• Happy holidays, folks! Thanks to each and every one of you for being part of the Tom's Hardware community!

Question Ryzen 5950x Frequency Issue in Idle?

Noobpunk

Commendable
Jan 11, 2022
136
1
1,585
Hey all,

Just monitoring my CPU cores out of curiosity and I have noticed that my cores are all almost maxed out and my average speed is 4.5GHz whereas my base speed is 3.40GHz. I also have an average VID of 1.3-1.4 V; HWINFO Screenshot - https://ibb.co/wdnWLrM

This is all in idle btw. Is this normal? If not can somebody help me deal with this potential issue?

Could this relate to doing a GPU undervolt?
 
Last edited:
Hey all,

Just monitoring my CPU cores out of curiosity and I have noticed that my cores are all almost maxed out and my average speed is 4.5GHz whereas my base speed is 3.40GHz. I also have an average VID of 1.3-1.4 V; HWINFO Screenshot - https://ibb.co/wdnWLrM

This is all in idle btw. Is this normal? If not can somebody help me deal with this potential issue?

Could this relate to doing a GPU undervolt?
Idle is very stretchable term , first thing is to check for any background tasks and running programs, Also need to check in BIOS and windows in power saving features are enabled.
 
Hey all,

Just monitoring my CPU cores out of curiosity and I have noticed that my cores are all almost maxed out and my average speed is 4.5GHz whereas my base speed is 3.40GHz. I also have an average VID of 1.3-1.4 V; HWINFO Screenshot - https://ibb.co/wdnWLrM

This is all in idle btw. Is this normal? If not can somebody help me deal with this potential issue?

Could this relate to doing a GPU undervolt?
Windows is always doing something with lots of background processes. When one of those asks, the CPU responds with a boost to max clock for an instant then dies away just as quickly. It's the way it works.

It's not likely 'all cores all the time' either. It's just occasionally on any one core but many monitoring programs are pretty dumb and only report the highest clock. Get HWInfo64 and you'll see each core's current, minimum, maximum, and average clock over a time period.
 
Windows is always doing something with lots of background processes. When one of those asks, the CPU responds with a boost to max clock for an instant then dies away just as quickly. It's the way it works.

It's not likely 'all cores all the time' either. It's just occasionally on any one core but many monitoring programs are pretty dumb and only report the highest clock. Get HWInfo64 and you'll see each core's current, minimum, maximum, and average clock over a time period.

Ok thank you,

I have just noticed that the power deviation reporting (accuracy) is 74% and is in red. Is this a potential issue that I can fix?

All I have done is change my power settings to balanced instead of high performance.
 
...
I have just noticed that the power deviation reporting (accuracy) is 74% and is in red. Is this a potential issue that I can fix?
...
NO!

The Power Reporting Deviation report is meant to provide an indication of whether your motherboard is accurately reporting CPU power and CPU current. The sensor is pretty much meaningless unless your system (CPU) is set up in perfect stock mode and running an all-core realistically heavy workload.

So disable any overclocking or PBO or curve optimizer settings. Set CPU frequency and CPU VCore to AUTO (if not already). Now run Cinebench 20 or 23 in a multithread test...just set it up to do it constantly for a while. Now check the Power Reporting Deviation reading: it should be 100 +/- 10. If not then the motherboard is not set up to accurately report CPU current draw or power consumption.

Any excess deviation is probably not really important but it can affect performance depending on how far it under- or over-reports. That's because the CPU uses the information to control it's boost behaviour. Whatever it is, there's nothing you can do about it since it's the way the motherboard's BIOS is set up to work. But it's also not perfect and can not take the place of proper test equipment. So basically it's just a curiosity.
 
Last edited:
NO!

The Power Reporting Deviation report is meant to provide an indication of whether your motherboard is accurately reporting CPU power and CPU current. The sensor is pretty much meaningless unless your system (CPU) is set up in perfect stock mode and running an all-core realistically heavy workload.

