Intel Turbo Boost vs. uTorrent upload speed

[crz]

Hi,

Some time ago I bought a P55 motherboard (Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3) and an i7 870 CPU to replace my old C2D E8400 CPU. That's when the issue I'm gonna describe started to happen. The OS has been and still is Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

The issue is as follows: the upload speed is no longer constant, instead it reaches a peak than falls down to almost 0 and remains there for several minutes. Then it climbs again, falls again etc.

Cause: by pure luck I was able to track down the cause to a setting related to Intel Turbo Boost in the motherboard BIOS: Enable C3/C6 states. Thing is that enabling C3/C6 halt states in BIOS allows the CPU to boost up to 3,6 GHz, as it should, but causes the upload speed problem in uTorrent. Disabling it solves the problem in uTorrent but the CPU only boosts to 3,2 GHz.

This is how the upload looks with C3/C6 Enhanced Halt States enabled:

This is how it looks without C3/C6 halt states (screenshot taken 10-15 minutes after the first one):

What I have ruled out:

1. uTorrent version: happens with a lot of versions, from 1.6 to the latest 3.0 alpha;

2. uTorrent settings, happens with both my custom settings and a clean settings file;

3. The OS + other software: happens with both the old Win 7 Ultimate 64 installation and a fresh Win 7 Pro 64 install with nothing but drivers and uTorrent installed.

4. The VDSL router: happens with host in DMZ, host with port forward, router in bridge mode, another connection with public IP.

5. The network adapter: happens on the mobo built in Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Adapter and on an older PCI adapter, Realtek RTL8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter.

6. General network problem: FTP uploads work at 100% upload speed.

This issue is driving me mad for the last month: i have to choose between proper Intel Turbo Boost and proper upload speed in uTorrent. Anyone has any idea what the hell is going on and a possible solution that would allow both uTorrent and Intel Turbo Boost to work at the same time?

[GTHK]

Did you do a clean install? Try disabling bandwidth management. I think there's a tool from Intel to get a better idea of how the speedboosts work.

[crz]

Yes, I tried a clean install, as I have mentioned, I have installed Windows on another partition just to rule out other software and and the old uTorrent install.

I have also tried a lot of options in uTorrent, none seems to help.

The only tool from Intel is a desktop gadget that shows the maximum frequency, It confirms what RealTemp's utility TurboGT and TMonitor show: without C3/C6 enhanced halt states, the CPU only boosts to 3,2 GHz, all the time. With C3/C6 enhanced states enabled it boosts to 3,5-3,6 GHz on single threaded loads, but the upload issue in uTorrent shows up.

Anybody else with an i7 or i5 experiencing this?