*Official Benchmark Thread* - Post it here or it didn't happen :D

[tps3443]

13 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

You should be getting more than 44K in CBR23 at those clock speeds. Like 46.5 or 47K.

This is with dynamic oc switching (MSI version of it) with my 4585PX.

Here is with the Apex with DOS enabled.

I’ll mess with it some more. When I enabled high priority it does hit 46K at least. Not sure if that helps, as I’m just using a stock retail Win11 OS. Anyways, I’m messing with ram tuning right now. I just let the chip run stock for the most part trying to memorize and learn AMD things.

 

Good news is my ram booted right up at 6000 CL26-36-36-36-96@1.435V. 

My motherboard seems to be responding a little bit better as time has gone on. It might be okay after all. 
 

I see training and posting with high tREFI is much easier with more VDD/VDDQ voltage. So, like 6000c30 with 65K tREFI won’t post with 1.400v VDD/VDDQ. But it will post with 1.435v VDD/VDDQ. I know how DDR5 was with Intel, and it was heavily dependent on your IMC quality. Like one CPU may do 6000c30@1.35v and another CPU wants 6000c30@1.400v. That’s what I learned with Intel anyways, the CPU IMC quality determines how much voltage your DDR5 rams would need. This made it incredibly difficult to bin ram sticks in my opinion. Because an amazing IMC would make average DDR5 look like super sticks or something.
 

 

 

[electrosoft]

Ultimate shootout with bonus crapping on Jufus's testing methodology (and others):

 

 

 

 

4k gaming really shows any of the CPUs finely tuned are on average close to each other capping out even a 5090 and the 10 game average when tuned it is a wash overall except for those rare titles that love X3D enough to make a meaningful difference even at 4k.

 

His results are basically in line with my testing even harking back to 7800X3D vs 13900KS and on but as always YMMV.

 

I would say 1080p is a portend of future 4k potential removing the GPU as a potential bottleneck with more powerful GPUs coming down the pipeline but the problem is X3D cache saturation diminishes as resolution lowers so you can't just predict future gains using a more powerful GPU at higher resolutions (thus lowering or removing the GPU as a bottleneck) using 1080p straight forward...

 

The overall king is now the 9950X3D2 taking into consideration everything. At 4k, I found it interesting the extra X3D on the other CCD actually helps level out some of the saturation deficiencies you can experience at such high resolutions vs the 9850X3D (further adding evidence to X3D saturation issues at higher resolutions). It's a pricey thang though.....

 

...either way bring on the bLLC!

 

270k is an absolute banger of a CPU and with the drastic cuts to MB pricing the real challenge is tracking down a set of decently priced 8000+ sticks either as sold or a 6000+ kit and OC'ing it.

 

-------------------------------

 

Shockingly, those same two $5300 Gigabyte 5090 Infinity GPUs are still in stock at our local Microcenter....

 

As a matter of fact, they're still in stock at all 10 Microcenters within a 150 mile radius too....

 

🤣

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

3 hours ago, tps3443 said:

I’ll mess with it some more. When I enabled high priority it does hit 46K at least. Not sure if that helps, as I’m just using a stock retail Win11 OS. Anyways, I’m messing with ram tuning right now. I just let the chip run stock for the most part trying to memorize and learn AMD things.

 

Good news is my ram booted right up at 6000 CL26-36-36-36-96@1.435V. 

My motherboard seems to be responding a little bit better as time has gone on. It might be okay after all. 
 

I see training and posting with high tREFI is much easier with more VDD/VDDQ voltage. So, like 6000c30 with 65K tREFI won’t post with 1.400v VDD/VDDQ. But it will post with 1.435v VDD/VDDQ. I know how DDR5 was with Intel, and it was heavily dependent on your IMC quality. Like one CPU may do 6000c30@1.35v and another CPU wants 6000c30@1.400v. That’s what I learned with Intel anyways, the CPU IMC quality determines how much voltage your DDR5 rams would need. This made it incredibly difficult to bin ram sticks in my opinion. Because an amazing IMC would make average DDR5 look like super sticks or something.
 

