750 Watt OCZ modular PSU

It has bios version 0052. Do you think the newer bios versions would include Speedstep, because that sounds as if it would be very useful?

I'm adding the jobscheduler cfg mod now.

[angels355]

Guess there was an fscom database error and fscom was down from my view so accidentally posted the same message twice.

The jobscheduler mod was outstanding! My 4 cores got up to about 76% whereas before it was only 25%. framerates are very good. Day before yesterday I turned many things down, perhaps I can turn them back up again a little.

While in FSX my 4 gb of ram remain at 1.93 gb usage, 64 bit W7. Is that right or is there a mod to increase that? I believe the 3 gb switch mod isn't applicable because I already have 64 bit W7. Guess FSX is limited to 2 gb of ram because it is a 32 bit program?

[fxsttcb]

I don't think SpeedStep will increase your CPU speed. It will only throttle down and reduce the voltage during minimal loads.

Paxx explains more about FSX, Video cards, and RAM, in this recently ressurected thread than I could...Don
http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showth...and-OOM-(again)

[loki]

Technically, if you have FSX SP1 or later installed, the affinitymask isn't needed for the sim to use all available cores. It should use the additional cores as needed. Where the affinitymask option is particularly useful is in limiting the sim to 3 out of 4 cores, leaving one free for the OS to use. Also, with SP2/Acceleration, FSX can use up to 4GB of memory, though it will only do so if needed.

[loki]

SpeedStep is about saving power, not increasing speed or performance. Just about all processors these days will throttle themselves if they aren't under a heavy load to save power.

[angels355]

Thanks Don, I've been flying nap of the Earth in a POSKY 747 over the CA mountains E of LA w/ RW weather. I turned up a few sliders and am still maintaining 36 fps, and I've reached 81% of all 4 cores. My first core runs at a low level, 2nd core is maxed, cores 3 and 4 have a lot of activity. I'll post a photo in a few minutes had to download Gimp.

[angels355]

Thanks loki, and thanks for the Speedstep information. The affinitymask appears to be working wonders though, I have FSX Gold. Before my max cpu output was 25%, core one was at a high level, and the other three cores would regularly spike to max, similar in appearance to a an EKG heart monitor readout (maybe it was telling me something about my FSX installation?), much lower activity. With the affinity mask however my overall cpu usage varies to a max of 81% so far, and FSX seems noticeably better.

I'm thinking I should get a 2700K for my next FSX computer. Saw an 1155 Asus mobo with pci standard slots included that was moderately priced, then a 77x(?) mobo with only PCIE 1 and 2(?) PCIE 16 slots, no pci standard slots! Do the PCIE 1 slots deliver a huge amount of data compared to PCI standard slots? Also the top of the board was covered with aluminum heat spreader plates which was interesting.

Thank you guys for your help, I've been greatly benefited by both of you over the years.

My first next purchase however has to be the laptop, although I have W7, FSX Gold, 2 1 TB WD Black hdd's waiting for the next FSX build.

This is what my cores look like after the affinitymask. Also notice my ram usage just under 2 gb:

[loki]

PCI is an old standard and will eventually be completely replaced, much like the old ISA slots. All PCI slots and devices (onboard audio and networking were often connected through PCI interfaces) share the 133MB/s worth of bandwidth. With PCIe, each slot or onboard device has it's own dedicated bandwidth. PCIe 1.0 offered 250MB/s per lane, both to and from the slot or device. A PCIe x8 slot has 8 lanes, and a x16 slot has, you guessed it, 16 lanes. Unless you have a PCI card you need to use, I wouldn't go out of my way to get a motherboard with PCI slots.