ClockBlocker (profiled AMD power-management control)

Apparently this works with intel hd graphics too, unfortunately i cant measure the clocks with afterburner, does anyone know a tool do measure the clocks on a intel graphics card ?

 

"Some" Intel IGP's definitely would be considered candidates for compute-workload, and for it to be generated on them. However, I do not know how this will effect them in clock control. It's probably a fair assumption that most vendors will have similar behaviors in order to minimize the chance of numeric instability when doing GPGPU type work. (the extent of my testing was that dedicated cards in these types of setups were properly elevated)

--Far as clock monitoring, I have no idea here if the typical choices like GPU-Z don't get you anywhere.



What type of improvement did you notice in this case? (eg, what are you using ClockBlocker to achieve with an Intel IGP)
I wasn't aware that there were any power management issues with Intel's embedded graphics.

 

Yeah I was messing with my i7s igp for an upcoming video idea I had where I'll play csgo on my smurf account for 10 wins and see if playing at 60hz with a bad gpu makes a good player a bad player just due to performance.... Clockblocker ramped my Intel HD 4600 to 1700mhz (I overclocked it)

Gpu-z monitors it

 

Well, i have this notebook that i use for work when i'm travelling, it is equipped with an intel hd graphics 5500 IGP, sometimes i want to play some games with it. So i tested clock block on some games to see if some improvement was noticeable, so far, most games i tested are running solid 30fps most of time which was not the case when i wasn't using clock block, also i noticed that the notebook started to become hotter, so i believe there is some clock control in order to leave the notebook cool.

 

Great program works fantastically well with my R9 380 card, i never realized how badly my framerates were suffering until i used this

 

Glad to hear it! Never too late to get more out of your hardware.

Sadly doesn't shock me too much on there being some noticed performance benefit, like the saying goes "There is no such thing as a free lunch".

Power-management is one of those double-edged swords where it's a love/hate relation. Always done with good intentions and awesome when it works right, but always seems to hurt things equal to however much it helps. I'm also not sure how much Intel has in the line of frame-pacing in their drivers too (to counter inconsistencies in rendering speed), but I expect much less than NVidia or AMD here.

Good to know that GPU-Z works for Intel IGP's. All my Intel desktops are Xeons that don't have integrated graphics (laptop has a 780m, non passthrough), so it's hard for me to test on these things. (I usually resort to borrowing a friend's)

On your experiment -- that sounds like a pretty interesting one, I'd definitely like to see it when it's done.


--Alot of people record pretty significant K/D increases if they move from vsync to freesync or gsync (not so much from vsync-off), so I'd definitely expect the reverse to be true (though I don't know how much). Just be aware that you'll probably start off playing alot worse until you compensate for the input lag and feel of the IGP vs your dedicated card (eg, wind up over or undershooting). May want some warm-up matches before you start including anything in running averages.

Probably also won't be used to playing in a lower res, if you lower it.

 

@A2Razor : seems like clock blocker doesn't detect my custom clock limit that i set from MSI AB,

because not all games needed full 3D clock,
so i often use a custom clock, with a lower clock speed,
and clock blocker doesn't detect it,

because during a game that doesn't really use gpu,
clock blocker automatically set my gpu to my factory 3d clock.

 

-See my responses to "Johannah" or other people in the thread that have resolved this, and or attempt to use the ADL-method instead of the compute-method. There are ways to get around this issue, but essentially these involve changing away from using the Default (Overdrive) overclocking method in Afterburner.

While their problem involved increasing clock-speed, the threshold with setting it backwards too far is the same. BAZOKA1942 also requested custom downclock control, though it's not something that I've looked in to adding yet.

 

i was using the ADL+compute,

and my MSI AB is already set to with powerplay,

and i've just tried using ADL only, and the gpu clock is still at the default load clock, which is 950 & 1200mhz.

infact, i've just tried switching between the 4 option, and the gpu clock still doesn't set it at lower clock i set at MSI AB which is 500/1200mhz or 500/600mhz

edit : instead of providing downclock control, its probably a lot better to make clockblocker to read what clock MSI AB is set at.

 

Amazing Tool!

Only way I knew to use the gpu max clocks before this was turning powerplay off but it would make clocks go always on max, you could set profiles but still not ideal.

is there any way to keep clocks "blocked" when game is in background? for example when using alt+tab? I know it goes back to max when game is in use again but I would like to keep it at max speed even if not using the game at moment (when it is open in background).

 

The first two choices of clock enforcement (compute-method) do not set a clock speed directly, they attempt to generate a workload pattern that produces virtually no load (no clockspeed setting that I can adjust here). The drivers (AMD's drivers) are what is setting your card to the default speed in this scenario. There is a separate clock-control for GPGPU work that I am exploiting to keep the card elevated.

The other approach reads performance levels as reported from ADL, then sets either the max or min level as all states.

--Unofficial overclocking (at least on some cards), raises the base clock-state (or reduces it). Clearly it does not for you.


Far as supporting Afterburner: If people consider this a big enough issue then I'll spend the effort to make at least the ADL approach "work with overclocking" by all overclocking methods, set in all tools. But I want to stress that I do not want this to become overclocking centric, my focus is more on solving general use problems.. So, I tend to prefer that it's able to work independently of other installed utilities.


DM789: Can you fill me in a bit more on what's in your machine OS and graphics card wise?

Thanks!

 

Yes, there's many different rule actions. The main three are:

-Block
-Block if in the foreground
-Block if in the background


"Block" does what you want, both foreground and background detection of the process. You'll just need to add a rule for that game.

