Intel’s SpeedShift Technology and heavy demand software

Topic

New Reply

Pretty technical question, but I’m wondering if anyone has noticed improvement or problems with Intel’s Speedshift enabled.

History: With the introduction of newer Intel processors and newer versions of Windows 10, Speedshift technology allows the processor (in conjunction with the OS) to ramp up and down faster. This technology replaces SpeedStep.

Obviously, Speedshift technolgy is great for saving power and running a processor cooler (until ramped up for performance), but I wonder just how good it works for video editing or other software where the demand might be needed all the time.

Old article for more information:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9751/examining-intel-skylake-speed-shift-more-responsive-processors

Reply | Quote

Replies

BTW. The reason I even got curious about Speed Step and Speed Shift was an article I read that most DAW software, like Steinberg, recommend disabling them. Another reason is many gamers have seen an improvement when playing games with either disabled. But, all that may be old news.

Reply | Quote

The biggest issue I would expect to see with any of the processor speed throttling features (whatever they may be called) would be in the transient effect.  When the CPU is idle or under low demand, the clock speed would be slow, but if a sudden load is applied, it takes a bit of time for the CPU to respond to the change in load.  It’s possible that before the CPU speed gets cranked up, the load could hit 100%, meaning that the task is slowed a bit.  If the load is a steady, sustained high load, the clock rate will nominally stay at the maximum setting (not counting the turbo limits, which will usually cause it to throttle after a short time to get back to the CPU’s TDP).  Other than the transient time when the CPU was responding to the increased load, it would be the same speed as if the CPU speed was locked at the maximum.

Where you might expect to see some effects from this is not in a sustained, really heavy load like video rendering, but a very spiky (intermittently heavy) load like gaming.  If the CPU keeps swinging up and down in speed, it could conceivably have some perceivable effects like microstutters or the like.

For real-time audio recording, where DPC latency needs to be at its lowest, it may be a good idea to lock the speed so that there is no latency while the clock speed cranks up under demand.  In other things, like video rendering, you could always try turning it off if you have problems.

This is all hypothetical from my perspective, as I’ve never done heavy video editing or anything with real time audio.  I’ve kept Speedstep and other similar things enabled (on my desktop, where the power consumption is not a big deal) while gaming and never seen any change when I tried turning it off, but I’m not that big a gamer, so the number of games I’ve tried is pretty small.  Some games are more dependent on the GPU (the most common situation), while some need all the CPU you can throw at them.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

Ascaris wrote:

When the CPU is idle or under low demand, the clock speed would be slow

Not if the PC is set to High Performance. Mine is.

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Reply | Quote

Alex5723 wrote:

Not if the PC is set to High Performance. Mine is.

Of course.  I can do the same in Linux.

I was explaining how SpeedShift/SpeedStep work and the reasons that someone may want to disable it, as the OP was asking.  High performance mode is one way to do that (with SpeedStep at least; I haven’t looked into SpeedShift or how it might be different).  You could achieve the same thing independent of the OS by turning it off in the UEFI, of course.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Reply | Quote

[Mike]

For reference, specifically for DAW’s

https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/360008589880-Windows-10-How-to-set-up-and-optimize-a-Digital-Audio-Workstation-DAW-

 

Modern systems with a fully updated Windows 10 should not need any of the default settings to be modified. However, if certain drivers are not fully optimized and you experience audio drop-outs, it is worth having a closer look. Note that the following settings are often not accessible, especially on laptop systems.

• Disable Hyper-Threading (Intel)/Simultaneous Multi-Threading (AMD) in the UEFI BIOS if your CPU supports it and if your BIOS allows you to modify this setting.

• Disable advanced power-saving and dynamic performance options for your CPU if applicable. This usually needs to be done in the UEFI BIOS of your computer and includes ‘Enhanced Intel SpeedStep (EIST)’, ‘AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet’, ‘Intel Turbo Boost’, and ‘AMD Turbo CORE’.

• Disable C-States in the UEFI BIOS if this is accessible. C-States allow your CPU to sleep when idle, which may interfere with real-time applications such as audio. This option is often called ‘Disable CPU Idle State for Power Saving’.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by Mike.

Reply | Quote

Okay, back to basics, reading comprehension 101, cutting through the blurb, etc.:

Example #1:

Mike wrote:

…if certain drivers are not fully optimized and you experience audio drop-outs, it is worth having a closer look.

Alt txt: “If you know/care nothing about hardware/software/bloatware drivers and your computer audio sounds fine, skip ahead to the next chapter because here we’re going on a tour of generic possibilities from the last twenty-odd years.”

Want to know why your audio (and/or video) skips, stutters, hiccups, crackles, pops? Then use specific software and run tests, video example for W10 using MS tools:
“[14:46] Let’s start with the Audio Glitches and Video Glitches datasets to identify where the problem is
[16:15] The CPU Scheduler dataset is very useful; shows which threads were running, and when
[20:11] Help->Shortcuts tells you all the keyboard/navigation shortcuts
[20:40] Context Switch Call Stack dataviewer shows you when a thread started running, what it was waiting on
[21:58] Callstacks dataset compiles all the events that had call stacks captured with them
[23:44] Stack Tree data viewer shows the summary breakdown of all call stacks over a selected time
[24:45] Using the Video Glitches and DMA Operations datasets to see what the GPU was doing during the glitches
[26:37] Demo #2: An audio glitch that occurred when the screen got powered on
[27:14] Start with the Audio Glitches and CPU Scheduler datasets
[30:52] Use the Callstacks dataset to identify the culprit: display driver was spending too long executing a DPC”

Media eXperience Analyzer download page.

W7 users should have long fixed any such issues but they’ll have to use some different tools/methods: TaskMan with kernel activity enabled, LatencyMon, DPC Latency Checker, xperf and .etl traces, etc.

There used to be several hardware review sites that tested for high latency on motherboards, for some reason (odd, given that I’m seeing many people complaining that W10 is worse in this respect), there might be only one or two left giving those (warning) details.

There may be some specific OEM notebooks that have a pretty poor reputation for high DPC/latency + audio issues, here’s one that might have been cured that I ‘randomly’ grabbed from Dell’s support site.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote

I am having difficulty finding SpeedShift in my BIOS and I am wondering if it even exists on the ASUS X99E WS USB3.1 platform. Can anyone verify this? I can find Speed Step but the shift is nowhere to be found.

Reply | Quote