Asus ROGGL752 VW-i76700HQ-Shows Active Cores -2 ?

Total Newb Here :

Just ran the XTU Benchmark - 919 Marks (No idea if this is good or bad), but, XTU shows that the "Active cores" is 2 ?

Is there some funk in the software ? This laptop is an i76700HQ with 4 cores. CPUID CPU-Z shows 4 cores. Speccy shows 4 cores ?

Any help would be much appreciated !

Hi @eightyeightkeys, do you have a link to your XTU submission?

I hope this is my link Massman :

XTU - eightyeightkeys - Core i7 6700HQ

A few of other things are jumping out at me that make me wonder if a feature or control panel might be OFF where it should be ON :

Turbo Overclocking : False (shouldn't this be True ?)

Intel Turbo Boost : False (as well, shouldn't this be True ?)

Intel Speed Shift : True (I guess this is where it's supposed to be)

Max Processor speed : 3.1GHZ (according to the Asus ads/specs, this should be 3.5GHz, shouldn't it ? It says 2.6GhZ Turbo boost up to 3.5GHz)

I've attached a screen shot of my System Spec Page from the XTU application. Any help would be appreciated.

Hm, it shows 4 active cores in the submission link and the score is also in line with expectations.

It's possible it shows 2 active cores in the XTU monitoring as the benchmark workload is ramping up. What do you see in task manager during the benchmark?

Hello Massman :

The Task manager shows all CPU Cores working, however, even during the entire XTU benchmark the Lower Monitoring windows never changes from "Active Cores -2" Screen Pic Attached.

Also attached is a screen pic of the Task Manager Overview which was captured during the XTU Benchmark. The CPU never budges off of 2.60GHz ? Is it not supposed to "Speed Step"/Turbo Boost up to it's maximum performance of 3.5GHz.

Thanks Massman

That is strange indeed. Last question: what version of XTU are you using?

It looks like 6.1.2.8

Alright, I'll have a look at the changelogs.

At IDF I saw version v6.3 on display so maybe the next version will fix this.

btw, why would my i76700HQ not Turbo Boost past 3.1GHz ?

I've watched the task Manager on extremely CPU intensive audio mixes where the CPU is "overloaded" in Cubase while the Task manager WILL NOT move beyond 3.08GHZ.

Is there a Windows setting which governs this ? The BIOS on my laptop is useless.

Is battery usage set to performance mode?

Hello Massman :

I almost never use the laptop using the battery. Basically, the laptop is a convenient "mobile" composing rig for me when we travel (now I use it at home as well)... but, I always plug-into A/C.

Under "Power Options" (which I'm using High Performance) there isn't any "Battery Usage" setting, however, I searched for Battery Usage and the "Battery Saver" system setting comes up. There is no "performance" mode there. All options there are set to values that would not affect the CPU power. Can you point me in the right direction ?

Power options is the correct setting (shows up here under the 'battery'-icon, hence the confusion).

Can you check the turbo boost behavior with SuperPI? Open the benchmark, then assign affinity to one core in Task Manager. Check with CPU-Z for the frequency of the core you assigned the SuperPI task to.

The i7 6700HQ turbo boost configuration is 3.5/3.3/3.1G for respectively 1C/2C/4C workloads.

Sorry Massman.. a bit beyond me I'm afraid....how do i set the "affinity to one core in the task manager?"

Set Affinity on a Program Manually

- Press ctrl + alt + del to bring up the Windows Task Manager, and navigate to the Processes tab.

- Find the program on which you want to set affinity. ...

- Uncheck Now, simply check off the core you want this specific program to run on.

- Click Ok, and you are done.

Got it...thank-you

Here are the screenshots :

#1) CPUZ screenshot : while running XTU Benchmark with XTU CPU Affinity set to one processor - CPU0

#2) Intel XTU Benchmark Screenshot : Benchmark Result with CPU Affinity set to one processor - CPU0

#3) CPUZ screenshot : while running SuperPI (1M calculation of pi) with CPU Affinity of SuperPI set to one processor - CPU0

How does the Intel XTU tuning app work ?

Does the app need to be running in order for the new settings to work across all applications or is the "Saved" XTU tuning automatically loaded when Windows boots ?

I'm guessing the the Core Voltage is the most critical setting when overclocking ? I've increased that setting from Default to 1.0V and the Benchmark score went from 917 to 922. Not sure what that means and how it will apply to my professional audio application Cubase, but, i need all the juice I can get when working.

On topic noticed the same issue in the latest version so i guess not fixed.

Got my limit quickly on the current I7 6700k can not pass 4.50 ghz for 2 reasons.

When i put it at 4.60 ghz it crashed, so i dug up the option to show more info including voltage on the cores and temps per core.

After running it again at 4.50 ghz, i can clearly see that all 4 cores are loaded so that makes me conclude that the software showing 2 core nonsense is not a problem at all.

In my case it showed also a huge problem on this cpu, at 4.5 it uses 1.45 volt on each core which made me clear i have to turn it down quickly because above 1.42 you risk burning your cpu.

This is kinda sad because the earlier cpu i had went easily up to 4.6 ghz running at adaptive 1.362 volt. Sadly i had to rma that one because there where some issues with the memory controller and the ringspeed.

This also ends my change on getting a higher score at the rookie challenge, where i dropped from 34th spot down to 39th in like 20 minutes

Hello ubronan :

Firstly, I'm a total newb at this....I'm a musician trying to squeeze the most out of, what I would say is, an under performing laptop.

I'd be more than happy with a stable 4 GHz machine. I noticed on your overclock scores that the lowest that you have posted is 4.39GHz ? Is that a completely stable O'C ?

If it is, I'd luv to download that file and give 'er a go.