Question Performance has dropped since BIOS update ?

[xtenchi90]

System worked great for 3 months. Updated the bios as a precaution when I found out about the microcode fix for intel 13th/14th gen cpu degradation issues, although my temps were always fine. Ever since updating the bios, load times in some games are a bit slower, texture rendering has a slight delay, and there are sometimes sudden fps spikes. Not sure if it's relevant but usually it will be only one of the 3 problems happening depending on the game, rather than all 3 problems at once.

I don't know much at all about tweaking bios settings, but I set the intel defaults extreme profile and enabled the same 'xmp 1' setting as before. I tried to take pictures of all the old bios settings before updating so I can put everything back as it was, but I somehow had a brain lapse and completely skipped over most of the ai/tweaker settings... so I just left everything alone after setting the defaults + xmp.

Basically I'm at a loss. It seems like it's either a cpu, ram, or ssd related setting, but I don't really know what to do and I don't want to rollback the update for obvious reasons.

Any help and insight would be very much appreciated because I've been trying to figure this out for about a week now.

PC Specs
Mobo: Asus Z790
CPU: 13900k
GPU: RTX 4070
SSD1: 1TB NVMe
SSD2; 2TB SATA
RAM: 1 stick of 16GB DDR5 6000 (yes I need to grab a 2nd one but I had no issues with it before the bios update))

Thank you.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

To my understanding, one of the controversies was that motherboard manufacturers likely pushed the CPUs faster than Intel specs. As in they were giving CPUs more voltage etc than they should have which killed some of them. The update probably put it back in line with Intel specs.

 

[xtenchi90]

Thanks for responding. The voltage has come down a lot after the update. It was around 1.39 in the bios before, now it's around 1.27. From what I know, voltage won't make a difference without clock speed also being changed too right? Speeds and multipliers haven't changed. They're all at 55(with core 4 and 5 at 58) both before and after the update. I've read many people saying the update either had no effect on performance or actualy had an increase in performance, so I feel that my issues are not normal.

 

[beyondlogic]

Thanks for responding. The voltage has come down a lot after the update. It was around 1.39 in the bios before, now it's around 1.27. From what I know, voltage won't make a difference without clock speed also being changed too right? Speeds and multipliers haven't changed. They're all at 55(with core 4 and 5 at 58) both before and after the update. I've read many people saying the update either had no effect on performance or actualy had an increase in performance, so I feel that my issues are not normal.

first not all cpus are the same you and i could have the exact cpu drop the voltage and have wildly diffrent performance numbers.

the issue with dropping voltage is while the speeds and multipliers make look the same they may not be able to stay in the higher turbo state on a all core workload as long. which can make the pc feel more sluggish or unresponsive

 

[xtenchi90]

first not all cpus are the same you and i could have the exact cpu drop the voltage and have wildly diffrent performance numbers.

the issue with dropping voltage is while the speeds and multipliers make look the same they may not be able to stay in the higher turbo state on a all core workload as long. which can make the pc feel more sluggish or unresponsive

Hey thanks for the info. So then if I offset the voltage by about +0.1 closer it's original amount before the update, do you think that would help maintain turbo mode better? I tried +0.05 already a few days ago and it didn't seem to have any effect.

 

[beyondlogic]

Hey thanks for the info. So then if I offset the voltage by about +0.1 closer it's original amount before the update, do you think that would help maintain turbo mode better? I tried +0.05 already a few days ago and it didn't seem to have any effect.

before jumping voltages clock down the clocks can help if there not getting enough power. a lower clock stable chip all core will beat out any performance gain of a few boosting cores. bumping voltage back up will just kill the cpu faster.

lowering your power consumption and keeping a somewhat higher all core clock that doesnt feel sluggish will be better.

 

[xtenchi90]

Alright so I tried my idea of overvolting by +0.1v with the default 55x core ratio, then I tried your idea of default voltage while downclocking to all core 50x ratio. Neither one made a difference.

Thanks for taking the time to try and help me. I'd love to hear any other suggestions. I'm trying not to give up on this.

