News Core Ultra 9 285K retail samples benchmarked in CPU-Z and Blender — thermal throttling and limited clock speeds spoil the fun

[Admin]

The Core Ultra 9 285K has been spotted in CPU-Z and Blender, with performance around 10% higher than the last generation, even while experiencing thermal throttling.

Core Ultra 9 285K retail samples benchmarked in CPU-Z and Blender — thermal throttling and limited clock speeds spoil the fun : Read more

 

[colossusrage]

I'm curious to see how the 285K will perform against an underclocked and undervolted 14900K, particularly in terms of power draw. AMD positioned the Ryzen 9XXX series as more efficient than the 7XXX series through its naming strategy. However, once comparisons between the 9700X and 7700 were conducted, it became apparent that the performance gain was under 5%, with no real efficiency improvements. As a result, most reviewers shifted their focus to benchmarking it against the 7700X instead.

 

[mac_angel]

"It appears that Skymont's IPC uplifts have made up for removing Hyper-Threading."

I've been curious about that for the past few months, being quite vocal on it.
With the E-Cores being added to the last couple of generations, is there any advantage in having hyperthreading turned on any more? I really wish someone had have been able to think of that and retest a bunch. Turning off hyperthreading would dramatically reduce thermal throttling, so would that not benefit gaming?

 

[PixelAkami]

Honestly, I wonder if we push up the Ring Bus 200 or 300 Mhz with adequate cooling (we don't know what they used here to cool this sample of the processor) if we can get better performance out of it.

 

[Mama Changa]

I'm curious to see how the 285K will perform against an underclocked and undervolted 14900K, particularly in terms of power draw. AMD positioned the Ryzen 9XXX series as more efficient than the 7XXX series through its naming strategy. However, once comparisons between the 9700X and 7700 were conducted, it became apparent that the performance gain was under 5%, with no real efficiency improvements. As a result, most reviewers shifted their focus to benchmarking it against the 7700X instead.

If they test against the 7700 there is unsurprisingly no efficiency gain as they have the same TDP, but it showed > 7% gains on average. Against the 7700X, efficiency is much better, again unsurprisingly as that's 105W TDP. Performance is only about 5% better though, and less in games. I get people want more, but the fact the 9700X still outperforms the 7700X while using 7700 levels of power is not bad. And let's not gforget it's only in Windows that Zen 5 is underwhelming. In Linux and the server sphere the performance uplift is excellent, > 20% hell Epyc Turin is up to 55% faster than Genoa and beats the snot out of Granite Rapids.

 

[Quirkz]

With the E-Cores being added to the last couple of generations, is there any advantage in having hyperthreading turned on any more? I really wish someone had have been able to think of that and retest a bunch. Turning off hyperthreading would dramatically reduce thermal throttling, so would that not benefit gaming?

In theory, hyperthreading is more about improving multicore performance on a CPU, by using parts of the core that would otherwise be idle during operations.

Gaming is still relatively core-light, (eg, 8 core ryzen X3D are still the fastest gaming chips, and the 6 core parts are not far behind in most games.)

So for CPUs with 12 or more real cores (with a generous assumption that hyperthreading is a huge benefit to those 8 core machines, and making them the equivalent of 12 core CPUs), hyperthreading is unlikely to benefit most games, unless you have an ancient 4 core CPU.

So yes, I suspect you're right, and gaming performance might be improved by switching off hyperthreading on the CPUS with lots of (ie, 12+) performance and efficiency cores.

A test from someone like hardware unboxed would be very interesting.

 

[YSCCC]

Blender could be some AVX instruction set/ the NPU able to utilize it.

But what caught my surprise is that it thermal throttles, where intel claims it gets some >10C lower in temperature I would expect slapping some cheapish single tower cooler would keep it from throttling hard. will like to see full blown reviews out soon to see how much surprise or "surprise" they are going to give

 

[mac_angel]

In theory, hyperthreading is more about improving multicore performance on a CPU, by using parts of the core that would otherwise be idle during operations.

Gaming is still relatively core-light, (eg, 8 core ryzen X3D are still the fastest gaming chips, and the 6 core parts are not far behind in most games.)

So for CPUs with 12 or more real cores (with a generous assumption that hyperthreading is a huge benefit to those 8 core machines, and making them the equivalent of 12 core CPUs), hyperthreading is unlikely to benefit most games, unless you have an ancient 4 core CPU.

So yes, I suspect you're right, and gaming performance might be improved by switching off hyperthreading on the CPUS with lots of (ie, 12+) performance and efficiency cores.

A test from someone like hardware unboxed would be very interesting.

