5800x3d Reverting Asus Zen3 Overclock

[FaceFoiled]

Hi, it's me again.

 

So I recently replaced my faulty 6950xt and at the same time replaced my CPU cooler with an EK-280mm AIO. It was all running well and cool - so I figured, let's see if we can boost this a bit! 

I am no overclocker or anything like that, so figured the "auto overclock button" there would give me a small boost and I'd be happy. (If I could get small increase, my Time Spy Score would go to 20k :P). Unfortunately, it did the opposite.

 

I don't have much to compare things too, and I am not even sure this translates to any loss or gain when gaming. But my previous scores in Time Spy for CPU were 11898 (11500+average). Now after pressing that stupid button, it was at 9k. Quite a drop! 

 

I've managed to get teh score "back up" to 10k (10.111) after resetting the BIOS (even updated it as there was a recent update) and re-enabling DCOP and AMD Smart Access. But that's still quite a bit below what I used to have.

 

I've uninstalled all the Asus stuff now (Amourcrate, Asus Zen) - halp.  

[OddOod]

enable XMP/DHCP?

[FaceFoiled]

7 minutes ago, OddOod said:

enable XMP/DHCP?

Thanks for checking in, that's one of the few things I did remember to do after the bios default/update :D. That would be DOCP for my CPU/Motherboard.

[OddOod]

Are you noticing significantly worse performance in games?

[FaceFoiled]

11 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Are you noticing significantly worse performance in games?

I have not even done any gaming yet since I got my new GPU and changed the cooler around. Clogged with work and sunny weather means my wife demands me to paint the house (outside) :P. So I have just been running the benchmarks in the background whilst working away to see what has changed since getting the new hardware.

 

Unfortunately after pressing that Overclock button, the scores have gone down hard on the CPU front. Its possible this is not noticeable at all when gaming, but still worries me.

[RONOTHAN##]

Have you re-enabled PBO? If you've done a Clear CMOS, the auto overclock from ASUS should be completely gone, but PBO (the auto overclock from AMD that actually works) is disabled as well. It might also be a good idea to setup custom PBO limits, pretty sure PPT 300, TDC 177, EDC 177 is more or less optimal from what I remember, but I also don't have a 5950X to play with so can't tell you for certain. 

 

Also, I assume that you're referring to Time Spy Extreme, not Time Spy, since the CPU benchmarks for them are pretty different (Time Spy vanilla maxes out at 16 threads, so the solution to getting more performance from it is to disable hyper threading, Time Spy Extreme has no limits). 10-11K is what I'd expect for that CPU in Time Spy Extreme, in normal Time Spy I'd expect closer to 14K. 

[FaceFoiled]

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Have you re-enabled PBO? If you've done a Clear CMOS, the auto overclock from ASUS should be completely gone, but PBO (the auto overclock from AMD that actually works) is disabled as well. It might also be a good idea to setup custom PBO limits, pretty sure PPT 300, TDC 177, EDC 177 is more or less optimal from what I remember, but I also don't have a 5950X to play with so can't tell you for certain. 

I've now enabled PBO again. Found a video for my BIOS and followed that. I could not find all PBO options they had though, but enabled the ones I could find. Not messing with specific limits or anything, will read up on that before making changes directly.

 

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Also, I assume that you're referring to Time Spy Extreme, not Time Spy, since the CPU benchmarks for them are pretty different (Time Spy vanilla maxes out at 16 threads, so the solution to getting more performance from it is to disable hyper threading, Time Spy Extreme has no limits). 10-11K is what I'd expect for that CPU in Time Spy Extreme, in normal Time Spy I'd expect closer to 14K. 

No, that was Time Spy vanilla. Hitting 10k (low 10k range) there. On Extreme I hit 4511. Both tests done after enabling PBO.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

12 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

No, that was Time Spy vanilla. Hitting 10k (low 10k range) there. On Extreme I hit 4511. Both tests done after enabling PBO.

 

Holy crap that's low. In Extreme (what I mainly run) my 5900X does 8500 with just PBO (and admittedly very good memory settings, Time Spy really scales with high speed RAM). Do you think you could run HWiNFO64 in the background and take a log when running Time Spy, that should record all your sensors and hopefully give some insight into what's going on (I'd expect the chip to be either hitting limits really hard, thermal throttling for some reason, or clock stretching a ton for whatever reason, and that should hopefully show exactly what's going on). 