So disable any overclocking or PBO or curve optimizer settings. Set CPU frequency and CPU VCore to AUTO (if not already). Now run Cinebench 20 or 23 in a multithread test...just set it up to do it constantly for a while. Now check the Power Reporting Deviation reading: it should be 100 +/- 10. If not then the motherboard is not set up to accurately report CPU current draw or power consumption.

Any excess deviation is probably not really important but it can affect performance depending on how far it under- or over-reports. That's because the CPU uses the information to control it's boost behaviour. Whatever it is, there's nothing you can do about it since it's the way the motherboard's BIOS is set up to work. But it's also not perfect and can not take the place of proper test equipment. So basically it's just a curiosity.

I have not touched anything in regards to my CPU at all. I havent even gone into the bios and set up an overclock, PBO etc. Only thing I have done is change power plan to balanced.

Can undervolting my GPU play a role in this at all?

Current PRD 57%
Minimum 86 %
Maximum 172.3 %
Average 116.5 %
 
...
Can undervolting my GPU play a role in this at all?
...
None

Unless running something like CineBench 23 it means absolutely nothing.

Go read this:

It's written by Martin, the author of HWInfo64. He's the ultimate authority on this.
 
None

Unless running something like CineBench 23 it means absolutely nothing.

Go read this:

It's written by Martin, the author of HWInfo64. He's the ultimate authority on this.

So am my CPU is safe from any potential or long term damage? because literally I have done nothing to it..All I would like is to undervolt but even then I wouldnt want to overclock anything too
 
That's a loaded question since there are many things that can harm your CPU in the long term.

Run it in stock modes with VCore in AUTO and multipliers in AUTO and it will last 20 years or more...UNLESS "life" happens.

Sorry, what I meant was..having these stats on my HWINFO in regards to the PRD..these are just stats and will not affect anything?

And your last sentence is in regards to undervolting without overclocking? this method is in doing so?
 
Sorry, what I meant was..having these stats on my HWINFO in regards to the PRD..these are just stats and will not affect anything?

And your last sentence is in regards to undervolting without overclocking? this method is in doing so?
Unless the system is set up right and running the correct kind of load they are meaningless...so they aren't even 'stats', they're just random numbers.

I'm saying, don't undervolt. Don't do anything but run it full stock as AMD designed it to run and you'll get 20+ years of service. Undervolting won't hurt it but it won't do anything "good" either...and will more likely make it unnecessarily unstable.
 
Unless the system is set up right and running the correct kind of load they are meaningless...so they aren't even 'stats', they're just random numbers.

I'm saying, don't undervolt. Don't do anything but run it full stock as AMD designed it to run and you'll get 20+ years of service. Undervolting won't hurt it but it won't do anything "good" either...and will more likely make it unnecessarily unstable.
If there is no issue with the clocks being that high in idle etc as shown in the first post, then I won’t need to undervolt.

https://imgbb.com/wdnWLrM - by looking at this, this is idle with no applications in back!
Is something wrong? Or unusual? Because the clock speeds don’t need to be that high during idle as well as the volt level too..
 
If there is no issue with the clocks being that high in idle etc as shown in the first post, then I won’t need to undervolt.

https://imgbb.com/wdnWLrM - by looking at this, this is idle with no applications in back!
Is something wrong? Or unusual? Because the clock speeds don’t need to be that high during idle as well as the volt level too..
That looks perfectly normal. The important thing to note is the average clocks for each core: between 3.67 and 4.0Ghz. And the MINIMUM clocks: 2.88Ghz. That means it's properly pulling back clocks most of the time and only boosting for a transient process to get it finished quickly, as it should. If you check core voltage you'll find it pretty similar: the max voltage may seem high, but the average and minimum are most important to take note of.

Windows has hundreds of resident process running...check Task Manager/ Performance/ CPU you'll see. At any time one may want some attention while the system seems to be at idle...when that happens the CPU boosts a core to get it completed and go back to a deep sleep. But another comes along and does the same thing. Perfectly normal because no Windows system is ever completely idle.
 
Last edited: