Question 3700X Boost clocks

[AP911]

Hey guys, so I was doing some benchmarks, here are my specs:
Ryzen 3700X(with Wraith Prism RGB cooler)
ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4
Corsair LPX DDR4 2 x 8GB 3200MHz
GTX 1070

My Cinebench R20 score is 4786 and single core is 497

During the multi core benchmark, under full load, Ryzen Master showed my CPU never crossed 4.05Ghz, and I'm observing the same for single core too. Should PBO be enabled to achieve better clocks? Currently, it's set to "Auto" in my BIOS, I've not enabled it due to temperature issues but that is another issue(I'll have to buy a better cooler) If not, then have I lost the "silicon lottery" and got a Processor that doesn't boost well?

 

[Barty1884]

The boost algorithm depends on temperature/voltage/power delivery headroom.
If you're already running warm, it's not going to boost to it's max potential.

Board should be fine for power delivery. What PSU do you have?

What kind of temps are you seeing in CB?

Do you have "High Performance" or "Ryzen Optimized*" enabled in terms of power plans inside Windows?

*Not 100% of what it's called exactly, but should be obvious inside power plan settings.

 

[jimmysmitty]

You want to make sure the BIOS is up to date. Mainly because the boost for Ryzen 3 is known to have issues hitting the specified boost but recent BIOS releases are supposed to have helped them to better achieve them.

And boost is always based on power use and temperatures. The Wrath cooler should by default be able to keep the CPU to attain boost clocks, maybe not for sustained periods but at least for some. But a better cooler will help the CPU to maintain better boost rates.

 

[RodroX]

mmmm what case do you have, and how many fans does it have?

what is the fan setup inside the case ?

Wraith Prism should be enough for the R7 3700X, even with PBO enable, maybe no the best cooler out there, but fo sure one of the best you can get for "free" on any actual desktop cpu.

Mayeb is all a matter of air flow not been good enough inside the case ?

Have you update to the lastest 1003 ABBA bios ?, Do you have the lastest chipset drivers form AMD website?

 

[AP911]

The boost algorithm depends on temperature/voltage/power delivery headroom.
If you're already running warm, it's not going to boost to it's max potential.

Board should be fine for power delivery. What PSU do you have?

What kind of temps are you seeing in CB?

Do you have "High Performance" or "Ryzen Optimized*" enabled in terms of power plans inside Windows?

*Not 100% of what it's called exactly, but should be obvious inside power plan settings.

I have an Antec Modular 650W PSU and I'm using the Ryzen High Performance Power plan. I didn't get what CB temperatures are, sorry.

EDIT: how dumb of me, didn't realize CB was Cinebench. Temps peak at 85-88 during CB R20 runs.

 

[AP911]

You want to make sure the BIOS is up to date. Mainly because the boost for Ryzen 3 is known to have issues hitting the specified boost but recent BIOS releases are supposed to have helped them to better achieve them.

And boost is always based on power use and temperatures. The Wrath cooler should by default be able to keep the CPU to attain boost clocks, maybe not for sustained periods but at least for some. But a better cooler will help the CPU to maintain better boost rates.

I've updated the BIOS to the latest - 1.7. so I'm guessing right now the main reason my temps are holding the CPU back from boosting? Also like I mentioned, I haven't "Enabled" PBO in BIOS, it's just set to "Auto", could that be one of the reasons? Or should it boost properly out of the box without any changes made to the BIOS?

 

[AP911]

mmmm what case do you have, and how many fans does it have?

what is the fan setup inside the case ?

Wraith Prism should be enough for the R7 3700X, even with PBO enable, maybe no the best cooler out there, but fo sure one of the best you can get for "free" on any actual desktop cpu.

Mayeb is all a matter of air flow not been good enough inside the case ?

Have you update to the lastest 1003 ABBA bios ?, Do you have the lastest chipset drivers form AMD website?

I have an Antec NX300 with 3 fans: front for inflow and 2 at the top for outflow. All cranked to full speed. And also, I ran Benchmarks with the side panel open. Didn't make much of a difference(ambient temperatures here are between 22-30). Also PBO is set to "Auto" not "Enabled".

