Question Lower Performance after Ryzen 7 3700x RAM OC

[Truemonkh]

So I recently tried to manually set all the timings etc. on my RAM for my Ryzen 7 3700x and must have done something wrong. I tried to boot and got a BSOD, adjusted the voltage and got another BSOD. So I thought to myself: "just revert to the previews settings you had in the bios." So I did that and ran some benchmarks to test if everything was still working as before. For the life of me I can't figure out why, but my Cinebench R20 score used to be 4900 with my previous OC, after the timing adjustment fail and then reverting to that previous OC my score never rises above 4300.

I tried a CMOS reset, tried to reinstall the latest BIOS, tried running with default settings and only got a score of 3900.
Windows is on the newest version, so are all my drivers. Even switched around power plans but that didn't work either.
Temps are all in the green.
I bought new RAM to test if I may have fried my RAM but it didn't seem to make a difference so tomorrow I might get a new Mobo to see if that's the problem, but I can't really afford to test another CPU.
Gaming Performance is also worse, CSGO benchmark used to give me around 500 FPS and now it gives me an average of 380.

Any ideas how to fix this weird issue?
Unfortunately I can't remember the BSOD messages.

Thanks for all the help in advance.

 

[drea.drechsler]

So I recently tried to manually set all the timings etc. on my RAM for my Ryzen 7 3700x and must have done something wrong. I tried to boot and got a BSOD, adjusted the voltage and got another BSOD. So I thought to myself: "just revert to the previews settings you had in the bios." So I did that and ran some benchmarks to test if everything was still working as before. For the life of me I can't figure out why, but my Cinebench R20 score used to be 4900 with my previous OC, after the timing adjustment fail and then reverting to that previous OC my score never rises above 4300.

I tried a CMOS reset, tried to reinstall the latest BIOS, tried running with default settings and only got a score of 3900.
Windows is on the newest version, so are all my drivers. Even switched around power plans but that didn't work either.
Temps are all in the green.
I bought new RAM to test if I may have fried my RAM but it didn't seem to make a difference so tomorrow I might get a new Mobo to see if that's the problem, but I can't really afford to test another CPU.
Gaming Performance is also worse, CSGO benchmark used to give me around 500 FPS and now it gives me an average of 380.

Any ideas how to fix this weird issue?
Unfortunately I can't remember the BSOD messages.

Thanks for all the help in advance.

4300 to 4900... a difference of 600 points, or about 13%... is actually not all that huge. It could be the result of a lot of things, even just chip temperature causing it not to hold as high a clock in the test. One thing I do is make sure CB20 has real-time priority by setting it in Task Manager on the Details tab. That makes results a lot more consistent from run to run.

Hardware degradation is almost certainly not the cause of it though. Something like that shows up as crashes under stress. A far more likely situation is the bad memory over-clock corrupted something in Windows, and even that seems a bit unlikely as they also show up as crashes and BSOD's. But you might try re-installing video drivers after un-installing with DDU, or recovering to a restore-point from before you tried the failed memory overclock.

But in the end, you'll probably find you had a setting in BIOS you'd forgot you'd set that got you the better performance but you'd never saved in an OC profile.

 

[Truemonkh]

4300 to 4900... a difference of 600 points, or about 13%... is actually not all that huge. It could be the result of a lot of things, even just chip temperature causing it not to hold as high a clock in the test. One thing I do is make sure CB20 has real-time priority by setting it in Task Manager on the Details tab. That makes results a lot more consistent from run to run.

Hardware degradation is almost certainly not the cause of it though. Something like that shows up as crashes under stress. A far more likely situation is the bad memory over-clock corrupted something in Windows, and even that seems a bit unlikely as they also show up as crashes and BSOD's. But you might try re-installing video drivers after un-installing with DDU, or recovering to a restore-point from before you tried the failed memory overclock.

But in the end, you'll probably find you had a setting in BIOS you'd forgot you'd set that got you the better performance but you'd never saved in an OC profile.

Well the all core boost is pinned at 4.2 Ghz since that is my OC profile and temperatures are in the low 70.
And I find it unlikely to be an issue with a BIOS setting, since a normal 3700x chip with no OC at all should get at least 4500 points in cinebench R20.
I'll try recovering to a restore point and I'll report back after that.
Thanks for the quick answer^^

 

[CountMike]

4.2GHz is actually an underclock because on PBO you should get at least 4.35GHz and 4.4 with one or two cores. CB r20 is not responding well to RAM frequency change, you are better off with Geek bench. When you OC RAM it works better with higher CPU frequency
If you are oveclocking memory manually you also have to adjust FCLK to at least half memory frequency.
It's also time to say which MB and BIOS version and also which RAM and which OC.

