12700k Unexplained reduction in performance

[Soid]

Intel 12700k

MSI Pro Z690-A (DDR5)

 

So, a few weeks ago I used the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility mostly just to look at the readouts, mostly. I found that it was pretty consistently reporting out a Max Core Frequency of 4.9 Ghz and a TDP in the 125 W range with defaults during stress tests. The benchmarking gave it about 7500 marks.

 

Today I looked at it, and it's reporting a Max Core Frequency of 3.6 Ghz, and a TDP of around 80 W, and the benchmarking gave it about 4500 marks. Also, interestingly, windows task manager shows 75% utilization when XTU shows 100% utilization. Also interesting, it's the E cores going up to 3.6 Ghz (close to the max advertised), and the P course are suddenly stuck around 2.5 GHz. Using their silly "speed optimizer" didn't really do anything.

 

I didn't change anything, that I'm aware of, in between these times. Maybe a new windows update, or a driver automatically installed (a new one was released a few days ago). I don't know.

 

Honestly, I don't mind the reduction in power and heat most of the time, but it seems like if I want that level of performance back, it will non-trivial to make it happen.  I'm not really sure what happened. Has anybody else experienced this? Any ideas where I can start to look to troubleshoot?

 

 

[Jurrunio]

Start from checking temperatures.

[--SID--]

Motherboard BIOS up to date?

[BetteBalterZen]

Try start with resetting your BIOS, and remember to enable XMP afterwards 

[Soid]

Temps have been good (I rarely got above 60 deg C, even before). No throttling has been reported.

 

Looks like they released a new bios version on Sept 7. I was on the July 4 release, so I'll give that a shot. 

[OnlyLinears]

I have a 12700K and I had a similar issue but in a Asus TUF ddr4 wifi board with the 1504 Bios.

For whatever reason, my overclock, undervolt, negative offset etc none of these settings seem to be influencing my 12700k.

The stock performance was also a bit odd, the 12700 was drawing much and didn't clock up high 

but more importantly, the cpu/mother was not stable with random crashes every two weeks or so. 

 

Few months later and skipping one bios update, I went from 1504 to 1720 bios and then everything worked. 

My overclock tests, stock test, and then eventually my undervolt settings all works on the 12700K 

and I haven't had a crash since i updated it in mid august. (I leave my system on basically 24 hrs a day). 

 

Perhaps consider a bios update? 

 

as an interesting side note... by any chance does your event viewer show any problems with the CPU voltage or stability problems?

XMP enabled? 

[Soid]

Hm. Updated the BIOS to the most recent version. XMP is enabled. Old bios didn't support my the memory I purchased (oops) at speed, but now it does, so thats a good pro to updating the bios. 

 

No difference on the CPU though. . Still stopping at 2.49 GHz on the Pcores. I've attached a screenshot of the monitor halfway through a 5 minute stress test. This is with the "speed optimizer" turned on even. 

 

Any other ideas?  I did update XTU recently, so maybe it's a problem with the software  I'll try uninstalling and stressing it with a different piece of software to see what happens...

[Soid]

Unistalled XTU, reset BIOs to default, turned XMP back on... P-Core frequency still stuck at 2.49

 

Arg

[Soid]

Well, I found it, and it was really dumb. 

 

There is a "power saver" setting hidden in the general settings that I must have turned on at some point.  It worked well to save power, I have to say, but it was in kind of a funny spot. Funny thing is that the setting stayed active even after XTU was uninstalled.