Enabling Precision Boost Overdrive does nothing

[t895]

I've tried enabling PBO in my motherboard BIOS and in Ryzen Master and no matter what I do, performance numbers barely change. Even with the AMD Ryzen power plan enabled, very little difference is made. Is there something I'm doing wrong or?

Benchmark results:

 

 

System Configuration:

Motherboard: B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600X

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB

OS: Windows 10 x64 (1903)

  

[nick name]

The Ryzen power plan sets Minimum Processor State to 90% which is how it should be for 1st gen Ryzen.  Second gen Ryzen needs Minimum Processor State to be set below 50%.

 

As far as PBO -- I'm not sure what you've done so far, but if cooling doesn't allow for more speed then you may not see anything beyond what you currently are.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

All of the information I'm finding about PBO is that it was introduced in 2nd gen Threadripper.

 

So I don't expect enabling the feature will actually do anything.

[t895]

56 minutes ago, nick name said:

The Ryzen power plan sets Minimum Processor State to 90% which is how it should be for 1st gen Ryzen.  Second gen Ryzen needs Minimum Processor State to be set below 50%.

 

As far as PBO -- I'm not sure what you've done so far, but if cooling doesn't allow for more speed then you may not see anything beyond what you currently are.  

Thank you for the advice on the power plan, but I tried looking into why cooling could be a problem. I turned all of my fans to 100% and tried to check if there would at least be a tiny difference. However, even then, my scores did not change and my processor only got up to 70C. Is that not low enough?

[nick name]

10 minutes ago, t895 said:

Thank you for the advice on the power plan, but I tried looking into why cooling could be a problem. I turned all of my fans to 100% and tried to check if there would at least be a tiny difference. However, even then, my scores did not change and my processor only got up to 70C. Is that not low enough?

What PBO options do you have in BIOS?

[t895]

6 minutes ago, nick name said:

What PBO options do you have in BIOS?

It's very basic, I only have options for Auto, Enabled, or Disabled. By default Auto is on but I tried disabled just now to make sure that it didn't have PBO on and I didn't notice. However, even that didn't lower my scores.

[nick name]

You could up PPT, TDC, and EDC in Ryzen Master then.  1000,114, and 168.

[t895]

1 minute ago, nick name said:

You could up PPT, TDC, and EDC in Ryzen Master then.  1000,114, and 168.

My PPT TDC and EDC only go up to 128, 80, and 125 in Ryzen Master respectively

[nick name]

Ahhh, then if you can't set those it's probably limited by your motherboard.  Are you on the latest BIOS and AMD chipset drivers? 

[t895]

5 minutes ago, nick name said:

Ahhh, then if you can't set those it's probably limited by your motherboard.  Are you on the latest BIOS and AMD chipset drivers? 

Yeah I'm on the latest for both. So I just have a power bottleneck from my motherboard?

[nick name]

Just now, t895 said:

Yeah I'm on the latest for both. So I just have a power bottleneck from my motherboard?

I couldn't tell you if it's by design or just a poor BIOS implementation that doesn't allow for the changing of those variables.  Many boards don't have all the options that exist for PBO available in BIOS.  Where do you find the option to change the PBO settings in BIOS?  Is it under AMD CBS?

[t895]

5 minutes ago, nick name said:

I couldn't tell you if it's by design or just a poor BIOS implementation that doesn't allow for the changing of those variables.  Many boards don't have all the options that exist for PBO available in BIOS.  Where do you find the option to change the PBO settings in BIOS?  Is it under AMD CBS?

Yes, I just go into XFR Enhancement and it's there. Here's the rest of AMD CBS if it helps.

[nick name]

Can you show us what is in XFR Enhancement please?

 

And is PBO or XFR mentioned in any other area of the BIOS.  For example: on the ASUS Crosshair VII it's in several places.  

[t895]

1 hour ago, nick name said:

Can you show us what is in XFR Enhancement please?

 

And is PBO or XFR mentioned in any other area of the BIOS.  For example: on the ASUS Crosshair VII it's in several places.  

I checked every menu in my bios and nothing else mentioned XFR or PBO. This is all there was to the PBO screen.

[nick name]

11 minutes ago, t895 said:

I checked every menu in my bios and nothing else mentioned XFR or PBO. This is all there was to the PBO screen.

I'm gonna assume it's by design then and not that it's a poor implementation.  Perhaps their more robust boards have more access and/or higher limits.  One thing I've noticed is that on the newest AGESA versions starting a couple months ago (at least on the ASUS CH7) is that the limits set in BIOS now cap what Ryzen Master can do.  Previously there was no correlation, but again that could have just been ASUS boards.  

[nick name]

One last trick would be to use the search function in BIOS to see if that will present you with the options that you don't have access to through the menus.  Search for PPT, TDC, and EDC.  EDC being the one that has the most impact on CPU performance.  If they are found with search then try the values I gave earlier.  

[nick name]

Oh, and it may be worth trying to overclock your CPU and see how well it does.  If you can't increase performance through PBO then an overclock may get you where you wanna go.  

[t895]

36 minutes ago, nick name said:

Oh, and it may be worth trying to overclock your CPU and see how well it does.  If you can't increase performance through PBO then an overclock may get you where you wanna go.  

I've been trying overclocking for the past hour actually and I found a couple interesting things. I haven't found any of the settings you mentioned (PPT, TDC, and EDC), but when I only increased the voltage, performance increased without needing to increase my frequency. 1.35V on VCORE is what got me the best advantage. However, when I changed the multiplier to reach 4.2Ghz on the same voltage, my computer would crash with no BSOD. I even tried bumping the voltage further and I got the same results. Any idea what is happening?

[nick name]

11 minutes ago, t895 said:

I've been trying overclocking for the past hour actually and I found a couple interesting things. I haven't found any of the settings you mentioned (PPT, TDC, and EDC), but when I only increased the voltage, performance increased without needing to increase my frequency. 1.35V on VCORE is what got me the best advantage. However, when I changed the multiplier to reach 4.2Ghz on the same voltage, my computer would crash with no BSOD. I even tried bumping the voltage further and I got the same results. Any idea what is happening?

You're likely gonna need around 1.4V for 4.2, but it may not be attainable.  Ryzen CPUs don't usually overclock all the way up to their boost speed on all cores.  

[t895]

20 minutes ago, nick name said:

You're likely gonna need around 1.4V for 4.2, but it may not be attainable.  Ryzen CPUs don't usually overclock all the way up to their boost speed on all cores.  

It seems like it, and I'm not gonna try and do individual core overclocks. But It seems like the VCORE voltage is basically EDC because ever since I increased it in the bios, the EDC % in Ryzen Master goes over 100%. So I think that's the best I'm gonna get. I think that's as far as I'm gonna go with my CPU though. Thank you for all the help!