EDIT: It's important to understand that "Block" has a different behavior on fullscreen and 3D program detection base rules. These rules only are concerned with foreground detection, anything else will require a custom rule to be added.

Since I see that you're trying to cut down on the need to produce alot of program rules, you might also want to take a look at using wildcards for any shared game folders (such as your Steam library). I provided a more complicated example of using the rule system some posts back that had this in it.

---I'll move this example up in to the main thread post.

 

Working on 1.2-5, it's going to be a pretty small update this time.

EDIT: -Released!

Note w/ Overdrive based overclocks: Do not apply new clockspeeds while ADL blocking is in effect.. Also you should use ADL exclusively (per ClockBlocker's choices) if you're using such an overclocking tool, or the other blocking method will probably override it.

--Overall, if you have a system that AB unofficial mode yields proper clockspeeds with then I believe this still to be the best approach.

 

can you explain how to do it for one shared game folder?

 

Sure.

I suppose I should mention that to create a rule that uses wildcards, you can't use any of the automatic "selection" dialogs. You can use "Pick Window", "Pick Running Proc", "Recent Foreground", etc, as a starting point -- but you will need to hand edit the path as well.
(eg, this is something done manually)


We'll use the Steam folder part from the example that I had:

-Double-Click on ClockBlocker's system tray-icon or right-click on it and then select "settings".
-Select the "Rules" tab from the top of the settings dialog.
-Click on the green "ADD" button.
-Select all of the text in the first edit field from the top (which reads "NOT DEFINED" by default).
-Replace "NOT DEFINED" with everything between the quotes here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\*"

The asterisk (or wildcard character) is special and denotes that anything is acceptable in a match in place of that character. If you place a wildcard at the end of the rule's path, then any path which contains the text you have "before it" will be considered a match.

So, in jist -- to make a rule that includes everything in a folder and all of its sub-folders, just add an asterisk to the end. Such as: "C:\Some Folder\*"

--That's it!

The default action is "Block" (foreground + background) until you change it, and in this case the behavior is exactly what you're looking for. So, if your Steam library folder was the above, and this included the games that you wanted elevated, you could just click "OK" and add this rule now.


There's one last important thing to mention here. Wildcard rules for a folder will of course only work so long as ClockBlocker can read the full-path to the game process. There may be special cases where it fails to do so due to rights issues or otherwise. (such as if the process is launched under a different user, or as SYSTEM -- like some anti-hack software does)


For troubleshooting: You can check that your rules are properly being matched by looking at the log viewer, inspecting the tray-icon's color, and or looking at the process pickers in the add or edit rule dialog to see what ClockBlocker is able to see about a process.


EDIT: As another note, keep in mind that wildcard matching is extremely powerful, but will also probably catch other things that you don't intend to. Like for example, launcher processes for games, or updaters (non game helpers).. If this happens, you'll need to add more rules (downclock rules) as exclusions to your wildcard rule -- depending how big a deal this is to you.

I wager that running an 8 hour MMORPG update with your graphics card elevated wouldn't be fun!


For how to add exceptions: ClockBlocker's rules are evaluated top-down order. To disrupt a rule from being evaluated, just place another rule that will also match above it.

The first rule to match is the one used. Rules in the list are automatically sorted, but you can also assign a priority-hint to rules in order to sort them higher than ClockBlocker's base sorting criteria. (such as if you want a block-rule before a downclock rule)

 

A2Razor, i seem to have found something strange.
Not sure if it's been covered in previous posts.

I see my clocks (when blocking) isn't running at my OC speed I set in MSI.
Example, i've got the core @ 1100 but with blocking it only goes to 1002mhz.

Any ideas why this is happening?

 

R9 Fury behavior should be the same as Johannah's question on page 10. In jist, see this post or try using ClockBlocker 1.2-5 w/ ADL method selected (the 3rd choice in general settings).

--The comment on ADL from that post is no longer valid as the behavior was changed in 1.2-5.

 

Thanks, the strange thing now is that my GPU is running higher that my OC profile. Says i'm running 1210mhz insteads of 1100mhz. I get the same reading using GPUZ and MSI AB.

Edit* OK, when i go higher than 1100 i get higher readings but when i go over 1125 is goes lower.

I will try and uninstall AB and reinstall it.

Should MSI Unofficial overclocking mode be WITH POWERPLAY? That's how i understood it from your previous post.

 

Did you completely clean your driver install before making the switch?

--You probably have both an Overdrive overclock & Unofficial-mode overclock going concurrently.


EDIT (for your edit):

You will need to completely uninstall your display drivers and clean with DDU likely (reinstall of AB not needed as long as you uncheck to apply overclock on startup before doing it). The overdrive overclock can be additive & stack, and I've seen this before.

(**AMD Overdrive if enabled via Crimson CP [or CCC] can also remember clockspeeds set through other overclocking tools and restore these on system startup**)

-Yes, unofficial "with" powerplay, that's correct.


EDIT 2: To clarify for everyone reading here.

The reason that I consider unofficial-mode superior (and am suggesting it) is because of what I know of CL & DirectCompute workloads. Most games don't do GPGPU work, but if anything did, then it has the potential to violate your clockspeeds set through AMD Overdrive or official overclocking method.

--You can use whichever you can get working on your hardware and it's probably fine in games, but just be aware of this special case. (for instance, OpenCL spreadsheet acceleration in LibreOffice is a big culprit -- unofficial mode will work with software like this active)

 

i'm on win 7 ultimate x64, and my gpu is an old MSI 7850 Power Edition

well by supporting MSI AB, it will make things easier for a lot of users, because MSI AB is widely used,

i mainly use MSI AB to set custom fan speed.