What am I doing Wrong? RYZEN PBO gets lower scores

[MadAnt250]

Well, I tried XFR/PBO and I have no clue why the performance is worse in Cinebench R20. I also tested in Forza Horizon 4 just to see if the clock speed would be higher and it was not by much.

 

Here are the CB R20 all core scores:

PBO on: 2894

Stock: 3020-3038

4.1 Ghz OC: 3138 (I don't want to push the limits of the VRM's, it is just for a score and not everyday use.)

 

The temps in Cinebench were in the 70's, I don't think that is too hot at all and the clock speed was about the same as stock, which is not right, even when the temps were in the 60's. As far as power draw goes, it does not look like the limit is even being reached, so there is plenty of room to go. So I have no clue what is going on, this the first time I messed with PBO and I don't know if this is something with the cheap motherboard or it could be something I missed?

 

My Specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600X

CPU Cooler: NH-U9S

Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus B450 M

RAM: Geil Evo Potenza OC'ed to 3200Mhz

GPU: GTX 980 ti

PSU: Corsair CX 650M

 

Thanks for your replies.

[freeagent]

Kick it in the cores with an all core clock 

 

I don't know how fast they go.. I would shoot for 4200MHz and work my way down if that didn't work out..

[Legitsu]

negative scaling

to high pbo limits perform worse

 

try lowering EDC/TDC 

[MadAnt250]

18 hours ago, Legitsu said:

negative scaling

to high pbo limits perform worse

 

try lowering EDC/TDC 

I can only adjust the PPT, and there was no positive change. I am starting to think the motherboard is the limitation here.

 

Edit: I am going to try Ryzen Master and see what happens.

[MadAnt250]

Update!

 

I give up.

I can manually overclock to 4.1GHz and get higher scores, but PBO gives me worse performance than stock. What a bummer.

Maybe I will try again in the future if any bios updates are known to fix this.

 

Anyway, thanks to all.

[MadAnt250]

Update!

 

I think it may be my BIOS version, I am on F41 and I found this:

There are so many options that are missing from mine. Now I need to find which BIOS version I need to get these extra options. Unless I am safe with the 2nd most recent version, I don't know, Gigabyte may be leaving out some information.

[Bitter]

Zen+ tends to be a bit voltage happy on some boards, I was running a negative voltage offset and a pretty mild LLC to get the voltage to remain stable and then running a higher PBO scalar with unlocked power limits and getting pretty good consistent results that were higher than it came at defaults, however I'm 2700X on Asus X470 so I may have things available that your B450 does not. I was able to get my 2700X to hold 4.0 all core and 4.3 on 2 or 1 core with PBO but power draw was pretty crazy at 180W. I didn't try manual OC because I valued the higher single core boost clocks for more things than having a higher all core but lower single core. I really wish AMD had a more Intel-ish approach like with my 4th gen i7 how I can set clock speeds for 1 core, 2 core, 3 core, and 4 core to tune it to what I most need instead of just all cores run one speed. That honestly was a bit of a let down.

In the end I turned PBO off and just run it at base clock at 90W because nothing I do really needs all that extra heat.

[MadAnt250]

25 minutes ago, Bitter said:

In the end I turned PBO off and just run it at base clock at 90W because nothing I do really needs all that extra heat.

I read people saying that PBO is better than overclocking and it is the easy way to go, but what I see in reviews is way more power usage an small performance gains. In my case I will not benefit from it because my system will mostly be GPU limited anyway in the games I play. It would just be nice if something worked as advertised. 

 

[Bitter]

5 minutes ago, MadAnt250 said:

I read people saying that PBO is better than overclocking and it is the easy way to go, but what I see in reviews is way more power usage an small performance gains. In my case I will not benefit from it because my system will mostly be GPU limited anyway in the games I play. It would just be nice if something worked as advertised. 

 

Try a negative 50mv offset, a middle LLC, and see how it does there. Drop the voltage offset and alter LLC to keep voltage stable until you're either unstable or dropping performance. Then start turning the PBO scalar up until heat becomes an issue or you get uncomfortable with voltage, I found 1.43-1.45 to be my limit of comfort for all core and I'd see intermittent peaks to 1.5 volts on fast single core speed jumps. I set an 80C throttle temp or whatever PBO calls it. Then work on memory clocks and timings once you know your PBO settings are stable. I was able to hit 3400mhz without pushing SOC voltage too hard.

I tend to keep hardware for a long time so I don't push it real hard for daily use. The reason I turned PBO off is I was looking to drop my idle power use since the computer spends it's idle times mining and no games I play or things I do were benefiting from PBO because I play games a potato could run.

[MadAnt250]

9 minutes ago, Bitter said:

hen start turning the PBO scalar up

It is not in my BIOS, or not at least in version F41.

I can do the basic things for overclocking, but not mess with PBO, I can turn it on, but it does nothing good. This is a cheap motherboard, so I will not be pushing things for longer than just getting a score or something, it is not worth the extra voltage and heat for everyday use. It was just my curiosity to want to mess with things and see different results, as a former auto technician that happens sometimes, because it's kinda fun sometimes. 

[Bitter]

13 minutes ago, MadAnt250 said:

It is not in my BIOS, or not at least in version F41.

I can do the basic things for overclocking, but not mess with PBO, I can turn it on, but it does nothing good. This is a cheap motherboard, so I will not be pushing things for longer than just getting a score or something, it is not worth the extra voltage and heat for everyday use. It was just my curiosity to want to mess with things and see different results, as a former auto technician that happens sometimes, because it's kinda fun sometimes. 

Well yeah cheaper boards have more limited BIOS usually, but do update to the most recent that still supports your CPU and you might gain some more controls.

Anyway, do play with LLC and undervolting, you can actually pick up more clocks with PBO by running lower watts and less heat. It still may not be enough but it's still interesting to play with. With just those two settings before I messed with PBO fine tuning I was able to make an appreciable difference in wattage and peak clock speeds. My daily tune before I needed a lower idle wattage was able to do 4.0 all core at just under 1.4 volts which is pretty good.