amd trinity turbo

Hello, my A8-4500M 7640G 2x4GB 1600 CAS11 laptop came in the mail a couple days ago. On newegg I recall the A8-4500M being able to hit 2.8GHz and it would supposedly use 2.8GHz on one or two cores if other cores were not being utilized. For some reason the CPU only goes to 2.8GHz (pb0) for a split second before dropping back down to 2.3GHz (pb1) even in single threaded applications. My temperatures are also fine too. I am actually forced to disable the 2.8GHz (pb0) state in PSCheck because it causes lots of framerate fluctuation and actually decreases CPU performance as shown here:

pb0 state enabled:
Trinity Devastator Lite Mobile video card benchmark result - AMD A8-4500M,TOSHIBA Portable PC score: P959 3DMarks
Physics: 2326

pb0 state disabled:
Trinity Devastator Lite Mobile video card benchmark result - AMD A8-4500M,TOSHIBA Portable PC score: P851 3DMarks
Physics: 2594

ps i dont care much for gpu perf since i mostly play csgo and tf2 and those are more cpu intensive

If if disable all states but the pb0 2.8GHz state, the computer just hangs and crashes. I don't understand why AMD advertises a 2.8GHz turbo if the computer cannot achieve it for more than a split second. I've been playing around with PSCheck using various different configurations trying to get the 2.8GHz setting to work on at least one core but I am still stuck with 2.3GHz. I really hope software is developed for overclocking this CPU or a fix is created that could help me and others get around this problem since I recall someone else having a similar issue.

 

PSCheck is a crap, only good for messing up the system; causing slow-downs, lower scores, worse gaming experiences. I suggest not to worry about CPU frequency, Trinity will handle perfectly itself. Uninstall PSCheck, maybe need Windows re-installation too. Use Windows 8 .

 

I have to use it or else I'll get annoying FPS fluctuation ingame, does Windows 8 handle Trinity better?

 

I have been only using with Windows 8 and no fluctuation without PSCheck.

 

Ill go ahead with that then and run more tests.

cant be missing those awps u know

 

You are thinking of Intel's Turbo CPUs which will actually reach their max turbo frequency and sustain it for non-negligible time periods. AMD's Turbo does not behave that way -- it has been tested quite extensively (see, for example, this thread) and the highest it can reliably reach is the next-to-highest bin. This is exactly the behavior you observe.

If you don't care much for GPU performance, then it is rather puzzling that you bought a Trinity based laptop at all. The integrated GPU is its greatest strength: it's around 20% better than Intel's best iGPU at medium settings and the discrepancy gets wider at higher ones. On the other hand, the CPU performance is more than a factor of 2 worse than Intel's high end CPUs and even the i5s thoroughly thrash it.

For the same reason that they advertise the 4500M as a quad-core processor (it's technically true in that it does have 4 integer cores, but there are only 2 FPUs and 2 of most front-end components typically allocated per core) and the same reason they allow early reviews only to reviewers who agree not to publish CPU benchmarks early. Their CPU performance is lousy and they know it so they're using these marketing tricks to hide it and divert attention to the GPU where they are strong.

Many people have tried it, but it doesn't look like it's easy to do. You're stuck at 2.3GHz for now.

All of that said, I don't understand why having the highest bin enabled would lower performance for you. The CPU frequency switching should be automatic and independent of operating system. Windows 8 introduces minor changes to how it handles threads split between Piledriver modules (each module is two integer cores + 1 FPU + the front-ends), but it should not have any impact on the frequency of the chip.

 

My 3dmark11 physics score is higher with the 2.8GHz turbo state disabled than at default; this is the real problem I'm having. I love the laptop but I feel that the second turbo state is not beneficial to me at all and actually hinders me unless it's disabled as shown in the scores I posted in the OP. Do other people have negatively impacted CPU scores from allowing the default 2.8GHz state as opposed to disabling it?

Reason I opted for this laptop was the price, it was $380 new, the 7640G was strong enough to play some other games. CS:GO and TF2 aren't the only games I play, though they are the ones I play most. I mostly game on my desktop (i7 870, GTX570) and wasn't originally going to get a laptop capable of playing games and instead get a regular sandy i3 laptop but these AMD APUs seemed kinda neat.