[SOLVED] New Ryzen 3700x system not performing as well as expected

[mistral_blue]

So am after some educated suggestions as to why my new system is not performing as well as expected, as I'm tearing my hair out with this after several days of fiddling, I must be missing something... I've been building computers for about 25 years (every few years, inc for friends and family) but it's only my 3rd Ryzen build (did a sweet mini-itx 3400G build for the kids into a Core V1 and another for a friend's kids too) so I must be missing something... I know things are constantly developing with Ryzen vs 6 months ago when there were major issues - problem is googling it gets you potentially old/irrelevant stuff now and regardless, having tried most of it I'm running out of ideas! I seem to be reading a depressing amount of threads with people with similar issues (as well as those whose systems are running amazingly!)...

Specs:

• Ryzen 3700X cooled by Corsair H110i GT with Noctua fans
• MSI MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI
• 2x8GB G.Skill DIMM DDR4-3600 F4-3600C16D-16GTZN
• MSI 1080TI Gaming X 11GB, with NZXT G12/Kraken X62 cooling and Noctua fans (vertically mounted using Cablemod kit)
• Corsair 750D case with airflow edition front panel
• Samsung SSDs, 850 Pro, 850 EVO, 860 Evo and a Corsair MP600, plus the usual spinners for File Storage
• Noctua case Fans (cooling is not an issue)
• Coolermaster V850 PSU (850W Gold)
• Predator X34 34" monitor at 3440x1440, 100hz

First things first, I'm coming from a 4790K, which I had overclocked to a stable 4.8GHZ on an MSI Z97A Gaming 7, with 16GB 2133 Vengance Pro. It was a bit of a weapon! Having seen a GN video

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6RsDyMn2gY
and read some stuff on better 0.1% and 1% lows, I started thinking that maybe it was time to finally start building a new system. While the 4790K was still doing the business for gaming, I'd been thinking about more cores due to the above (RDR2 is pretty punishing), as well possibly doing some UNRAID stuff, Vive VR and to future-proof me a bit for multi-core gaming/workloads (the odd spot of 3d design/rendering in Sketchup). In addition, it allows me to free up my 4790k to upgrade my brother's system (running on my old 4690K which is getting a bit long in the tooth).

Having done my homework I decided my budget would reach a 3700X paired with an MSI X570 Pro Carbon (I was going to go for the ACE but the PC was discounted to £200 so too good to miss), so I could get PCI 4.0 etc, along with some fast B-die GSKILL memory and a sweet MP600 PCI 4.0 SSD. As a result of my selections, based on what'd I'd read/seen on Youtube, I was expecting at the very least slightly better performance than my current system in gaming (with perhaps slightly better fps, but improved lows), along with significantly better mutli-threaded performance in other workloads (which matches a lot of anecdotal forum posts and youtube videos out there). Trouble is, this is not what I am getting and I am a pretty stumped as to why!

I took a few benchmarks before I removed the old mobo etc to put the new bits in so I could hopefully see the expected improvements. Stock performance on 3700X wasn't great tbh after initial setup (although I was waiting for the clips so I could fit my AIO). Even once that was fitted it was showing up as poor/bottom end of USERBENCHMARK results for similar hardware and my Cinebench scores while impressive at about 4500 were lower than others . So I decided to do some bios tweaking/overclocking and now have it running all-core overclocked at 4.4 GHZ at 1.35V under an H110i GT, which gets me about 5000 in Cinebench R20 (multi) and 500 (single). I think this is pretty good from what I've read (especially getting 4.4 all core @ 1.35V). Weird thing is, now it seems to be performing well in the benchmarks, it's just STILL not doing as well as 4790K in RDR2 by about 5-10 fps. I know that's only one game but I've seen similar patterns in the others I tested too, other than Ashes (which I know is generally CPU bound).

So far I have:

• Done a clean install of W10 Pro 64bit on to Samsung 850 Pro (which I did regardless as part of the new setup)
• Updated to latest BIOS for mobo from MSI website
• Latest drivers from MSI LIVEUPDATE and the latest AMD chipset driver direct from the AMD website
• Latest Geforce Experience/driver for 1080TI
• Tried various Windows power plans (now have Ryzen Balanced and High performance options with new chipset driver, have tried both)
• NVIDIA control panel set to Max Performance
• Fiddled with Cool n Quiet in bios ON/OFF
• Tried PBO and overclocking, both via bios and Ryzen Master (currently uninstalled)
• Tried JBAT1 CMOS jumper reset, followed by re-doing all my settings in BIOS
• Graphics card is idling at 24 deg, about 45 deg under 100% load (G12/X62 is a beast!), showing 99% utilisation in Afterburner/RDR2
• Processor is idling at about 35 deg, goes to max of about 70 deg at 100% in Cinebench R20 due to H110i, which is well under 90 deg max)
• Graphics card is overclocked to +70 core/+500 memory (stable in games and Superposition), this was my previous setting on 4790K system
• CPU is all-core overclocked to 4.4GHZ, OVERRIDE@ 1.35 Core, 1.1 SOC, LLC 2, PBO AUTO (off), Fabric left at 1:1:1 1800mhz
• Memory is XMP to 3600MHZ (rated speed) at 1.35V, in slots 2 & 4 as per manual. Have tried messing with power down/gear down, currently back on AUTO
• Have both 4 and 8 pin mobo CPU power block connected
• Tried 1080TI in direct in top PCI slot without riser (no difference) and it is running at PCI 3.0x16 (I checked in GPU-Z)
• Have 2 separate 6+2 pin connectors to the 2 GPU connectors