 

 

If you are using the latest BIOS you might want to test something older. I think the version numberings are the same on the Apex and Hero. 9961 is one of the best for memory and CPU overclocking. Some of the latest with newest AGESA are crappy and hinder CPU performance.

(Edit: Not sure if older BIOS is compatible with 9950X3D2.)

 

6000 and 6400 being the "sweet spot" for AMD is a hold-over myth from the days that Ryzen motherboards couldn't handle 8000. (They made up that excuse rather than admit that memory overclocking sucked.) For the best gaming experience you should be targeting 8000 with tight timings and latency below 60ns. It doesn't matter a ton with X3D but the higher bandwidth does help with the "AM-Dip" that Jufus the Dufus talks about. Turn off GDM and set Bank Refresh mode to "Normal" (not mixed). 

 

Feel free to give these Dynamic OC Switcher and 8200 memory tuned settings a try and see if they will work for your CPU. Compare my V/F curve values (not necessarily the SP rating) to your CPU to see if the voltage needs are close to the same. ZenTimings shows all of the values that matter. Leave the ODTs on Auto. ASUS does a good job of setting correct resistance based on the detected memory modules. Should not need to mess with ODTs unless they are modules ASUS hasn't optimized for in their BIOS tweaks.

 

Edited 20 hours ago by Mr. Fox
comments on BIOS compatibility

[tps3443]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

If you are using the latest BIOS you might want to test something older. I think the version numberings are the same on the Apex and Hero. 9961 is one of the best for memory and CPU overclocking. Some of the latest with newest AGESA are crappy and hinder CPU performance.

(Edit: Not sure if older BIOS is compatible with 9950X3D2.)

 

6000 and 6400 being the "sweet spot" for AMD is a hold-over myth from the days that Ryzen motherboards couldn't handle 8000. (They made up that excuse rather than admit that memory overclocking sucked.) For the best gaming experience you should be targeting 8000 with tight timings and latency below 60ns. It doesn't matter a ton with X3D but the higher bandwidth does help with the "AM-Dip" that Jufus the Dufus talks about. Turn off GDM and set Bank Refresh mode to "Normal" (not mixed). 

 

Feel free to give these Dynamic OC Switcher and 8200 memory tuned settings a try and see if they will work for your CPU. Compare my V/F curve values (not necessarily the SP rating) to your CPU to see if the voltage needs are close to the same. ZenTimings shows all of the values that matter. Leave the ODTs on Auto. ASUS does a good job of setting correct resistance based on the detected memory modules. Should not need to mess with ODTs unless they are modules ASUS hasn't optimized for in their BIOS tweaks.

 

I cannot get any Gear 2 memory speeds beyond 6000 to run at all, just fails to post. What am I doing wrong? 
 

I have set these settings: 

 

Asynchronous mode

fclk 2000

DDR5 6200/6400/6600/6800/7200/8000 etc. (I tried all these speeds slowly working down) 

bclk 1: 100.00Mhz

bclk 2: Auto

uclk Div1 mode=MEMCLK/2 

loosest timings imaginable. I cannot get a post. 
 

CPU SOC Voltage: 1.200-1.260v tried these ranges.

CPU VDDIO/IMC voltage 1.300-1.400v tried these ranges. 
 

@Mr. Fox EDIT: I got it!!! I just posted DDR5 7,000. Will slowly work up with some loose timings, then try to tighten. 

2nd EDIT: I am having a hard time posting past 7,000

 

3rd EDIT: I GOT 7400c34 To post and train. 

 

4th EDIT: I got 7600 posted. 

Still slowly working up in frequency. 
 

 

[electrosoft]

30 minutes ago, tps3443 said:

I cannot get any Gear 2 memory speeds beyond 6000 to run at all, just fails to post. What am I doing wrong? 
 

I have set these settings: 

 

Asynchronous mode

fclk 2000

DDR5 6200/6400/6600/6800/7200/8000 etc. (I tried all these speeds slowly working down) 

bclk 1: 100.00Mhz

bclk 2: Auto

uclk Div1 mode=MEMCLK/2 

loosest timings imaginable. I cannot get a post. 
 

CPU SOC Voltage: 1.200-1.260v tried these ranges.

