CPU Underclocked?

melon

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I've got my new computer together, and everything seems to be working well, so far.

One thing I've noticed, however, is that my motherboard lists my CPU, an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz (Q6600), as running at 1.86 GHz. It does seem to recognize the CPU itself properly, stating that it is a 2.4 GHz CPU.

I'm guessing, at this point, that the motherboard is intentionally underclocking, by default, but I have no idea what settings I'd need to change! It's an Asus Striker Extreme motherboard.

FYI, I'm not looking to overclock; I just want the speed that I paid for. Can anyone help here?

Thanks in advance...

Also, I should point out that Vista states that it is a 2.4 GHz CPU when I look at the CPU properties. Is there a reason why the BIOS and Vista are saying two different things? And which one should I trust?
 
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You may need a bios flash. the quad cores are new enough that many MBs do not have support for them yet. CPUz may indicate if the bios is not ID'ing the CPU correctly. Check the hardware info under windows also to see what core it says you have.
 
Try resetting Bios? ( I have no idea, but maybe that will help )
 
I *think* I might have found what's wrong. Asus set the multiplier wrong? The BIOS has it set at a multiplier of 7. Searching around, I found these stats, in the format of multiplier x FSB:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=2057083#26624335

For reference, here are all Intel offerings as of Nov/’07:

Quads:
Q6600: 9x266 = 2.40 GHz
Q6700: 10x266 = 2.67 GHz
QX/Q6700: 10x266 = 2.67 GHz
QX6800: 11x266 = 2.93 GHz
QX9650/QX6850: 9x333 = 3.00 GHz

Duals:
E4300: 9x200 = 1.80 GHz
E6300/20: 7x200 = 1.86 GHz
E4400: 10x200 = 2.00 GHz
E640/20: 8x266 = 2.13 GHz
E4500: 11x200 = 2.20 GHz
E6540/50: 7x333 = 2.33 GHz
E6600: 9x266 = 2.40 GHz
X7800: 13x200 = 2.60 GHz
E6700: 10x266 = 2.67 GHz
E6750: 8x333 = 2.67 GHz
X7900: 14x200 = 2.80 GHz
X6800: 11x266 = 2.93 GHz
E6850: 9x333 = 3.00 GHz

Looking at those stats, it looks like I should have a multiplier of 9 instead? A 7 multiplier x 266 FSB = 1.86 GHz, which would explain why I'm low right now?

You may need a bios flash. the quad cores are new enough that many MBs do not have support for them yet. CPUz may indicate if the bios is not ID'ing the CPU correctly. Check the hardware info under windows also to see what core it says you have.

The board was manufactured recently, and it appears to have the latest BIOS currently available (1305).

The BIOS is identifying the CPU as a 2.4 GHz Q6600 CPU, which is correct.
 
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could it just be automatic throttling by the motherboard? my 2.5ghz athlon is running at 1ghz right now. until i put a load on it, then it jumps up to full speed.

cpu-z will tell you everything.
 
could it just be automatic throttling by the motherboard? my 2.5ghz athlon is running at 1ghz right now. until i put a load on it, then it jumps up to full speed.

cpu-z will tell you everything.

I did consider the automatic throttling ("SpeedStep"), except that the Striker Extreme disables it by default, and it was disabled on this motherboard too. Double-checking it with CPU-Z, it stayed constant at 1.86 GHz, even when I tried some intensive processing. CPU-Z also confirmed that the multiplier was set at 7, while the FSB was 266 MHz, as expected. Hence, 7x266=1.86 GHz.

I decided to change the multiplier to 9, since I could change that setting without enabling overclocking on the board, and it seems to have corrected the issue. 9x266=2.40 GHz, and now CPU-Z also reports that it is running at 2.40 GHz with a multiplier of 9. The BIOS temperature monitor shows favorable numbers still (from an average of 23 C at 1.86 GHz to 26 C at 2.40 GHz [thanks to the Zalman 9700 LED heatsink I put on it].

I guess my final question here would be if that's all I'd have to adjust to make things run safely?

Sorry for the kinda stupid questions here. My last computer build went five years, and since I'm not interested in overclocking personally, I've never had to touch these kinds of settings before. Overall, though, going from an Athlon 2400+ with 2 GB of RAM to a Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz with 8 GB of RAM is such an incredible boost in speed! Doing a 4-core test 3D render in 32-bit Blender at insanely high polygon levels went through much faster than I ever imagined possible. It only makes me wonder how fast the 64-bit Linux version of Blender will be when I get that up!
 
You may want to let Asus know of how your board/CPU combo is not being set right. They may come out with a bios update to correct it.
 

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