Running at 9700k with a minimum of 800MHz while playing is possible.
Running at 9700k with a minimum of 800MHz while playing is possible.
Hey everyone, it’s not too big of a problem, just curious about what’s going on! In games or benchmark tests, my 9700K tends to slow down to stock speeds and drop to around 1.2GHz, even reaching as low as the energy-saving setting at 800MHz. On the other hand, when you run pure CPU benchmarks or use tools like Intel Diagnostic, it usually stays at full 5GHz. It seems like the system thinks it’s not under heavy load, so it reduces performance unless usage is high. This issue might be fixed by changing Windows settings—switching power management to High Performance mode. That should help without affecting everything. I’m new to this stuff, but my seven700K didn’t have this behavior either, so maybe a BIOS update was involved. The CPU stays at 5GHz with 3.500V and no AVX offset, and the LLC is medium. Temperatures stay below 75°C under load, usually in the low 50s.
Full load temperatures were checked using Prime95 or OCCT. Your 8700K reads around 1.360v, which is close enough. Make sure your chipset is current. You might want to update the BIOS on the board if you haven’t already. Which software are you using to monitor CPU speed? If you’re running Cpu-z, ensure it’s active so you can see all core frequencies—click the frequency box and it lists each core’s speed. For more control, try QuickCpu; it lets you manage things like core parking and memory cache cleaning.
It actually handled this right from the start when I first purchased it. Gigabyte and Intel confirmed it was fine, so I just set it to high performance mode in power management—though I’m not sure that was the right choice. It automatically fixed itself and consistently ran at 4.6 during games. I’m now figuring out what I did differently; I updated the BIOS again after overclocking, which might have caused this. In the product notes it mentions fixing the CPU Vcore and power behavior, but in my case it seemed to work the other way around. I shared this with a Gigabyte subreddit, and someone replied that they didn’t encounter the same issue. I’ve installed all major monitoring tools—CPU temperature, Core Temp, CPU-Z, etc.—but noticed the clock speed dropping only when using burner mode in-game or in Beachmark, especially in full screen. Thanks for your advice!