 

[Truemonkh]

4.2GHz is actually an underclock because on PBO you should get at least 4.35GHz and 4.4 with one or two cores. CB r20 is not responding well to RAM frequency change, you are better off with Geek bench. When you OC RAM it works better with higher CPU frequency
If you are oveclocking memory manually you also have to adjust FCLK to at least half memory frequency.
It's also time to say which MB and BIOS version and also which RAM and which OC.

Thanks for the answer, although that doesn't seem to be an issue either, since I got that score of 4900 with the OC of 4.2 Ghz (Game Boost Profile from my MSI Mobo), with just PBO enabled I got about 4500.
I'm using the MSI x570 Gaming Edge Wifi on version 7C37v14.
My RAM is the Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3600 Cl18 kit 2x8GB. I had the XMP profile enabled when I got that 4900 score and also MSI Game Boost in the BIOS, although I did adjust the fan curve a bit to quiet it down since I have a beefy cooler, be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
I used the enhanced mode 3 for PBO and made sure that my CPU doesn't rise above 1.37 volts, which before my OC attempts gave me that 4900 score.
Hope this helps and thanks for the answers^^

 

[drea.drechsler]

...CPU doesn't rise above 1.37 volts, which before my OC attempts gave me that 4900 score.
Hope this helps and thanks for the answers^^

That would definitely limit performance, and probably the reason for the low CB20 scores with PBO if you're lowering VCore voltage to achieve it.

Ryzen 3000 has to be able to spike voltage upwards of 1.5 V for to hit high boost clocks. It's specifically designed and tested to do that very thing and AMD engineering has said this: https://community.amd.com/community...ios-updates-for-boost-and-idle-plus-a-new-sdk .

I'd just leave it in AUTO as when the load gets serious and the processor heats up it will also drop voltage as needed to keep it safe. In a wicked bad Prime95 test mine drops to 1.27V range, but clocks do also to about 4.050 Ghz.

Otherwise, my 3700x returns CB20 scores of 5085-5095 on PBO, with a slight VCore offset of +0.0125V to make sure it's getting to at least 1.475 V in light loaded bursts. It will sometimes hit as high as 1.49 V but the only way I catch that is in an HWInfo MAX reading after a period of use.

Single thread scores are 508-510 with up to 3 cores hitting 4.4Ghz regularly.

 

[dorsai]

If you're using a voltage offset to keep the 3700x at or below 1.37v then remove it...there's nothing bad about letting the CPU hit up to 1.4v while under load and your score will improve.

The other possibility is somnething running in the background...Logitech recently did a software update that I swear was doing bitcoin mining in the background. I found out about it when I noticed my 3600 was under-performing in R20 and went looking for why...as soon as I uninstalled the Logitech software update everything returned to normal.

 

[Truemonkh]

Okay interesting, I'll try it out.
Although I read somewhere that undervolting Ryzen could improve performance because PBO relies heavily on thermals. And even if, I got that 4900 score when I limited vCore to 1.36, now if I don't limit it, the score is lower.
This has me bamboozled

 

[Truemonkh]

I will uninstall my G-Pro Wirelesd software and report back. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Okay interesting, I'll try it out.
Although I read somewhere that undervolting Ryzen could improve performance because PBO relies heavily on thermals. ..

That was true of Zen+, the Ryzen 2000 processors. But Zen2, or Ryzen 3000, is an all-new process and with boosting algorithm that behaves differently. The boost algorithm squeezes all the performance it can in light bursty loads but it needs to see enough voltage to ensure stability for that.

When you lower VCore, it doesn't have the voltage headroom and responds by something called 'clock compression'. Clocks LOOK like it's still boosting but it's not actually so performance suffers.

This isn't to say it doesn't respond to thermals though. The stock cooler may work well, but replacing it with a good AIO or 'big air' cooler coupled with a properly ventilated case can improve sustained load performance immensely. Just don't lower voltage to get there or it will throttle light loads and short-duration loads unnecessarily.

What all are you doing when you enable PBO?

 

[Truemonkh]

I will uninstall my G-Pro Wirelesd software and report back. Thanks for the suggestion.

Wow, <snip> that did the<<EDITED>> trick, G-Hub was using 7% of my CPU constantly for some reason, I uninstalled it and now everything is back to normal.
Thanks for the help.