So, message reads... WTF? WHY is is not behaving well in games? Looks like the GPU is at 99% at the same core/mem speeds as the old system (which would suggest it is GPU-bound on this title), but it was getting significantly better framerates under the 4790K. This doesn't make sense, should be as good as or better from what I've read...

eg:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/i7-4790k-vs-r7-3700x.3501183/
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/upgrade-4790k-to-3700x.3546041/

Yeah I know my 4790K was at 4.8GHZ and single core performance counts but still, I would expect the mins/average to be at least on a par). To be clear, my 3700X blows my 4790K out of the water in Cinebench, just not in the games/progs I benchmarked before disassembly (I did RDR2, Superposition, Ashes, Wildlands, Cinebench).

Seems I'm not the only one (I know the first is a 3900x but the point stands)...

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...wer-than-5-year-old-intel-cpu.18869533/page-2
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/ryzen-7-3700x-underperforming.3548213/

If you need any screenshots from AIDA64/CPU-Z/GPU-Z/BIOS etc then please fire away...

TL-DR - had a 4790K, side/upgraded to get more cores, 3700X isn't performing anywhere near as well in games as 4790K (was expecting equal or better) and I don't know why!

PLEASE HELP!

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Nice system. I love Noctua fans.
Did you try the Fclk at 1800 ?
Have you tried Ryzen Dram Calculator ?
3733 mhz is supposed to be the sweet spot for ram and cpu.
I have my 3600x @4.3 ghz 1.29375v
G.Skill trident z royal gold 2x8 cl16
16 16 16 16 36 running @3733 fclk 1866
Timings of 15 15 15 15 30 45 1.35v on a Asus rog strix x470 f gaming.
Cb r20 m/c 3924 s/c 499

 

[Danymq]

Perhaps infinity fabric is reducing your CPU performance in games? I remember hearing somewhere that Windows was not the best allocating the cores in games, maybe you could play around in the task manager/core affinity to prevent manually the usage of infinity fabric in games, maybe using 4C+8T, or 8C+8T, but that's just an idea, I'm not sure if it will work.

 

[mistral_blue]

Nice system. I love Noctua fans.
Did you try the Fclk at 1800 ?
Have you tried Ryzen Dram Calculator ?
3733 mhz is supposed to be the sweet spot for ram and cpu.
I have my 3600x @4.3 ghz 1.29375v
G.Skill trident z royal gold 2x8 cl16
16 16 16 16 36 running @3733 fclk 1866
Timings of 15 15 15 15 30 45 1.35v on a Asus rog strix x470 f gaming.
Cb r20 m/c 3924 s/c 499

Hey, thanks for the reply. Just been and set FCLK to 1800 (was on Auto but I'm sure it was 1800 previously), no change in RDR2 or R20 sadly. I've got DRAM calc but am worried about DL Thaiphoon Burner to get my full timings as the website is coming up as potential malware at the moment from Malwarebytes (depending on where you read this is because of the type of tool it is, but could also have been hacked of course!)... I see you've kept 1:1:1 by doing 3733 DRAM vs 1866 FCLK? How have you found your framerates in games, better or worse than expected?

 

[mistral_blue]

Perhaps infinity fabric is reducing your CPU performance in games? I remember hearing somewhere that Windows was not the best allocating the cores in games, maybe you could play around in the task manager/core affinity to prevent manually the usage of infinity fabric in games, maybe using 4C+8T, or 8C+8T, but that's just an idea, I'm not sure if it will work.

Interesting idea, I'll give it a try...

 

[drivinfast247]

I don't have much to add to this except, damn! You got 4.4ghz @ 1.35v, nice!

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Good Morning
I'm not a hardcore gamer so as to fps i didn't compare but using rdc did show increases in Cb r15 /r20, 3dmark firestrike, and userbenchmark on my 2600x.
Now with the 3600x rdc isn't working for me but have manually lowered the timmings and verified by Memtest86 and p95.
I only have 2 games at this time
Ghost Reacon WL and Cold Waters submarine.

Now people talk you can't really use userbench for any real useful comparison but you can still use it to check if you make changes in settings to see if it helped or not by the individual components such as the ram score and watching how it's scale rates the component.

I have had no ill affects of thaiphoon burner on my system.

Please note there is talk of 1.32v being safe max volt for longer life of the cpu,
And some diminishing returns on lite thread vs heavy threaded situations on a all core oc.
From my oc'd 2600x and now my 3600x it seemed to be best at 2600x 4.1g and 3600x at 4.3ghz @1.29375v so i have some room to try higher as I'm still playing with it.

Please keep us posted there will be others here that can help more then me.