 

[jimmysmitty]

I've updated the BIOS to the latest - 1.7. so I'm guessing right now the main reason my temps are holding the CPU back from boosting? Also like I mentioned, I haven't "Enabled" PBO in BIOS, it's just set to "Auto", could that be one of the reasons? Or should it boost properly out of the box without any changes made to the BIOS?

Auto should enable it.

That said, yes temps can hold it back. A better cooler may get you higher boost clocks. You can try setting PBO to on and see if it makes a difference but again it will be limited to the power draw,

 

[AP911]

Auto should enable it.

That said, yes temps can hold it back. A better cooler may get you higher boost clocks. You can try setting PBO to on and see if it makes a difference but again it will be limited to the power draw,

Got it, I'll give it a try. I didn't enable it so far for the risk of damaging the processor.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Got it, I'll give it a try. I didn't enable it so far for the risk of damaging the processor.

The CPU has multiple protections built in to prevent damage to it. If it gets too hot or exceeds the TDP it will automatically back the clock down. Its very hard to kill a CPU, even intentionally, these days.

 

[AP911]

The CPU has multiple protections built in to prevent damage to it. If it gets too hot or exceeds the TDP it will automatically back the clock down. Its very hard to kill a CPU, even intentionally, these days.

Just ran R20 with PBO on. No improvement whatsoever, and I got almost 200 points lesser than my best score. All core frequency didn't cross 4.05Ghz and peak voltage was 1.35V. Temperature Peaked at 85.

EDIT: after disabling PBO(not auto) I'm back to my original score on R20.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Just ran R20 with PBO on. No improvement whatsoever, and I got almost 200 points lesser than my best score. All core frequency didn't cross 4.05Ghz and peak voltage was 1.35V. Temperature Peaked at 85.

I'm assuming you've updated your motherboard to BIOS based on 1004B or at least 1003ABBA. Also that you've installed the latest chipset drivers provided by AMD... downloaded only from AMD's website.

Once you've that, make the following changes to your BIOS settings:

Set the following in your BIOS, under "CPU Features" or "AMD_CBS":

• Global C-state Control = Enabled
• Power Supply Idle Control = Low Current Idle
• CPPC = Enabled
• CPPC Preferred Cores = Enabled
• AMD Cool'n'Quiet = Enabled
• PPC Adjustment = PState 0

You can also download a modified power plan, and read a very informative article on how it works, by 1Usmus from here:

1usmus Custom Power Plan for Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 Processors

In this article by our resident Ryzen tweaking guru "1usmus" we present a customized power plan for AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors. The new power plan ensures workloads run on the best cores, which not only increases boost clocks, but also stops threads from bouncing between cores too often.

www.techpowerup.com

That can also help boost CB20 scores a little bit.

With a 3700X on a B450M Mortar using the modified power plan my CB20 scores are: 518 single thread, 5114 multithread. I am running with PBO, all the parameters maxed for my motherboard and a PBO Scalar of 5x.

While I'm happy knowing it's pretty well optimized and seeing the cores hitting 4.4Ghz so reliably and frequently is kind of amazing, I do agree it's not really a noticeable boost to performance. That's because all that high-clock boosting is happening with light bursty workloads. Once the processor gets a really heavy workload that runs to an hour or more the cores will slow down as they heat up. At that point performance depends far more on how effective cooling is (and how robust your VRM is for a 12 core) than boost clock optimizations.
Good luck.

 

[AP911]

I'm assuming you've updated your motherboard to BIOS based on 1004B or at least 1003ABBA. Also that you've installed the latest chipset drivers provided by AMD... downloaded only from AMD's website.

Once you've that, make the following changes to your BIOS settings:

Set the following in your BIOS, under "CPU Features" or "AMD_CBS":

• Global C-state Control = Enabled
• Power Supply Idle Control = Low Current Idle
• CPPC = Enabled
• CPPC Preferred Cores = Enabled
• AMD Cool'n'Quiet = Enabled
• PPC Adjustment = PState 0

You can also download a modified power plan, and read a very informative article on how it works, by 1Usmus from here:

1usmus Custom Power Plan for Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 Processors

In this article by our resident Ryzen tweaking guru "1usmus" we present a customized power plan for AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors. The new power plan ensures workloads run on the best cores, which not only increases boost clocks, but also stops threads from bouncing between cores too often.

www.techpowerup.com

That can also help boost CB20 scores a little bit.

