Question re: Turbo Groups Ratio & Core settings in FIVR page

[DrainBamage]

I have a fairly new prebuilt desktop gaming PC from a major company, who did something with the configuration that really nerfed the turbo speeds on the 12400F CPU. All of the cores are set with 40 being the max multiplier, which prevents individual cores from boosting up to 4.4 Ghz like they are supposed to when the load allows.

I'm pleased to find that Throttlestop is allowing me to tweak those multipliers so I can at least get the turbo boost up to the Intel spec level. But I want to make sure I understand how the Turbo Groups interface really works. I think I understand the "Ratios" column well enough, but I'm not sure about the "Cores" column or what the "groups" mean. Looking at the first row, does it mean, if 1 core is active, the multiplier is X, and on the next row, if 2 cores are active, the mulltiplier is Y, etc.? Basically, I want to set the multipliers on this 6-core CPU so that if any 2 cores or less are active, the max multiplier for those is 44; and if 4 cores or less are active, the max multiplier is 42, and if all six cores are active, the max multiplier should be 40.

But I don't want to assign multipliers to "specific" physical cores, if that makes any sense. I.e. I don't want to specifically set only Core #1 and Core #2 to 44; I want that multiplier to apply to whichever two cores are most active. Keeping all that in mind, do the settings in the image attached below look correct? Thanks in advance for your help. (P.S. this is a six-core CPU, so I'm not sure why there is a Group 6 and 7 listing more than 6 cores, but I won't worry about that unless I need to.)

 

[Toothless]

I'd think resetting the BIOS to factory would fix your issue.

 

[unclewebb]

resetting the BIOS to factory would fix your issue

It is a pre-built computer. Resetting the BIOS is only going to work if the BIOS is setting the CPU up correctly to the default turbo ratios. It sounds like the BIOS is setting all the turbo ratios to 40 which is not correct.

@DrainBamage
Intel stopped publicly documenting the default turbo ratios for their CPUs a few years ago. They show that 44 is the maximum multiplier when at least 1 core is active and 40 seems to be the maximum multiplier when all 6 cores are active. I am not 100% sure what the default intermediate values are. If you want to do some testing to find out, send me a message and I will send you a testing program that should be able to read this information from your CPU. HWiNFO might report this information but I am not sure where.

if 1 core is active, the multiplier is X, and on the next row, if 2 cores are active, the multiplier is Y, etc.?

Your understanding of Turbo Groups is correct. Any core can use the highest 44 multiplier. The multiplier used is always based on how many cores are presently active which can be changing hundreds of times per second.

Group 0 to Group 7 is what Intel shows in their public documentation so I used that labelling for consistency purposes. With a 6 core CPU, you do not need to use the last 2 groups. I left those settings unlocked in ThrottleStop just in case someone's BIOS does not set these up correctly. On my 10th Gen 10 core CPU, I actually only need to use the first turbo group. If I set the Group 0 Ratios to 50 and if I set the Cores to 10, that gives me the 50 multiplier whether 1, 2, ... or all 10 cores are active. You do not have an unlocked K series CPU so that is not going to be possible. No matter what Ratios you ask for in ThrottleStop, the CPU will only use the maximum Ratios that it supports.

You should be able to make turbo ratio changes in ThrottleStop while the CPU is loaded with something simple like the TS Bench test. This might give you a better idea of what multipliers your CPU supports. The 44 multiplier will be difficult to see in ThrottleStop because Windows background tasks are always waking up and using additional cores while any benchmark test is running.

 

[DrainBamage]

Thanks for the informative replies! And yes, the BIOS in this system completely lacks any user-accessible settings for CPU control, and to make matters worse, it (or some other factor in the system configuration) imposes a max multiplier of 40 across the board. But thanks to Throttlestop, I'm able to enable that lost performance. As to the multiplier ratios of 44 for up to two cores, 42 for four cores, and 40 all-core, I found one review of the 12400F which claimed that was the standard mapping for this CPU, but I haven't been able to independently confirm that. It does seem to work, but I haven't done any hardcore stability testing beyond a few minutes of TS Bench.

 

[unclewebb]

I haven't been able to independently confirm

I have a little testing program I wrote that can probably confirm what the default turbo ratio mapping is. Send me a message and I will send you a link if you are interested in running it. Some people are hesitant running a program that they got from some guy on the net. Running this program will not hurt anything. It has been useful for me to find out what is hiding in what register inside Intel CPUs.

I

You can also try setting the turbo ratios to some random numbers and then press the Defaults button in the FIVR window. I think this button works correctly on the 12th Gen P cores but I do not have any 12th Gen hardware for testing purposes. If the turbo ratios change then this feature that reads the default turbo ratios from the CPU should be working correctly.