Processor Clocking Up and Down in Diablo

I was monitoring my CPU and GPU while playing Diablo for around an hour. The CPU will clock up to 2.9ghz and then go back down to 797MHz when I am walking around and not attacking a crowd.

Does this behavior seem normal? I thought the processor would stay clocked a 2.9GHz the entire time.

 

I am no expert in this area but I do know something about it so I will offer that up. Unclewebb has forgotten more about this subject than most of us will ever know. The Intel Turbo Boost multiplier is based on the number of active cores, the loading, CPU temperature and the number of watts being consumed. Most games do very little multithreading so you would expect high multipliers and therefore higher speed when playing games. Windows also distributes load, though so you have to take that into account. Windows prioritizes processes as the computer works. If Diablo III suddenly becomes less demanding because your character is walking around doing nothing, Windows will distribute the unused clock time to other processes to allow them a little work time. This causes the CPU to get multiple threads going during that time. If this work is significant, it will reduce the turbo boost. Once your Diablo III thread gets really demanding and commands a higher share of the operating system's attention, it will boost up toward maximum because D3 is using few threads (I'm not sure it can even use two cores).

The other thing to consider is that if you use something like Unclewebb's ThrottleStop just to monitor activity, you will see that boosting is an extremely rapid process. You really can't keep up with the number of times it jumps between 797Mhz and 2.9GHz in a few seconds. It is doing it so fast the lines are almost a blur. Therefore the tools with the slow moving single bar aren't really showing you what's really going on. They are either not really tracking the changes or just showing you an average over many seconds before they refresh. I don't know that we get much detail out of that desktop gadget that Intel provides for this purpose. Even using HwInfo64 will show you that it is rapidly changing all the time while that Intel tool is lazily moving up and down.

I don't know if that helps, but that's my best shot at it. Intel has a chart the specifically lays out what the multiplier will be based on active thread loading but it's happening so rapidly that I don't know of a way to verify that it's working as expected. I've never really tried to do it. I used to run a tool all the time that graphed boost. One day I realized I'm wasting cycles on something that works on its own and that I can't affect at all unless I buy an extreme processor so I removed it and never looked back.

 

Can anyone else with Diablo confirm or deny this behavior?

Jody thanks for the response. The only things I have running are GPU-Z, CPU-Z, and HWMonitor.

 

I just fired it up with HWInfo64 running and the boost constantly bounces between 797 and 2.7GHz for me. The cores never settle on 797. It would be helpful to know what monitoring tool you are looking at to determine it's sticking at 797. I use that one to see if it does the same thing on my machine. I'm don't see a difference to my eye when standing still in town or fighting in a dungeon.

Edit: Just saw your response. I have GPU-Z and CPU-Z. I'm not sure I have HWMonitor. I think your tools will show the rapid bounce so if yours is sticking at 797 when you stand still, it's different than mine. My cores fluctuate between 797 and 2791 all the time. I never hit 2.9GHz for some reason but it never stays on 797 for more than one screen paint if that helps.

 

Let me check with HWInfo64. It only stays like that for a second, then goes right back up and back down dynamically. I'm sure its normal.

Jody I am seeing the same behavior you do with HWInfo64.

 

You should try the on-screen stats capability using MSI Afterburner, augmented by HWINFO64, described by Mr. Fox here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html. Works very well and can be customized to display whatever data you wish to display, allowing you to monitor data and changes as they are happening. Mr. Fox provides a detailed guide of what is needed, how to configure it and the options available. Below is a screenshot of the mothership fly-through from Vantage showing the data display I use as an example of what can be done.



@Remedy1978 -- the behavior you see with your CPU speeds in D3 (and will see in most other games) is perfectly normal.

 

That's cool! Thanks. I bookmarked it for future reference.

 

Can you try running ThrottleStop with the Log File option selected? Also check the More Data option so I have plenty of data to look at. After you are finished gaming, exit the game and then exit ThrottleStop. Post the log file somewhere convenient like MediaFire or you can Copy and Paste the data into Pastebin.com

Some monitoring tools that are reporting 797 MHz while gaming might not be accurate. Turn off CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMonitor and all of your other monitoring tools and side bar gadgets and only run ThrottleStop. Most people don't realize that the high performance monitoring timers in the Intel CPUs are a shared resource. What this means is that one badly written monitoring application can interfere with every other monitoring application trying to get accurate performance data out of them.

I know when ThrottleStop is running by itself, the multiplier data in the log file will be a very accurate look at what your CPU is really doing. I'm curious to see some numbers while you are playing Diablo.