 

It would also be a decent idea to download ZenTimings and send a screenshot. Time Spy scales a lot with memory speeds (the difference between 3200MHz CL16-18-18-38 and 3800MHz CL14-13-13-21 is 1000 points in Time Spy Extreme in my testing) so if there's some memory settings that the board happened to misconfigure that could be contributing to the overall poor performance, and that program reads every relevant memory setting. That won't be the main factor for the bad score, but it might be a factor in it. 

 

15 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

I've now enabled PBO again. Found a video for my BIOS and followed that. I could not find all PBO options they had though, but enabled the ones I could find. Not messing with specific limits or anything, will read up on that before making changes directly.

What board are you running, and what settings can't you find? Those settings may or may not be relevant for why performance is so bad. 

 

As for the limits and stuff, PBO boosts adjusts stuff within certain limits. It's a bit weird though since it sweet spots hard a lot lower than where a lot of boards set the limits manually. I'm guessing if you've got a higher end board (like I'd kinda assume you do if you've got a 5950X and 6950XT) the limits will be by default something like 450 PPT, 300 TDC, 400 EDC, much higher than what's optimal, and counterintuitively limiting the CPU more makes performance better. Those limits should be closer to within the ballpark of optimal than by default, hence why I said run those. 

[FaceFoiled]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

As for the limits and stuff, PBO boosts adjusts stuff within certain limits. It's a bit weird though since it sweet spots hard a lot lower than where a lot of boards set the limits manually. I'm guessing if you've got a higher end board (like I'd kinda assume you do if you've got a 5950X and 6950XT) the limits will be by default something like 450 PPT, 300 TDC, 400 EDC, much higher than what's optimal, and counterintuitively limiting the CPU more makes performance better. Those limits should be closer to within the ballpark of optimal than by default, hence why I said run those. 

I was following this guide to make changes in my Bios, as it's the same Bios I use here (albeit mine is a newer version): https://intensewebs.com/index.php/amd/amd-cpu/key-points-ryzen-oc

 

Motherboard I use is a: Asus TUF 570-Plus Gaming

 

 

That guide states there are 3 PBO settings to adjust. I could only find 1.

 

Ran it again with the HWINFO64 monitoring in the background:

Uploaded the Monitor.csv and report.txt here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hlM20la6nIx7K_IQn5O89VRus7eM_7cA?usp=sharing

 

Just for reference, this result:

VS result "before I pressed that damn button"

 

All I wanted was to get that score to 20k .

[RONOTHAN##]

11 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

All I wanted was to get that score to 20k

Yeah, that required disabling Hyperthreading and manually locking the CPU to 4.8GHz with really good memory settings, it's not super easy to get. That said, you should be closer to 14000 points than you should be to 10000. 

 

21 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

Uploaded the Monitor.csv and report.txt here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hlM20la6nIx7K_IQn5O89VRus7eM_7cA?usp=sharing

That link is private. 

[FaceFoiled]

26 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

link is private

Ah bugger. Should be public now. I really appreciate you looking into all this. 

[RONOTHAN##]

36 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

Ah bugger. Should be public now. I really appreciate you looking into all this. 

Wait a minute, I just realized you're running a 5800X3D. That makes a bit more sense now, I could've sworn you wrote 5950X in there at some point, I'm guessing I just went full dyslexia and mixed up 6950 XT with 5950X. that score makes a lot more sense now. 

 

Ok, so it's still likely a misconfigured PBO setup (the X3D is pretty much immune to memory settings as long as the Infinity fabric is clocked well enough). Unfortunately, I don't know where the limits are optimal on a 5800X3D, so I will need to do a bit of searching to find that out first. I'll go through the data though when I get home and see for certain what's going on. 

[RONOTHAN##]

6 hours ago, FaceFoiled said:

Ah bugger. Should be public now. I really appreciate you looking into all this. 

OK, finally had a chance to look at it, the CPU is just not boosting in the slightest. If you look, it's running at a constant 3.6GHz, with no cores going above that at all. With PBO enabled it should be averaging closer to 4.5GHz or higher, 3.6GHz is base clock. Temps look fine, so it should be running a lot higher than it currently is. That explains the score.

 

The question now is why is it running at just 3.6GHz? First thing I'd check is in the BIOS to make sure that the multiplier is set to auto, as well as a couple other settings like turbo boost (or whatever it's called in AMD boards, I don't touch that setting often enough to know by heart). I'll be looking through the log some more to try and see a reasoning behind that, but start looking through some of the BIOS settings. It might not be a bad idea to just do a Clear CMOS and start all over again. 