CPU VDDIO/IMC voltage 1.300-1.400v tried these ranges. 
 

@Mr. Fox EDIT: I got it!!! I just posted DDR5 7,200. Will slowly work up with some loose timings, then try to tighten. 

 

The difference between 6000 and 8000 in real world applications and games has been shown on average to be much of nothing due to the memory architecture of AM5, but with that being said it is better to run 8000 if you're able to because at worse, with tight timings, it basically equals 6000 tight but in pockets the extra bandwidth can come into play. 6000 tight if your program really happens to be latency sensitive but even something like WOW which is traditionally known to be latency sensitive on Intel literally ran the same (or close to it) 6000 vs 8000 on AM5.

 

If I couldn't hit at least 8000, I would go back to 2133/6400 or even 2000/6000 but that's personal preference. 

 

Did you test your fclk yet to see where it posts up to at least?

 

You posted 7200, are you just scaling up to see how high you can post at this point before running some stability tests later? I've had that problem before where an aggressive EXPO/XMP timing was causing no post. At that point, even scaling the frequency down to Jedec but still retaining the stock EXPO/XMP speeds would fail to post. Usually at that point (pro tip) use Asus tweaked/optimized timings. More times than not it will adjust a bad timing into a proper range then compare EXPO/XMP timings vs Asus tweaked timings to pinpoint the problem(s).

 

You can also go old school JEDEC, set SOC/VDDIO close to max and scale up from there unless you had problems booting JEDEC too?

 

 

 

[tps3443]

25 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

 

The difference between 6000 and 8000 in real world applications and games has been shown on average to me much of nothing due to the memory architecture of AM5, but with that being said it is better to run 8000 if you're able to because at worse, with tight timings, it basically equals 6000 tight but in pockets the extra bandwidth can come into play.

 

If I couldn't hit at least 8000, I would go back to 2133/6400 or even 2000/6000 but that's personal preference. 

 

Did you test your fclk yet to see where it posts up to at least?

 

You posted 7200, are you just scaling up to see how high you can post at this point before running some stability tests later? I've had that problem before where an aggressive EXPO/XMP timing was causing no post. At that point, even scaling the frequency down to Jedec but still retaining the stock EXPO/XMP speeds would fail to post. Usually at that point (pro tip) use Asus tweaked/optimized timings. More times than not it will adjust a bad timing into a proper range then compare EXPO/XMP timings vs Asus tweaked timings to pinpoint the problem(s).

 

You can also go old school JEDEC, set SOC/VDDIO close to max and scale up from there unless you had problems booting JEDEC too?

 

 

 

I don’t think 2200fclk works. But I haven’t tried really messing with it much either. I do see 2,167 fclk works at least. 

 

I feel like I really suck at messing with this thing lol. 
 

I saw DDR5 7600c34 posted up and works. But couldn’t get anymore. Need to loosen timing or add more VDD/VDDQ. 

[Mr. Fox]

45 minutes ago, tps3443 said:

CPU SOC Voltage: 1.200-1.260v tried these ranges.

CPU VDDIO/IMC voltage 1.300-1.400v tried these ranges. 

Just for Giggles, check the SPD tab in CPU-Z and confirm it shows "1" for Ranks. I have a V-COLOR 6000 C26 32GB kit that is dual rank and it will not boot at 8000. (You can also see memory chips on both sides of the PCB.) Dual Rank DDR5 sucks at overclocking. I never would have wasted money on this crappy V-COLOR memory kit if I had known it was dual rank. 

 

The voltages you are testing with are too low for 8000 and won't work.

 

Also, you're going to need about 1.600V for VDD and at least 1.550V for VDDQ. Set them both at 1.600V to start and if that works you can try lowering VDDQ. (MSI and Gigabyte BIOS makes them the same value by default and you have to manually change them to different values, so you could leave them both at 1.600 with no problem.)

 

Leave VDDIO on Auto. 1.400V is way too low for 8000. Auto should take it to roughly 1.475V.

