i7 860 -- Problem with speed step/turbo boost?

[NQA]

I am a proud owner of a i7 860, running at stock speed (so I thought until yesterday). Until now I was satisfied with the performance of the system, especially as my new HD5870 just arrived. ;)

Yesterday I checked the core frequency and found out that it never runs at the frequency it is supposed to. It should reach 2.8GHz without turbo boost, and >3GHz if turbo boost is active. Sadly, I can never see higher speeds than 2GHz, even under full load.

All energy settings of Windows are set to high performance.

[NQA]

Addendum (I cannot edit my post for some reason, so I have to post this as a reply):

I measured the CPU frequency using Argus Monitor and this is what I get:

http://www.abload.de/img/argus_monitor_core_fre6meh.png

The multipliers never seem to go above 15, but I should at least be able to see 21 some of the time (21 is the nominal multiplier):

http://www.abload.de/img/argus_monitor_core_mulewvl.png

For some time I thought the CPU is getting to hot, but this is not the case. The operation temperatures seem to be OK:

http://www.abload.de/img/argus_monitor_core_tem0k7s.png

[NQA]

Ok I wanted to report back, because I got it working, in case someone else is confronted with the same problem -- it was a BIOS setting that was incorrect (even though I had loaded the optimized results after updating the BIOS).

There was an option to set the CPU multiplier and this was set to 15. I changed it to the correct value (21) and now it is woking properly.

Here is how it looks like in Argus Monitor (http://www.argusmonitor.com) now, when the system is under full load (I am running y-cruncher in 'stress test' mode):

http://www.abload.de/img/argus_monitor_workingfwb8.png

Today I updated to BIOS F5 for my Gigabyte GA P55M UD2 and after loading the optimized defaults the multiplier setting has the correct value.

[jlreich]

I just seen this post but looking in the BIOS for the multiplier would have been my suggestion. I have my OS's set to high performance but do leave speed stepping on in the BIOS which allows the system to drop down to X6 from the default x8.5 under an easy load. With my Q9550 at a FSB of 400MHz that sets the clock at either 2.4 or 3.4GHz respectively. I am not a big fan of speed-stepping but at 2.4GHz my system runs perfectly fine without any lag while letting my CPU stay cooler when I am doing standard computing. Yet I have an extra GHz of speed in reserve for gaming or other CPU intensive tasks. :)

[NQA]

Yes, speed stepping is enabled on my system as well as the deeper Cx sleep states (they are set to AUTO). When the system is idle, all multipliers drop down to 9 (I guess there is no need to post another screenshot ;) -- Argus Monitor is showing all bars at 9 with some fluctuations to around 11 or 15). The core frequency graph then looks like my very first sceenshot during the first part (my system was idle then as well).