Performance of Rocket Lake locked CPUs can vary up to 50% on some B560 motherboards.

[Ydfhlx]

Summary

 

Some B560 motherboards enforce 65W power limit (it's the TDP of locked parts, 11400f and 11700 were tested by Hardware Unboxed) singificantly impacting CPU performance - especially multi core and sustained. Some do not enforce it. And it can be seen across all manufacturers, mainly on cheaper models. Difference can be astonishing, and actually buying a more expensive motherboard may do a bigger of a difference than more expensive CPU! It's such a difference that it is still noticeable in games, even though they don't use all the cores evenly. 14% between best and worst tested with 11700 in SOTR for instance.

 

It is however possible to remove the power limits - it's true, but a) not every body will know to do that - and how to do that; and b) not all boards were designed for running without the power limits, resulting in VRM throtteling.

 

Quotes

Quote

The MSI B560M Pro clocked even lower at just 3100MHz, more than 1GHz lower than the Tomahawk, which clocked 35% higher. [...] What we see is the B560 Tomahawk is actually 35% faster than the B560M Pro. [11400f test]

 

Quote

But it gets even worse. If you were to buy B560 Tomahawk with Core i7-11700, rather than the B560M Pro4 (sic!), you've done well, gaining 53% more performance out of the box.

 

Quote

The MSI B560M Pro4 (sic!) can handle a package power of 125W pretty well, but going beyond that seems the board run into trouble forcing it to throttle the CPU to avoid catastrophy.

My thoughts

A typical adivse is that "motherboards don't affect performance". However, Intel for some reason doesn't want to admit that Rocket Lake CPUs run about as hot as Chernobyl on 26.04.1986, so this mess is entirely their fault. What's the point of "all core turbo" if a CPU can't reach it within TDP, or vice versa? This will only damage their brand as people buying their products won't get the performance as reviewers do (although still in spec).

 

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3AEj3x39vQ

 

[Ydfhlx]

Shit, I made a typo in title I didn't notice at all, sorry about that

[TheReal1980]

Wow, 50% is a lot.

[CommanderAlex]

They really blew up the rocket on the launch pad on B560 motherboards...that takes incredible planning!

[SupaKomputa]

15% improvement probably, 50% increase is unbelievable.

[Morgan MLGman]

12 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

Shit, I made a typo in title I didn't notice at all, sorry about that

Fixed that for you

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

However, Intel for some reason doesn't want to admit that Rocket Lake CPUs run about as hot as Chernobyl on 26.04.1986, so this mess is entirely their fault. What's the point of "all core turbo" if a CPU can't reach it within TDP, or vice versa?

They can, specifically for the turbo boost duration. That's literally how it's supposed to work. Literally every single motherboard that overrides either or both the PL1/PL2 and the Turbo length (Tau) is operating them outside the advertised Intel specifications. The Intel specifications are with the actual PL1, PL2 and Tau limits in place and you will be able to reach single core boost, two core boost and all core boost as advertised just NOT for all time in eternity.

 

Did you know an Intel CPU operating with an enforced 65W power limit is just as "hot" as an AMD CPU with an enforced 65W TDP limit. Intel CPUs get hot because people remove the limits.

 

Is Intel's 14nm process less power efficient, well sure, but you don't have to be insane about it and push the CPU well past the exponential power curve increase for such a small gain. Even that worst case 14% could be significantly closed with a much smaller power limit increase.

 

Intel: Gives vendors and users ability to tweak their systems

LTT Forum: HOW DARE THEY!!

 

Guys pick your battles or Intel may just further restrict the B series platforms to only be able to run with Intel defined specifications, you don't want that.

[Kilrah]

32 minutes ago, Ydfhlx said:

What's the point of "all core turbo" if a CPU can't reach it within TDP, or vice versa?

Becasue with Intel TDP is by definition the power at base clocks? Turbo is "exceeding that for a given period".

[tishous]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Guy pick your battles or Intel may just further restrict the B series platforms to only be able to run with Intel defined specifications only, you don't want that.

I couldn't care less. It would give me more of a reason to avoid Intel's products.

 

20 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Intel: Gives vendors and users ability to tweak their systems

LTT Forum: HOW DARE THEY!!

Except they haven't really given us the ability to tweak systems. Not to any significant extent at least, that is reserved for K SKUs of CPUs and Z series chipsets. Otherwise the only tweaking you can do is power limits and memory "overclocking" whereas AMD gives you full control.

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, tishous said:

Except they haven't really given us the ability to tweak systems.

Ok so then you don't want to be able to change the PL2 value and the Tau values? That seems odd to not want something like that and be forced in to having less or in to spending more. A 10400/11400 is a great CPU for many at it's price for gaming and there is literally no good reason to want to bring back such restrictions just after Intel started relaxing them.

 

14 minutes ago, tishous said:

I couldn't care less. It would give me more of a reason to avoid Intel's products.

If you don't want to buy their products then don't, that doesn't give a good reason to actively want to make products you don't already want worse, worse for those that may actually want them.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, tishous said:

Otherwise the only tweaking you can do is power limits and memory "overclocking" whereas AMD gives you full control.

