Top Speed

[glorybound]

My computer speed is 2.3 GHz (Max 3.8 GHz), but Windows is saying the max speed is 2.3 GHz. Is there something I have to do?

[benb32]

Nope, Windows (in the task manager) will report the top speed for each CPU (two in your case) as well as showing the utilisation for each core (as though each core is an independent CPU). 2.3Ghz is the base speed of all your cores, anything higher will come with turbo boost when the clock speed is increased dynamically depending on the load across all your cores and the temperature of the cpu. 3.8Ghz will be the top clock speed of a single threaded operation assuming the other cores have minimal utilisation and the thermal design of the cpu hasn't been reached causing throttling. In the case of a render where all your cores are used the collective speed of your cores will be lower. In the case of the speed reported by windows, the max speed reported will increase when in turbo boost.

[benb32]

Here's the turbo boost for your chips:
5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/13/13
Assuming there's space with the temperature, the base clock speed is multiplied by the numbers above. Read the numbers from right to left. For example, if only two cores are being fully utilised then 100Mhz x 13 will be added to the base speed of two cores, the rest remaining unchanged. If all the cores are utilised then 100Mhz x 5 will be added to all the cores, with none of them exceeding that clock speed. Hope this helps.

[glorybound]

So, there is nothing I need to do? I had to do some tinkering to get Windows to see both processors.

[benb32]

As long as windows sees both processors and by extension all your cores - there is nothing more you can do in software, but using task manager to see the actual core speeds is not the most accurate.

As far as hardware goes, some motherboards allow for a slight overclock of xeon - around 5 to 10%. As you probably picked up from the posts below, your maximum clock with all cores is 2.8GHz as long as the thermal limits of the cpu have NOT been reached. With each CPU pushing out 140W of heat each, that's an awful lot of energy to dissipate. If the thermal limits have been reached, your CPU will throttle down the core speed by 100Mhz increments until the CPU is back within in thermal limits. In my experience with high wattage CPUs I've gone with good water cooling to keep the cores working at full speed.

[benb32]

Ohhh and by the way, Windows reports the top speed as the speed your CPU is currently running at. If there is very little utilisation, turbo boost won't be active, hence it reporting the base speed.