[tps3443]

12 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Just for Giggles, check the SPD tab in CPU-Z and confirm it shows "1" for Ranks. I have a V-COLOR 6000 C26 32GB kit that is dual rank and it will not boot at 8000. (You can also see memory chips on both sides of the PCB.) Dual Rank DDR5 sucks at overclocking. I never would have wasted money on this crappy V-COLOR memory kit if I had known it was dual rank. 

 

The voltages you are testing with are too low for 8000 and won't work.

 

Also, you're going to need about 1.600V for VDD and at least 1.550V for VDDQ. Set them both at 1.600V to start and if that works you can try lowering VDDQ. (MSI and Gigabyte BIOS makes them the same value by default and you have to manually change them to different values, so you could leave them both at 1.600 with no problem.)

 

Leave VDDIO on Auto. 1.400V is way too low for 8000. Auto should take it to roughly 1.475V.

Okay! I will try that. Let me check the memory as well. 

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, tps3443 said:

I don’t think 2200fclk works. But I haven’t tried really messing with it much either. I do see 2,167 fclk works at least. 

The first 9950X that I owned maxed out at 2175 FCLK and the 9950X3D that I returned for a refund (a horrible silicon sample) had very high voltage needs, a weak IMC and it would not boot with FCLK at 2175.

[electrosoft]

3 hours ago, tps3443 said:

I don’t think 2200fclk works. But I haven’t tried really messing with it much either. I do see 2,167 fclk works at least. 

 

I feel like I really suck at messing with this thing lol. 
 

I saw DDR5 7600c34 posted up and works. But couldn’t get anymore. Need to reduce timing or add more VDD/VDDQ. 

 

Sounds like a potential imc dud albeit you can't rule out the MB either.... I would snag another to compare it against for chip to chip check and to check the MB.

 

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

The first 9950X that I owned maxed out at 2175 FCLK and the 9950X3D that I returned for a refund (a horrible silicon sample) had very high voltage needs, a weak IMC and it would not boot with FCLK at 2175.

 

Ditto on my first 9800X3D that couldn't do anything past 2000 fclk and 5600 on memory stable. I returned that and my next one is my current one. 2200 fclk and 6400 along with 8200. I haven't really pushed it past that though in light of the newer 9200 sticks. Might need to revisit that.

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

4 hours ago, tps3443 said:

Okay! I will try that. Let me check the memory as well. 

What BIOS are you on? If you are on the latest it could also be causing you issues. A number of people (me included) saw reduced stability and performance. 

 

This is the best BIOS for me, and it is available for the Dark Hero as well. If you are on a newer BIOS you will need to flash using the renamed file and do the BIOS recovery with the button on the back of the I/O or the motherboard firmware will tell you it is too old.

 

ROG CROSSHAIR X870E DARK HERO TEST BIOS 9961 based on 0701

Do not use older versions of cmo files, they may cause problems with agesa 1300a bios

1. Update AGESA version to 1.3.0.0a
2. Apply new odt rules for 16x2 6000cl26 1.4v and 1.45v kit
Download

 

[Mr. Fox]

Still respectable performance for such an old (and very affordable) GPU.

 

And, DDR3 quad channel is on the heels of a modestly tuned DDR5 system.

[tps3443]

43 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Still respectable performance for such an old (and very affordable) GPU.

 

And, DDR3 quad channel is on the heels of a modestly tuned DDR5 system.

Okay, I’m going to try that bios! And @electrosoft I may try another 9950X3D2. If I’m feeling up to it. 
 

Memory tuning is very fun. But I learned that it does not help much in real world gaming performance, I suppose IPC is the real king for high fps and pushing fast GPU’s. My Xeon w3175x is a memory performing beast. When I would run only 6x16GB (96GB total) I can do 1T stable, and this does like 172GB bandwidth and 45ns-46ns latency. And it just cannot hold up to anything modern with the words X3D even with a single stick of DDR5 4800 lol. It’s a powerful rig, and still did well in many titles especially those more uncommon “Well Optimized titles”. 😂😂😂 

 

These X3D chips are ridiculous in gaming. I did not realize how many CPU limited games I do play. Almost everything is CPU limited with a 5090 Astral, even with 4K. Rust, Oblivion, Ark, blasting some

crazy frame rates with 9950X3D2. 
 