Like that really does you any good when even with this ability remove the power limit doesn't actually result in the CPUs using more power and boosting higher or performing better, a lot of what you get is placebo unless you have a cooling system that can reduce the core temps down below 30C and better so the boost algorithm and silicon stability can actually allow the CPU to clock higher.

 

AMD giving all access to everything is clearly better but don't go fooling yourself that you are currently getting any significant benefit out of it without exotic cooling.

[tishous]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Ok so then you don't want to be able to change the PL2 value and the Tau values? That seems odd to not want something like that and be forced in to having less or in to spending more. A 10400/11400 is a great CPU for many at it's price for gaming and there is literally no good reason to want to bring back such restrictions just after Intel started relaxing them.

Huh? When did I say that? I said the level of "tweaking" still isn't up to par. I didn't say I wanted them to start removing these features. I literally recommend the 10400f, but if they removed the ability to change power limits then it would be a hard product to recommend if you can get a 3600+B550 for around the same price AND not have these restrictions.

 

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

If you don't want to buy there products then don't, that doesn't give a good reason to actively want to make products you don't already want worse, worse for those that may actually want them.

Again, when did I say I wanted them to worsen their products? I said IF they did add restrictions on allowing people to change power limits then it would only make me (and likely many other potential customers) avoid their products.

[tishous]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

AMD giving all access to everything is clearly better but don't go fooling yourself that you are currently getting any significant benefit out of it without exotic cooling.

What? My Ryzen 5 2600 performs ~10% better vs stock with a Hyper 212 Evo with a pretty light overclock. You don't need to watercool in order for it to perform better. The fact Intel doesn't even give you the option to overclock their CPUs unless you're on a Z series chipset and are using a K SKU CPU (costing at least another $100) reflects badly on them when every single AMD CPU has no restrictions on what you can do.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, tishous said:

Huh? When did I say that?

 

28 minutes ago, tishous said:

I couldn't care less. It would give me more of a reason to avoid Intel's products.

^ Here

 

Choose your words better? You are either indifferent to the situation (why comment at all?), think Intel is in the wrong somehow, or don't think Intel really has an issue at all.

 

Like to be clear the majority of this story lies at the feet of the board vendors and advertisement clarity. It would help a great deal if it said on the box "125W TDP" or something if they have increase it so you actually know up front something is different or something about the board.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, tishous said:

What? My Ryzen 5 2600 performs ~10% better vs stock with a Hyper 212 Evo with a pretty light overclock. You don't need to watercool in order for it to perform better

Yes you do, and not even water cool, you have to go chilled water or better. Go watch GN frequency scaling video on the different Ryzen generations, they all act the same. You putting in a manual overclock only benefits all core loads and can often reduce single core and certain game performance because you are not allowing higher single core boosting.

 

~10% increase is a marginal improvement if you consider the overclock potential Intel CPUs have had over many generations that do not require chilled water, or even water at all. That situation however was ever decreasing towards the final stages of 14nm but either way 10% is a legitimately bad Intel overclock.

 

Edit:

Ryzen CPUs will not clock higher without reducing core temps, from memory it's 25MHz for every 5C. Would have to go re-watch the GN video to confirm. So if you want to change an all core 4.0GHz to 4.4GHz then you have to reduce core temps by ~80C. Ryzen simply will not clock higher than a certain point in room temperature scale no matter what settings you adjust in OC menus.

[TetraSky]

And to think a motherboard's impact on performances used to be negligible for so long. Intel just had to prove people wrong, because they can't stay within the TDP that they've set.

[tishous]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

^ Here

 

Choose your words better? You are either indifferent to the situation (why comment at all?), think Intel is in the wrong somehow, or don't think Intel really has an issue at all.

That still doesn't show where I said I don't want to be able to change power limits...

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You putting in a manual overclock only benefits all core loads and can often reduce single core and certain game performance because you are not allowing higher single core boosting.

Doesn't really apply to anything before Zen 3. That 10% boost is in games. From a first hand example, the freedom of being able to overclock has given me an average of 10% increase in gaming performance.

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

~10% increase is a marginal improvement if you consider the overclock potential Intel CPUs have had over many generations that do not require chilled water, or even water at all. That situation however was ever decreasing towards the final stages of 14nm but either way 10% is a legitimately bad Intel overclock.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3592-intel-i5-10600k-cpu-review-benchmarks-ryzen-5-3600-et-al#:~:text=The i5-10600K overclock puts,at 317W for its overclock.

"The stock average was 114FPS, and up 6.9% to 122FPS when overclocked." Referring to an average uplift across 9 games. 10% seems to be a very good overclock (pretty much impossible) on the i5-10600k. 

 

 https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3587-intel-core-i9-10900k-cpu-review-benchmarks

"The 10900K stock and OC results end up within run-to-run variance and are equal." 

 

Keep in mind these tests were run using a 280mm RAD so in fact you probably need LN2 to even approach a 10% increase. 

[schwellmo92]

This has always been a thing with Intel motherboards. Some of them run at the Intel specified power limits, some of them do not.

