i7 turbo boost problem

[sads001]

Im having trouble finding out why my cpu (i7 820qm) sets the multiplier down to 15x when dolphin starts emulation. I am running CPUz on the side to see what happens to the speed and it goes from 3.06ghz (turbo boost maximum) down to 2ghz per core. Does anyone know why this happens and if i can fix it! im getting real performance issues!
thanks for the help
sads

[admin89]

Try disable Hyper threading in your bios

[sads001]

(05-01-2010, 10:35 PM)admin89 Wrote: Try disable Hyper threading in your bios

i forgot to mention this is on a hp laptop. the bios settings are slim at best. so i cant disable ht.

its odd, i cant seem to find any software that enables to set the mulitplier. turbo boost seems to work automatically. unless theres software out there that does?

[JADS]

Set your thread affinity correctly (Bring up windows taskmanager and right click on Dolphin.exe -> Set affinity) Select Processor 0,2,4 and 6. Or select processor 0,2 and 4 if you want your CPU to overclock itself trough turbo.

[Ocean]

(05-01-2010, 11:12 PM)sads001 Wrote:

(05-01-2010, 10:35 PM)admin89 Wrote: Try disable Hyper threading in your bios

i forgot to mention this is on a hp laptop. the bios settings are slim at best. so i cant disable ht.

its odd, i cant seem to find any software that enables to set the mulitplier. turbo boost seems to work automatically. unless theres software out there that does?

You can't 'set' the multiplier. You can 'define' the maximum range in BIOS (though very likely not on an OEM laptop version) only. The multiplier generally ranges between x6 and x20 depending on what you are doing.

Even if you had an unlocked multiplier extreme edition CPU, it, again, only lets you choose the maximum available multiplier for the front side bus/(QPI in i7's). If you define it at say 175x22, your cpu wont be running at 3.8ghz continuously in windows. But if it's placed under stress it will cap at that frequency instead of the normal rated max.frequency of the processor.

If you start a game or CPU-intensive process, the frequency per core will drop automatically. Even on dolphin, one core will have to run windows, and at least 2 cores will be processing dolphin video/audio I/O if you enabled it in the options.

The thermal output on a laptop would be too high if you attempt/manage to overclock it a lot. It's safer on a desktop processor with liquid cooling or a really good heatsink+air cooler.

Turbo boost on i7's also will only nominally boost core frequencies if you are utilizing many at one time.

[FloW3184]

set cpu affinity to cores 0 and 2 only via taskmanager
AND
use lock threads to cores option in main menu of dolphin

this should fix your problem.

[sads001]

(05-02-2010, 11:46 AM)FloW3184 Wrote: set cpu affinity to cores 0 and 2 only via taskmanager
AND
use lock threads to cores option in main menu of dolphin

this should fix your problem.

This helped alot, thanks for the info peeps, ocean, you pointed out the obviuos flaw, OEM laptops arent the bet for hi end emulation, but hey, im playing zelda twp with near perfect emulation at above average fps.

thanks once again ;D