Well, as you said, 8 cores is usually fine, which is what most of Intel's higher end ones have; plus the E-cores. So, yea, I think someone should have done an update on gaming performance the past couple of years with Hyper-threading turned off. I thought it would have been a rather obvious one to check from all the big news outlets. They include gaming performance in their reviews already.
I also can't help but wonder if Intel should have looked into this, too. Especially with trying to promote the gaming capabilities of their CPUs and going against AMD. Turning off Hyper-threading brings down the voltages, and the temperatures, which means less thermal throttling (and burning out CPUs).

 

[YSCCC]

Well, as you said, 8 cores is usually fine, which is what most of Intel's higher end ones have; plus the E-cores. So, yea, I think someone should have done an update on gaming performance the past couple of years with Hyper-threading turned off. I thought it would have been a rather obvious one to check from all the big news outlets. They include gaming performance in their reviews already.
I also can't help but wonder if Intel should have looked into this, too. Especially with trying to promote the gaming capabilities of their CPUs and going against AMD. Turning off Hyper-threading brings down the voltages, and the temperatures, which means less thermal throttling (and burning out CPUs).

IME turning off HT don't really help games as they are more limited by frequency and IPC of the P cores, and normally they are distributed to not use up both threads from HT. voltages and temperature wise most games are less demanding than rendering and never reach the TDP limit anyway, maybe cool down a bit more but unlikely related to the degradation issues, however, disabling E cores do help some games if they cannot properly arrange and occupy the P cores, but that was addressed partially by the intel APO and some demonstrated using HW schedulers could benefit some games (thought I doubt that is worth the effort if most using the latest HW will hit above the meaningful FPS anyway)

 

[mac_angel]

IME turning off HT don't really help games as they are more limited by frequency and IPC of the P cores, and normally they are distributed to not use up both threads from HT. voltages and temperature wise most games are less demanding than rendering and never reach the TDP limit anyway, maybe cool down a bit more but unlikely related to the degradation issues, however, disabling E cores do help some games if they cannot properly arrange and occupy the P cores, but that was addressed partially by the intel APO and some demonstrated using HW schedulers could benefit some games (thought I doubt that is worth the effort if most using the latest HW will hit above the meaningful FPS anyway)

Interesting. But that would kind of circle around to potential overclockability of the CPUs, especially 13th and 14th gen. I can't say for sure, but I think some people still do experience thermal throttling on the Core i9 series of those, and cutting voltage would help. I have mine locked at 1.35 with a VDroop of 5 (I think. It's been a while. And it's on an MSI board, and all motherboards are different with this. Asus has theirs reversed). I'm able to maintain full stock speeds, without thermal throttling with Cinebench R23; no overclock. So, I wonder if overclocking might be possible. Especially if you turn off hyperthreading and lower the voltage needed.
It's a big rabbit hole that needs attention.

 

[YSCCC]

Interesting. But that would kind of circle around to potential overclockability of the CPUs, especially 13th and 14th gen. I can't say for sure, but I think some people still do experience thermal throttling on the Core i9 series of those, and cutting voltage would help. I have mine locked at 1.35 with a VDroop of 5 (I think. It's been a while. And it's on an MSI board, and all motherboards are different with this. Asus has theirs reversed). I'm able to maintain full stock speeds, without thermal throttling with Cinebench R23; no overclock. So, I wonder if overclocking might be possible. Especially if you turn off hyperthreading and lower the voltage needed.
It's a big rabbit hole that needs attention.

It could be, but personal after all those degrading cpus I decided that the best to do was just under volt as much as it is stable， and then set the power limit at 253W and let it run the stock frequency and call it a day.. too stressful to OC and worry it self fries. Although in theory upping the frequencies and power limit to the KS extreme spec should be safe also

 

[TheHerald]

Interesting. But that would kind of circle around to potential overclockability of the CPUs, especially 13th and 14th gen. I can't say for sure, but I think some people still do experience thermal throttling on the Core i9 series of those, and cutting voltage would help. I have mine locked at 1.35 with a VDroop of 5 (I think. It's been a while. And it's on an MSI board, and all motherboards are different with this. Asus has theirs reversed). I'm able to maintain full stock speeds, without thermal throttling with Cinebench R23; no overclock. So, I wonder if overclocking might be possible. Especially if you turn off hyperthreading and lower the voltage needed.
It's a big rabbit hole that needs attention.

Yes, if turn off HT you can reduce voltages or increase clockspeeds at same voltages. If I remember correctly my 14900k needed 1.18v for 5.5 with HT off, 1.26 with HT on.