[Icarus_Radio]

Maybe you guys should just take a look at the other Steve's video

Steve made it very clear that some motherboard manufacturer just remove the tau limits to make their borads look better in some benchmarks. You might feel you can compete with Ryzen 5000 with less money (e.g. 11700K vs 5800X). That is totally untrue, as you should factor in the cooler cost and more noise.

[heickelrrx]

why there is a debate of these? 

Correct me if any, since B560 platform support memory overclocking, now we can overclock the memory to gain higher memory speed

and now, we can see some B560 board, that keep the CPU Under TDP Rating, will perform worse than Board that fully Unlock the power limit

 

wasn't it's the end of Goal of Overclocking? While the Multiplier still locked, it's now showing that user with some Budget Board now able to (Tweak) their CPU to gain more performance

of course, buyer with Board with terrible VRM shouldn't expect great result on their CPU, you get what you pay isn't it? just like multiplier overclocking, You'll want a good quality board with good VRM

 

so are we want Intel Locking down these or not? Back then when Asus Put MCE as default, people rant about the insane thermal on many board, Now They Follow Intel guidance of TDP Rating people rant about they losing performance

 

[WolframaticAlpha]

If you are one of the unlucky ones stuck with this, you can go download cpu, gpu and ram to alleviate this problem

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, heickelrrx said:

so are we want Intel Locking down these or not?

Ideally we want Intel to give out specifications that make sense for their chips and not ones that artificially limit their performance. And also, locked parts don't really have a reason to exist.

 

Some variance between motherboards isn't unheard of but 50% is ludicrous.

[porina]

6 hours ago, Ydfhlx said:

My thoughts

A typical adivse is that "motherboards don't affect performance". However, Intel for some reason doesn't want to admit that Rocket Lake CPUs run about as hot as Chernobyl on 26.04.1986, so this mess is entirely their fault. What's the point of "all core turbo" if a CPU can't reach it within TDP, or vice versa? This will only damage their brand as people buying their products won't get the performance as reviewers do (although still in spec).

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how it all works. Both AMD and Intel do not get all cores to max turbo at TDP. That's why base clock exists.

 

AMD CPUs only appear to be less hot because AMD forces mobo makers to set a default power limit. Intel are nicer and do not require that, going further they even will not invalidate warranty for adjusting power limits, although actual overclocking by setting clocks and/or voltages for example still affect warranty. Setting PBO on AMD will affect warranty and they can guzzle a load of power too.

 

Anyway, it is not really a big surprise either, as this difference in CPU behaviour due to mobo has been around pretty much forever. Higher end enthusiast boards have tended to be more aggressive. Mid range or value boards tend to be more conservative.

 

I only have a sample of two Rocket Lake capable mobos to go on, my Gigabyte Z490 is really optimistic and their bios team really suck. It doesn't reduce the all core clock, not even for AVX-512, and runs it at 4.6 GHz. A newer B560 based board if you decline Asus' attempts to "enhance" performance will run at the Intel suggested values which eventually drop to 125W TDP limit of my 11700k. If you accept the Asus enhancement you can run much above that if you want although this board stops at 4.2 GHz all core AVX-512.

 

So basically a non-issue, it was already a thing, and many techtubers are still producing bad interpretations get provoke fanboyism and get views. Note I haven't clicked the source in OP so I have no idea who did it and I don't really care either.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, tishous said:

That still doesn't show where I said I don't want to be able to change power limits...

Then why specifically pick that comment out of the entire post and make the sort of comment like you did, like I mentioned choosing your words better either applies or maybe it's more of case of what I thought you said in the first place and you don't seem to realize it.

 

As to your other point, correct like I said OC percentage increase did decrease near the end of 14nm but getting quite well over 10% before 10th Gen was not hard at all. And FYI basically all Z series boards since Z270 have removed power limits and turbo timers so if you use the better metric of actually stock vs OC the gains are actually far higher as this topic literally shows.

 

Ryzen is 10% at ambient, you can achieve better than this on Intel simply by removing power limits, that is as far as I am concerned and AMD btw an OC. Intel CPUs have been about as stock as Cleetus's "stock marauder".

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Like that really does you any good when even with this ability remove the power limit doesn't actually result in the CPUs using more power and boosting higher or performing better, a lot of what you get is placebo unless you have a cooling system that can reduce the core temps down below 30C and better so the boost algorithm and silicon stability can actually allow the CPU to clock higher.

 

AMD giving all access to everything is clearly better but don't go fooling yourself that you are currently getting any significant benefit out of it without exotic cooling.

Honestly most of the time you are better off leaving amd cpus at stock. They sorta boost so well that its hard to want to overclock especially if you care about single core performance. Sure you might get marginally higher all core overclock but your single core performance will undoubtedly be worse than at stock settings 99% of the time. I have ran into this issue before and after awhile I just realized that stock amd just runs really close to the limit of what the cpu can do to begin with. When I mean stock I mean what the majority of boards are designed to run out of the box as I am unsure if the boost settings is technically stock settings.