My i7-10700F never boosts beyond its 2.9 GHz base clock. HWiNFO reports a constant 29x core ratio, even while idle, and Cinebench R20 multi-core scores only 1772. During full load, temperatures stay around 70°C and CPU power is roughly 37 W, so it does not appear to be thermal or power throttling. HWiNFO only shows the "Max Turbo Limit" flag at 100%. Turbo Boost is enabled and the ratio table lists boost values up to 48x. I have tried different Windows power plans, enabled aggressive boost behavior, removed any maximum-frequency cap, updated the BIOS, loaded optimized defaults, checked SpeedStep, Turbo Boost, and C-States, tested with Speed Shift disabled, removed Alienware Command Center and other Alienware utilities, and confirmed that neither Intel XTU nor ThrottleStop is installed. Dell's diagnostics also reported no problems. Disabling Hyper-Threading made no difference: HWiNFO and CPU-Z still show about 2893 MHz and a 29x multiplier under load and at idle. What could be forcing the processor to remain at its base clock?
1 Answer
Hyper-Threading was suggested as something to check, but disabling it did not change the behavior. The CPU still stays around 2.89 GHz with a 29x multiplier, so Hyper-Threading is not the cause based on this testing.
I tested that already, and both HWiNFO and CPU-Z still report the same 29x multiplier during the stress test and when the system is idle.