@Mr. Fox Are you thinking my Dark Hero should also run 8000c34 just like your Apex can?

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

55 minutes ago, tps3443 said:

@Mr. Fox Are you thinking my Dark Hero should also run 8000c34 just like your Apex can?

Yes, it should be able to do at least 8000 C36 and likely C34. My X870E-E Strix was able to and my MSI B850MPOWER is able to do 8000 C36 with a 48GB kit. It will depend on the IMC and memory modules as well.

 

[Mr. Fox]

The Ryzen fanbois gamers are probably not going to like this. Starting from the meat of the video.

 

[electrosoft]

10 hours ago, tps3443 said:

Okay, I’m going to try that bios! And @electrosoft I may try another 9950X3D2. If I’m feeling up to it. 
 

Memory tuning is very fun. But I learned that it does not help much in real world gaming performance, I suppose IPC is the real king for high fps and pushing fast GPU’s. My Xeon w3175x is a memory performing beast. When I would run only 6x16GB (96GB total) I can do 1T stable, and this does like 172GB bandwidth and 45ns-46ns latency. And it just cannot hold up to anything modern with the words X3D even with a single stick of DDR5 4800 lol. It’s a powerful rig, and still did well in many titles especially those more uncommon “Well Optimized titles”. 😂😂😂 

 

These X3D chips are ridiculous in gaming. I did not realize how many CPU limited games I do play. Almost everything is CPU limited with a 5090 Astral, even with 4K. Rust, Oblivion, Ark, blasting some

crazy frame rates with 9950X3D2. 
 

@Mr. Fox Are you thinking my Dark Hero should also run 8000c34 just like your Apex can?

 

 

 

I usually end up bouncing two off each other and sometimes more. It also helps flesh out your MB, but that Dark Hero should be able to do 8000 easy. I think it's rated up to 9600? That doesn't mean you couldn't receive a problematic board like many of us suffered with the Z890 Apex boards that were crapping out past 8400 for some reason. Like @Mr. Fox said, check what rank your sticks are. I tend to go with 2x24GB kits as they are primarily single rank and not problematic.

 

X3D is pretty righteous especially when a game loves the cache but at 4k things get real close real fast. 

 

3 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

The Ryzen fanbois gamers are probably not going to like this. Starting from the meat of the video.

 

 

Yeah, I posted an analysis yesterday on his video:

 

 

270k is easily the best bang/buck Intel has brought to market in quite some time and that video backs up a few things I've been spewing especially cache saturation at higher resolutions so I posit with cache in play you can no longer arbitrarily use 1080p as a watermark for future performance metrics at higher resolutions with more powerful GPUs down the pipeline (IE 6090, 10070xt)

 

Right now, if I was in the market for a banger gaming setup on a budget I would go 270k along with all the heavily discounted Z890 MBs on the market and a decent set of 8000 sticks and call it a wrap. DDR5 is a constant regardless if you go with AMD or Intel.

 

I know him and Jufus were friends (maybe still are), but he goes after his testing methodology pretty hard along with others.

 

 

[tps3443]

These are single rank sticks. I specifically

bought these because they were Hynix A die 5.43.01. 
 

Hopefully they are alright OC wise. 
 

 

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, tps3443 said:

These are single rank sticks. I specifically

bought these because they were Hynix A die 5.43.01. 
 

Hopefully they are alright OC wise. 
 

 

That's good. If you do not starve the voltage you should be good to at least 8000 or 8200 CL34 or CL36 with the Dark Hero.

 

My V-Color 32GB crap kit is Hynix A-die but they are dual rank with 16 1GB ICs (8 1GB chips on each side of the PCB) and they suck. Being Hynix A-die doesn't win them any points because of them being dual rank. I bought two 8GB Hynix A-die generic green modules for an upgrade to my son-in-law's PC that had the X79 Rampage IV Gene and DDR3 and they overclock much better than the dual rank V-Color kit. The easily handle 8000 C34 in his new Gigabyte B650 AORUS Elite AX with a 9600X CPU.

 

These dual rank 6000 CL26 turd sticks actually work fine in 1:1 mode up to 6400 but anything past that they suck real bad (don't even want to boot).