With a 3700X on a B450M Mortar using the modified power plan my CB20 scores are: 518 single thread, 5114 multithread. I am running with PBO, all the parameters maxed for my motherboard and a PBO Scalar of 5x.

Good luck.

Got it, I'll give it a try and get back. Thanks.

 

[AP911]

I'm assuming you've updated your motherboard to BIOS based on 1004B or at least 1003ABBA. Also that you've installed the latest chipset drivers provided by AMD... downloaded only from AMD's website.

Once you've that, make the following changes to your BIOS settings:

Set the following in your BIOS, under "CPU Features" or "AMD_CBS":

• Global C-state Control = Enabled
• Power Supply Idle Control = Low Current Idle
• CPPC = Enabled
• CPPC Preferred Cores = Enabled
• AMD Cool'n'Quiet = Enabled
• PPC Adjustment = PState 0

You can also download a modified power plan, and read a very informative article on how it works, by 1Usmus from here:

1usmus Custom Power Plan for Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 Processors

In this article by our resident Ryzen tweaking guru "1usmus" we present a customized power plan for AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors. The new power plan ensures workloads run on the best cores, which not only increases boost clocks, but also stops threads from bouncing between cores too often.

www.techpowerup.com

That can also help boost CB20 scores a little bit.

With a 3700X on a B450M Mortar using the modified power plan my CB20 scores are: 518 single thread, 5114 multithread. I am running with PBO, all the parameters maxed for my motherboard and a PBO Scalar of 5x.

While I'm happy knowing it's pretty well optimized and seeing the cores hitting 4.4Ghz so reliably and frequently is kind of amazing, I do agree it's not really a noticeable boost to performance. That's because all that high-clock boosting is happening with light bursty workloads. Once the processor gets a really heavy workload that runs to an hour or more the cores will slow down as they heat up. At that point performance depends far more on how effective cooling is (and how robust your VRM is for a 12 core) than boost clock optimizations.
Good luck.

I found out that Ryzen Master does not provide the instantaneous clock readings, it provides an effective clock reading over an interval of time: https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/effective-clock-vs-instant-discrete-clock.5958/

On HWinfo, I can see all my cores have hit the maximum of 4.4GHz(talked to AMD tech support too, they said everything looks fine, it's working as intended). Now I have to troubleshoot why my All Core Boost clock is low(maxed out at 4.05Ghz). I suspect it's because of the high temps, can't think of anything else.

 

[drea.drechsler]

...
On HWinfo, I can see all my cores have hit the maximum of 4.4GHz(talked to AMD tech support too, they said everything looks fine, it's working as intended). Now I have to troubleshoot why my All Core Boost clock is low(maxed out at 4.05Ghz). I suspect it's because of the high temps, can't think of anything else.

Are you on a BIOS with 1004b AGESA? MSI dropped a BETA BIOS with it yesterday so I updated and it was doing that on my board too. Benchmark scores also dropped...over 250 points lower on multi-threaded CB20 with core clocks right around 4.0Ghz. This even though single thread and lightly threaded clocks still hitting 4.4Ghz. When I ran a quick-scan with Defender one core was sitting almost constantly at 4.4Ghz and another with frequent peaks at 4.4Ghz.

But the performance drop in all-core simply wasn't acceptable so I went back to the last released BIOS using 1003ABBA. Once I did, it's back to core clocks around 4.2-4.3 Ghz in CB20 multi-threaded and scores back into the 5060-5100 range as before.

One thing I did note was temperature and power consumption was much lower, as it should with clocks so much lower. I'm wondering if this was intended in order to address the complaints about high-temperatures. That being the case, I'm now wondering if enabling the auto-overclocking in PBO might not restore the lost 200Mhz all-core clock speeds I lost.

Maybe I'll update to that BIOS again and try it out, the faster boot time was sort of nice. I'm not sure MSI will come out with a release version. They've shown an annoying willingness to abandon perfectly good boards with limited BIOS updates left at BETA.

 

[AP911]

Are you on a BIOS with 1004b AGESA? MSI dropped a BETA BIOS with it yesterday so I updated and it was doing that on my board too. Benchmark scores also dropped...over 250 points lower on multi-threaded CB20 with core clocks right around 4.0Ghz. This even though single thread and lightly threaded clocks still hitting 4.4Ghz. When I ran a quick-scan with Defender one core was sitting almost constantly at 4.4Ghz and another with frequent peaks at 4.4Ghz.

