Turn AVX down on cpu?

[Zonal]

I’ve heard that it is good to turn down the avx on the cpu since it decreases temps and not a lot of things use it. Is this true? I have an i5-9600k currently clocked at 5ghz.

[DoctorNick]

If the application dosen't use AVX then yes, if it does, it will be slower of course. IS your CPU too hot? If not then don't worry

[SupaKomputa]

No, i don't think it's beneficial to disable AVX. Better just to leave it on.

[Stahlmann]

If you set an AVX offset in your BIOS, the CPU will downclock when AVX instructions are used. But this way you also lose performance in these instructions. As long as your temps are fine, just leave it as-is. You can use cinebench R20 and R23, as these version use AVX to measure your temps during an AVX load.

[porina]

AVX usage is ever increasing, especially since AMD bothered to support it well since Zen 2. The benefit, and also problem that comes with AVX is that your CPU does a lot of work with it, but that can also produce a lot of heat. If fixed clock overclocking you can tune the overclock for non-AVX workloads first, then use the ratio to keep it stable under more challenging loads. Note that when running AVX and the CPU downclocks, it affects non-AVX code running at the same time.

 

BTW on the plus side to Zen 2 and newer, instead of using a dumb offset, at stock they use power limiting. So clocks will adaptively drop only as much as needed for the combined workload at the time. If you run an Intel CPU with a realistic power limit, it can also do that, but most people run unlimited power limit which is when the offset is more important.