Yes, they refer to the same concept—how much processing power a CPU is using at any given time.
Yes, they refer to the same concept—how much processing power a CPU is using at any given time.
@porina Here is another Windows reporting issue that no one ever seems to question. How is it possible to have the CPU running at more than 100% of its Maximum Frequency especially when the CPU is idle? This is only possible if the base frequency is what Microsoft is using to calculate the Maximum Frequency. My old 4th Gen laptop with a 4700MQ can use the 36 multiplier when 1 core is active. When running at its base frequency, it uses the 24 multiplier. 36 / 24 = 150% I can show you examples of this misleading data but I have no idea why Microsoft decided to compare everything to the base frequency and not to the maximum turbo boost frequency, Intel CPUs mostly run at the max turbo frequency. When Microsoft first started doing this, desktop CPUs only used a small percentage of turbo boost. No one really noticed or cared that CPU Utilization and CPU Usage were not in sync. Some Intel mobile CPUs have very low base speeds and very high turbo speeds. The inflated looking Utilization data becomes a lot more obvious then. On my above example with 10 of 20 threads loaded, when I select Disable Turbo in ThrottleStop and run the CPU at its base frequency, CPU Usage and CPU Utilization are exactly the same. If I use ThrottleStop and slow the CPU down to a crawl while the TS Bench is still running, the CPU Usage is still exactly the same at 50% but the Utilization number goes way down. When forcing the CPU to run the TS Bench at 800 MHz the Utilization is, (800 MHz / 3600 MHz) X 50% Usage = 11% Utilization On my desktop computer with a 50 multiplier and a 36 base multiplier, when CPU Usage is 72% or higher, Windows scales this up and reports 100% Utilization. The problem then is that 72% Usage or 80% or 90% or 100% CPU Usage will all be reported exactly the same as 100% Utilization. The Task Manager just caps the maximum Utilization number at 100%. This leaves some users thinking that their CPU is more loaded than it actually is. This data has probably encouraged more than one user that it is time for a faster CPU with more cores to handle this imaginary load. I am not sure what you are looking for. This issue has been around for years. No one has ever been interested enough to stop and ask Microsoft why they decided to display and graph utilization data in the Task Manager instead of CPU usage. The Task Manager Details tab shows data for CPU Usage.
I think I haven’t used Resource Monitor often enough to realize this. It’s unclear if Intel CPUs always run at full speed for many generations now. Perhaps not since we moved past the quad-core period. For the 6700k, it started at 4.0 GHz base and 4.2 GHz turbo, but many motherboards would push all cores up to 4.2, which wasn’t a huge change. Even in the Coffee Lake lineup, the difference was much larger. The 8086k had a 5.0 GHz turbo while all cores ran at 4.3 GHz. Mobile CPUs showed even bigger gaps. Maybe Microsoft wanted users not to see their CPU hitting 100%. Turbo clocks don’t always work as expected. The article I updated provided more details, but it was still unclear when the issue first appeared—possibly as early as Windows 8.x or even Windows 10. From my side, it looks like the problem is more about display issues rather than actual performance loss.
It's important to note that the standard turbo speed for the 6700K was just 5% higher than its base rate. Increasing the maximum turbo would raise this gap, making CPU utilization and usage readings less reliable. The 6700T, with a 35W TDP, operated at a lower base frequency, so at full turbo it reached about 28.6%. Mobile processors generally run at even lower frequencies. This issue is especially clear with my 4700MQ at (3.60 GHz / 2.40 GHz) or 50%. Today's low-power mobile CPUs, such as the 10710U, feature a minimal base frequency and a high maximum turbo speed.