B85M Pro3 Multicore Enhancement

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   Hi everyone.

This is my second rock solid ASRock motherboard. I currently have an i5-4590 installed and would like to squeeze some more performance out of both.

I have BIOS version 1.30 installed. Version 1.40 does not have the Multicore Enhancement option. Nothing seems to happen when I enable Multicore Enhancement. With Prime95 running on all 4 cores, I am only getting 3.5ghz turbo.

I would appreciate any assistance you can give.

If it helps, I have XMP enabled on 2 sticks of Team Dark 1600 DDR3.

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twostarph Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 06 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote twostarph Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: B85M Pro3 Multicore Enhancement Posted: 06 Oct 2015 at 3:28am
	Hi everyone. This is my second rock solid ASRock motherboard. I currently have an i5-4590 installed and would like to squeeze some more performance out of both. I have BIOS version 1.30 installed. Version 1.40 does not have the Multicore Enhancement option. Nothing seems to happen when I enable Multicore Enhancement. With Prime95 running on all 4 cores, I am only getting 3.5ghz turbo. I would appreciate any assistance you can give. If it helps, I have XMP enabled on 2 sticks of Team Dark 1600 DDR3.

parsec Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996	Post Options Post Reply Quote parsec Report Post Thanks(1) Quote Reply Posted: 06 Oct 2015 at 12:44pm
	For your i5-4590 processor, 3.5GHz is the standard all cores maximum Turbo speed. It seems you changed to UEFI/BIOS version 1.40 at one time, but went back to 1.30, is that right? Before you changed to 1.40, when using 1.30, Multicore Enhancement set all the cores to 3.7GHz, is that right? If all of the above is correct, I believe Multicore Enhancement is not working because of the Update microcode 19 change in 1.40. Multicore Enhancement and the non-Z OC features most mother board manufactures provided at one time for non-overclocking chipset boards like your B85, did not make Intel happy. Intel is very strict about which boards can have any type of over clocking ability. Only the 'Z' model chipsets, since Intel's 7 chipset series, are allowed to have any over clocking features. It took a while, but Intel forced mother board manufactures to take back the over clocking features on non-Z chipset boards. That was done by a special CPU microcode update, microcode 19, sorry to say. Intel also had Microsoft release a Windows Update that did the same thing, IIRC. CPU microcode is part of the BIOS. CPU microcode is not updated or over-written by every BIOS update. So if (when) you applied 1.40 to your board, you changed its microcode to the one that blocks the Multicore Enhancement option. Changing to BIOS 1.30, which does not change the microcode, will not give Multicore Enhancement back. Sorry to say, it is gone forever now, given all of the above is correct.


twostarph Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 06 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote twostarph Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 07 Oct 2015 at 2:37am
	Thanks for your response. My board did come with BIOS version 1.20 out of the box but I upgraded to 1.40 without checking the impact. I then noticed in the manual that Multicore Enhancement was an option but could not find it in the BIOS. I tried downgrading to 1.30 and Multicore Enhancement was there but not working. Oh well lesson learned. Thanks again for your assistance.