[FaceFoiled]

4 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The question now is why is it running at just 3.6GHz? First thing I'd check is in the BIOS to make sure that the multiplier is set to auto, as well as a couple other settings

I previously used the "set to default" option in the BIOS, without any success. What you said here made me look into the bios a bit further.

Spoiler: Performance is back to what it should be.  

 

I loaded the "Optimized default" bios state instead of 'just" setting everything to default (different option). After that I did go through the same settings again as shown in my first post, to enable various settings/PBO etc. - Low and behold, it's fixed! (Just had to go back in again and enable AMD Smart access memory, forgot that one)!

 

 

CPU is hitting Mhz limits there, but temps (not shown in that one) are staying well below 70. Might try and mess with PBO2 now to try and get over 20k!

[FaceFoiled]

5 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The question now is why is it running at just 3.6GHz? First thing I'd check is in the BIOS to make sure that the multiplier is set to auto, as well as a couple other settings

I previously used the "set to default" option in the BIOS, without any success. What you said here made me look into the bios a bit further.

Spoiler: Performance is back to what it should be.  

 

I loaded the "Optimized default" bios state instead of 'just" setting everything to default (different option). After that I did go through the same settings again as shown in my first post, to enable various settings/PBO etc. - Low and behold, it's fixed! (Just had to go back in again and enable AMD Smart access memory, forgot that one)!

 

 

CPU is hitting Mhz limits there, but temps (not shown in that one) are staying well below 70. Might try and mess with PBO2 now to try and get over 20k!

 

Update:
We did it!

 

Happy with that now, think I'll leave it there.  

 

Thanks again so much for the assistance and guidance @RONOTHAN## 

[RONOTHAN##]

37 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

I previously used the "set to default" option in the BIOS, without any success. What you said here made me look into the bios a bit further.

Spoiler: Performance is back to what it should be.  

 

I loaded the "Optimized default" bios state instead of 'just" setting everything to default (different option). After that I did go through the same settings again as shown in my first post, to enable various settings/PBO etc. - Low and behold, it's fixed! (Just had to go back in again and enable AMD Smart access memory, forgot that one)!

 

 

CPU is hitting Mhz limits there, but temps (not shown in that one) are staying well below 70. Might try and mess with PBO2 now to try and get over 20k!

 

Update:
We did it!

 

Happy with that now, think I'll leave it there.  

 

Thanks again so much for the assistance and guidance @RONOTHAN## 

Nice!

 

If you want to go over a bit more, 6900 XTs/6950 XTs overclock really far if you do it right. Unlocking the power limits and overvolting them (they are one of the few GPUs that actually scale with voltage at ambient) can be done entirely within the OS. On my 6900 XT (admittedly one with pretty bad silicon quality in comparison, whether that will affect this up or down) I'm able to get over 1000 points higher in Time Spy Extreme GPU score by doing that, though since the 6950 XT has a higher out of the box power limit I wouldn't expect as much from that as I would from a 6900 XT (it still should be a fair bit more though, Time Spy in particular gets these cards to pull ridiculous power figures). That's mostly just for bragging rights though, going for 21000 points or more isn't really that meaningful. Still, if you want to do it (if you find this type of thing fun, for example), I can find the couple of tutorials for how to do those things to get a fairly decent performance improvement. 

[FaceFoiled]

49 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Still, if you want to do it (if you find this type of thing fun, for example), I can find the couple of tutorials for how to do those things to get a fairly decent performance improvement. 

Yeah I'm up for that for sure.  

[RONOTHAN##]

7 hours ago, FaceFoiled said:

Yeah I'm up for that for sure.  

OK, for the power limits there are two options: manually or MorePowerTool. If you want to do it manually, this is the tutorial I used

If you want to do it with MorePowerTool (this is how you overvolt the card, so if you want to overvolt the card you might just want to do this). You start off by going to TechPowerUp's website and downloading a 6950 XT vBIOS (it doesn't really matter which one, you can get one for the MSI card you've got, but you can use an XFX or PowerColor BIOS as well just fine, all it changes is what a couple of the initial power limits are). Then download MorePowerTool (MPT), and run it. In the dropdown along the top, select the 6950 XT you've got, then click "Load" and select the vBIOS you downloaded earlier. Go to "Power" and change the Power Limit and TDC limits so something kinda high (800 for both works just fine) and should let the cards draw as much power as they want. Hit Write SPPT and you're done. 