 

[beyondlogic]

Alright so I tried my idea of overvolting by +0.1v with the default 55x core ratio, then I tried your idea of default voltage while downclocking to all core 50x ratio. Neither one made a difference.

Thanks for taking the time to try and help me. I'd love to hear any other suggestions. I'm trying not to give up on this.

it could be efficiency cores being a pain as well. i would be focusing on zero overclock more down clocking voltage as said it will run smoother. also make sure the cpu cooler is able to keep the heat load in check as stuttering etc can be the cpu is overheating

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Bm0Wr6OEQ


i would try turning down the efficiency cores by half all p cores to 52.

video shows how to fine tune. may take a few trys to find a performance your looking for.

lock voltage at 1.27 personally the lower you get this down the less power cpu will have but will drop the temperatures down and make your cpu more stable.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nIIG7QYcKE

 

[xtenchi90]

Like I said my core voltage is already 1.27 now ever since the bios update and I tried it with 50x all core ratio which didn't make a difference. I have good liquid cooling, my temps have always been great both before and after the bios update. I get only around 50c-60c while playing games, so I'm not thermal throttling. Maybe you can begin to see why I'm so confused by these issues. Lol.

One thing I noticed is XTU has current/tdc throttling flagged pretty frequently. I heard this doesn't matter and pretty much happens anytime you set iccmax, but it makes me wonder. So i tried changing tdc current limit settings but again nothing changed.

I'm beginning to think it's just the 0x12B microcode itself and there's likely nothing I can do about it. I tried many different bios configurations tonight so I think I'll throw in the towel now. The issues are extremely minor to begin with, it's like momentary texture pop-in or a brief fps spike both when doing really specific things in specific games. It was largely me being ocd about it. I'll deal with it. Thanks so much for the help though. Those videos helped give me a lot of ideas for my trial and error tests. I learned a lot about these things if nothing else. Anyway, hope you have a great week. Cheers

 

[xtenchi90]

Ok so I'm reviving this because I changed my mind. There are consistent hard stutters under certain conditions and it's not ok at all. I've taken some screenshots of HWinfo while running a game so that maybe someone can take a look and point out something that looks off.

Bare with me because I know this might sound weird but latest problem is; I'm playing a turn based RPG called Romancing Saga 2 and I notice every time in battle the enemy hits us with attacks that afflict us with reduced stats or poison/paralyze/etc then the screen freezes up for about one whole second. That's the only time it happens though. Nothing else triggers it. When I use the same kind of attacks against the enemy, it doesn't happen. It's really bizarre to me and it definitely never happened at all before the bios update. I don't have a clue what that could possibly point to, but hoping someone might. Only thought I had was maybe some kind of driver problem, but you don't typically need to update drivers after bios updates, right?

I'm still getting the delayed texture rendering under specific conditions too in this game, as well as stutters/frame drops only when loading in and out of different areas in another game called Throne and Liberty. Again none of this happened before the bios update.

I'm also still wondering if the Current/EDP throttle might have something to do with all this. Anyway here's the screenshots:

MBo

CPU

PCores showing random intermittent slowdown(not sure if that's normal or not):

RAM

GPU

 

[xtenchi90]

I fixed it. I'm sad to say, I don't really know what did it. I rolled back to the previous bios. It was still acting up. Then I went forward to the latest one again. Yep, still acting up. Then I went in and changed SVID behavior from intel fail safe to auto, set BCLK aware adaptive voltage to auto, enabled both IA and SA CEP, and set IR voltage limit to 1450. Didn't touch clocks or overvolt/undervolt. These are all things I had already played around with, so I really don't know why suddenly everything was fixed.

For anyone who comes across this in the future, I really don't want to touch the bios to check anymore but based on what I remember, other settings include; intel extreme defaults, XMP 1, core clocks speeds default and not synced, Asus multicore enhancement=disable enforce all limits (i think?), cpu loadline calibration level 3, iccmax either 511.75 or 400 can't remember which, pl1 253, pl2 253, pptw 56.

Goodluck, sorry I don't have a more definitive answer.