We have a new server with a Xeon 1270 processor. Looking at CPU-Z I see the Core Speed as 1596MHz, with a Multiplier of x16, and a Bus Speed of 99.8MHz.
I've been watching it for a while and sometimes noticed how the core speed jumps up to about 3GHz, which would match the advertised Clock Speed of 3.4GHz on Intel's website.
Is the core speed reported by CPU-Z and the clock speed on the Intel's website the same thing? Should I expect to have the core speed to be at 3.4GHz, rather than 1.5GHz?
The server doesn't have a lot of constant traffic, rather small bursts that don't seem to be enough to kick the CPU into a higher frequency. Am I correct in thinking that in my scenario, given that the CPU stays mostly constant at 1595MHz, we are getting much less than the benchmarked performance for this CPU?
Would you disable the Intel Turbo Boost? We have configured the power options to be high performance, but it doesn't seem to make a difference -- I read somewhere that the BIOS probably doesn't let Windows make the necessary changes.
Thank you,
Peter
If you check wikipedia's description of "Intel Turbo Boost" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost) you'll probably understand this a little better. Essentially, the CPU stays at a lower clock speed to conserve power until the system decides that it needs the extra horse power, in which case (as you noted) the CPU frequency jumps up for a few seconds to finish that workload, and then drops back down.
This doesn't mean you're getting any less performance, realistically; if the work load required more performance the clock speed would likely stay at the higher rate for a longer period of time. But since it's going right back down, then you just don't need the extra performance. I personally would leave it alone, save on your electric bill, your server is obviously not overloaded or anything so the performance is fine.