 

To overvolt the card, do roughly the same thing with MPT at first, then follow this tutorial and write the new SPPT

 

Also, you will need to reboot every time you write a SPPT for it to take effect (technically you only need to restart the AMD driver, but it's usually easier to just do a system restart)

[FaceFoiled]

I have some work ahead of me, thanks for the resources!  

[RONOTHAN##]

14 hours ago, FaceFoiled said:

I have some work ahead of me, thanks for the resources!  

Keep me posted, just kinda curious how far you can end up pushing that card. 

[FaceFoiled]

5 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Keep me posted, just kinda curious how far you can end up pushing that card. 

I don't know how far I want to try and push the car, as I don't want it to burn out or break it.  So far, I've been able to add roughly an extra 1000 points. Currently messing with restricting voltage to the card after giving it access to more power.

[RONOTHAN##]

4 hours ago, FaceFoiled said:

I don't know how far I want to try and push the car, as I don't want it to burn out or break it.  So far, I've been able to add roughly an extra 1000 points. Currently messing with restricting voltage to the card after giving it access to more power.

1000 points ain't bad. Restricting voltage likely won't get you anywhere with that card though, they scale with more voltage, not less. If you stick below 1.25V on VCore, you should be pretty OK, you're just running benchmarks so there isn't really much risk doing so. I just wouldn't daily anything above 1.25V

[FaceFoiled]

On 8/14/2022 at 5:47 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

1000 points ain't bad. Restricting voltage likely won't get you anywhere with that card though, they scale with more voltage, not less. If you stick below 1.25V on VCore, you should be pretty OK, you're just running benchmarks so there isn't really much risk doing so. I just wouldn't daily anything above 1.25V

I've used MPT to give it more power. I tried the manual way first, but could not get it to "stick". Re-reading:

Quote

you will need to reboot every time you write a SPPT for it to take effect 

I don't think I did this when doing it the manual way first. Likely why..  Oh well.

 

 

So far I've been getting this on average: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/78634306?

This is with the power set to 800 (does not really go above 480 when doing my 3dmark tests), and Min/Max Frequency of the GPU set to 2619 - 2719MHz and undervolting to 1150mV. I've messed around with VRAM Tuning as well, but not been getting much in regards to better scores.

 

I've been able to mess a bit boosting frequencies and such, but with this setup I get easily over 23500. The best score I had was 23751 I think. Happy with that.

 

[RONOTHAN##]

29 minutes ago, FaceFoiled said:

I've used MPT to give it more power. I tried the manual way first, but could not get it to "stick". Re-reading:

I don't think I did this when doing it the manual way first. Likely why..  Oh well.

 

 

So far I've been getting this on average: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/78634306?

This is with the power set to 800 (does not really go above 480 when doing my 3dmark tests), and Min/Max Frequency of the GPU set to 2619 - 2719MHz and undervolting to 1150mV. I've messed around with VRAM Tuning as well, but not been getting much in regards to better scores.

 

I've been able to mess a bit boosting frequencies and such, but with this setup I get easily over 23500. The best score I had was 23751 I think. Happy with that.

 

That is a pretty good graphics score, ~1800 points higher than average for those cards. 

 

Undervolting is only really a good idea with those cards when thermally or power limited. If you aren't thermal or power limited, those cards do scale to about 1.25-1.3V on air. That said, you are in the high 60s for temps according to the 3DMark readout, that's probably high enough to make more voltage cause instability (my card personally needs to stay in the mid 50s in order to be stable at those frequencies). The Gaming Z you've got is a good card, it is one of the best 6950 XTs you can get, it's just not the best cooler for a 6950 XT you can get. If you want to try pushing it further, you need to pull the temps down, either by maxing out the fans, putting the card on water, or just pointing an AC unit at it. That said, that's a good score, and if you want to stop there I wouldn't blame you. 

[FaceFoiled]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

If you want to try pushing it further, you need to pull the temps down, either by maxing out the fans, putting the card on water, or just pointing an AC unit at it.

Yeah. This is part of the reason why I tried undervolting it a bit, as I figured that might help keep temps down. 

 

I might look into "proper" water cooling at some point, but not for now. Not too happy with the AIO I put in there for my CPU. Cooling is fine, but software for it does not work and would like to monitor things a bit more. So an overall "real" water cooling solution might be something I'd look into down the line. Happy with where it is at now though, will see if I get an urge to boost it more down the line.