But the performance drop in all-core simply wasn't acceptable so I went back to the last released BIOS using 1003ABBA. Once I did, it's back to core clocks around 4.2-4.3 Ghz in CB20 multi-threaded and scores back into the 5060-5100 range as before.

One thing I did note was temperature and power consumption was much lower, as it should with clocks so much lower. I'm wondering if this was intended in order to address the complaints about high-temperatures. That being the case, I'm now wondering if enabling the auto-overclocking in PBO might not restore the lost 200Mhz all-core clock speeds I lost.

Maybe I'll update to that BIOS again and try it out, the faster boot time was sort of nice. I'm not sure MSI will come out with a release version. They've shown an annoying willingness to abandon perfectly good boards with limited BIOS updates left at BETA.

I'm still using the 1003ABBA, haven't updated to the beta BIOS(I use an ASRock mobo). Let me try running a quick scan on defender and see if I do achieve 4.4Ghz. And about MT clocks, I'm stumped, at this point, either it's my cooling, or I just got unlucky with the silicon lottery. I saw another user with top of the line cooling and he's only able to achieve 4.1GHz all cores. Maybe I'll overclock to 4.2 once I get a good cooler. What cooler do you use by the way?

 

[drea.drechsler]

I'm still using the 1003ABBA, haven't updated to the beta BIOS(I use an ASRock mobo). Let me try running a quick scan on defender and see if I do achieve 4.4Ghz. And about MT clocks, I'm stumped, at this point, either it's my cooling, or I just got unlucky with the silicon lottery. I saw another user with top of the line cooling and he's only able to achieve 4.1GHz all cores. Maybe I'll overclock to 4.2 once I get a good cooler. What cooler do you use by the way?

I'm using an AIO, CoolerMaster LM-240. But it all depends on how your temps are running whether more cooling will help. In an all-core load (like CB20 MT test), where are the base of the peaks running at? Ignore the peaks, they aren't the problem and you can't control them anyway (it's like trying to put out a match by turning the AC cooler). It's the base you should focus on.

Have you tried the 'auto-overclcock' feature in PBO? Some BIOS call it something else...I think MSI calls it like 'boost clock offset' or something. I can dial in a positive clock offset in 25 or 50Mhz increments. It does nothing with my current BIOS. But just to see if that does anything, would be interesting.

 

[AP911]

I'm using an AIO, CoolerMaster LM-240. But it all depends on how your temps are running whether more cooling will help. In an all-core load (like CB20 MT test), where are the base of the peaks running at? Ignore the peaks, they aren't the problem and you can't control them anyway (it's like trying to put out a match by turning the AC cooler). It's the base you should focus on.

Have you tried the 'auto-overclcock' feature in PBO? Some BIOS call it something else...I think MSI calls it like 'boost clock offset' or something. I can dial in a positive clock offset in 25 or 50Mhz increments. It does nothing with my current BIOS. But just to see if that does anything, would be interesting.

Base of the peaks is around 83-87. Many a times it doesn't cross 88. I'll check out the auto OC options in BIOS. Also, I'm getting better CB20 results with PBO off. Almost 150 points increase in MT.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Base of the peaks is around 83-87. Many a times it doesn't cross 88. I'll check out the auto OC options in BIOS. Also, I'm getting better CB20 results with PBO off. Almost 150 points increase in MT.

That does suggest cooling might help, as with PBO on it should be willing to run hotter since that raises the normal limits. But even with those limits raised boosting starts getting limited when temps drift above 75C (reportedly). It's the mid-clock boosting (4.1-4.3Ghz) where the processor does it's all-core heavy lifting.

Under my AIO, the temp stays reliably under 70C even with core clocks hovering around 4.20-4.25Ghz in CB20. In P95, small FFT's temps will drift into 85-90C and the clocks lower to 4.0-4.05 Ghz. I'm not worried about P95, it's not any way reflective of real-world. But CB20 is very much real world for heavy all-core processing.

Try opening up your case and putting a big fan (like a room cooling fan) blowing on the motherboard. Idea is to see if it affects things with that kind of over-kill and help making decisions where to go.

 

[drivinfast247]

If you're approaching 88°C during a CB run, an all core frequency of 4.1 doesn't seem bad.