i7 13700KF underperforming since last BIOS update

[TechManMax]

Updated bios to FJd (Z790 Aorus Elite AX Rev 1.1) https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z790-AORUS-ELITE-AX-rev-1x/support#support-dl

Before this update I'd left all bios settings as out of the box default except I'd enabled XMP on the RAM (ddr5 6000 CL30) and resize bar support. Everything else I'd left as default. I have done the same this time.

CPU cooler: Peerless Assassin 120 SE

PREVIOUS BIOS Cinebench R23 multi core score: 30943 (tested yesterday)
NEW BIOS Cinebench R23 multi core scores: 29811 (first test today), 29677 (third test today), 29372 (fourth test today). All tests have been run with Cinebench set to "high" or "realtime" priority. Scoring even lower (still above 29000 though) at default priority. Single core scores range from "just above" 2000 up to "just above" 2100.

Let me explain...the SECOND test today was after disabling the new "intel default settings" that was introduced with this bios update so that "perfdrive optimised" (which I think was previously enabled with the old bios) would work...however the moment I pressed "Start" on Cinebench R23 multi core my computer just shut down, restarted, and went to the boot failure screen (had to press CMOS reset button). Now back on the new "intel default settings". And while it's stable once again it's underperforming. Please help me here...what's changed? Why am I getting worse performance on this new bios Vs old one? (I didn't manually configure any CPU related settings on the old bios btw). Having regrets about updating the BIOS...

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Go test game benchmarks; all that Cinebench stuff is just a number game.
And stop using R23 version; go get the R24 version.

If they had to fix something for stability reasons, well yea you going to lose a little performance. In the real world you won't notice any difference at all, except now stuff is not randomly crashing. Win-Win.

You should also be looking at how to undervolt the CPU; the defaults are going to have ridiculous power consumption and heat when using that.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Go test game benchmarks; all that Cinebench stuff is just a number game.
And stop using R23 version; go get the R24 version.

If they had to fix something for stability reasons, well yea you going to lose a little performance. In the real world you won't notice any difference at all, except now stuff is not randomly crashing. Win-Win.

You should also be looking at how to undervolt the CPU; the defaults are going to have ridiculous power consumption and heat when using that.

Update: somehow fixed it. I'm not sure how but after clearing the CMOS and setting it back to intel default and noticing a performance loss I decided to change it and try setting it back to perfdrive optimised only this time it's completely stable and my scores have returned to Normal. Not sure why it wasn't stable the first time but clearing CMOS has resolved it.

What's more I'm getting better temps now while also getting better performance. I don't like that intel default profile.

Just scored 30,926 and temps didn't go above 95 degrees in the multi core test. On the intel default profile some cores were hitting 100 degrees and I was scoring much lower.

[Illusion of Progress]

That all makes sense to me. The updated BIOS for many LGA 1700 motherboards are implementing new power limits, because the current ones are allowing Raptor Lake CPUs to degrade and/or be unstable. That may be why your scores went down ~4%. You then chose to go back to the unrestricted power limits on the new BIOS and got the previous scores back.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

That all makes sense to me. The updated BIOS for many LGA 1700 motherboards are implementing new power limits, because the current ones are allowing Raptor Lake CPUs to degrade and/or be unstable. That may be why your scores went down ~4%. You then chose to go back to the unrestricted power limits on the new BIOS and got the previous scores back.

Possibly but how come the temperatures were higher (and it was consequently throttling), resulting in the lower scores. With gigabyte perfdrive optimised it's always max clock, performance is better but also temperatures are lower.

I believe it's also pulling slightly less watts too compared to intel default profile.

[Illusion of Progress]

I can't answer that. I can only speculate at best as to why temperatures were lower. BIOS changes leading to different temperatures aren't entirely unheard of though. As someone looking from the outside in, the whole situation seems to be a mess. But I understand many of the recent BIOS being released are to address instabilities and risk of degradation, so my thought process would be that any lower scores would be a result of the changed boosting behavior.

Internal Intel documents apparently still under NDA (?) have been leaked and said to be referring to this as the chip boosting in unsafe conditions when it shouldn't, and it's degrading the CPUs.

https://www.igorslab.de/en/intel-comments-internally-on-the-13th-and-14th-generation-k-sku-processor-instability-issue-and-finally-brings-a-comprehensive-update-of-its-own-investigation-leak/

There's the possibility they are going to release an updated microcode for it too (both through BIOS and perhaps even Windows Update).

Your call on what you do, but it seems clear to me these chips have been (by various documented instances) either unstable and/or degrading and both Intel and board makers admit it (while blaming one another), so I'm not sure I'd risk it for an extra few percent of performance, even if it "seems stable" now. Stability can be funny like that because something is only stable until it's not. Meaning it can seem stable in 99.999% of what you do (or 100% if your use case doesn't trip the instability), but then you start getting those crashes when it's compiling shaders, saying you're out of VRAM when you're not, and so on.

This isn't entirely dissimilar from the situation with the 7800X3D, but this one is much worse. With the 7800X3D, it was as simple as "the chip can't tolerate much over 1.3V long term, they are spiking up to 1.5V and instantly dying". It was instant, obvious, had a quick fix, and very few documented cases. BIOS update from board makers to stop the higher voltages addressed that one. Here, it's much more subtle; the issue isn't an instantly dead chip but one that is operating improperly and possibly degrading over time, so it's much less obvious. In my mind, running on "old limits" would be like knowingly running a 7800X3D on a BIOS that is letting it go up to 1.4V+ for no reason. It might seem stable in the limited subset of what it's tested under... and for now... but is it truly stable, and will it be stable one, two, five years from now? Obviously that can be asked for anything, but when something has known risks, it's a different question.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by TechManMax:

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

That all makes sense to me. The updated BIOS for many LGA 1700 motherboards are implementing new power limits, because the current ones are allowing Raptor Lake CPUs to degrade and/or be unstable. That may be why your scores went down ~4%. You then chose to go back to the unrestricted power limits on the new BIOS and got the previous scores back.

Possibly but how come the temperatures were higher (and it was consequently throttling), resulting in the lower scores. With gigabyte perfdrive optimised it's always max clock, performance is better but also temperatures are lower.

I believe it's also pulling slightly less watts too compared to intel default profile.

Are you sure that you are installing all of the latest Drivers as well?
Such as the various Chipset and other drivers + software from Intel?
Because Motherboards that support 12th Gen and later, there is Intel Turning Software you can and should be installing that can allow you to have auto CPU tuning for various games and allows you better CPU monitoring and such.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Originally posted by TechManMax:

Possibly but how come the temperatures were higher (and it was consequently throttling), resulting in the lower scores. With gigabyte perfdrive optimised it's always max clock, performance is better but also temperatures are lower.

I believe it's also pulling slightly less watts too compared to intel default profile.

Are you sure that you are installing all of the latest Drivers as well?
Such as the various Chipset and other drivers + software from Intel?
Because Motherboards that support 12th Gen and later, there is Intel Turning Software you can and should be installing that can allow you to have auto CPU tuning for various games and allows you better CPU monitoring and such.

Got all the latest drivers yes. Been testing this further for a few hours now and I've noticed a few things...switching from intel default back to perfdrive optimised (though not the other way around) seems to ALWAYS require a CMOS reset (else the system will power off on R23 multi core and go to the boot failure screen telling me "previous settings in BIOS may not be compatible with current hardware state"). But once the CMOS is reset and I've allowed the system to boot into windows (and then...crucially...restart again which always takes longer the second time during the "POST" stage...it must be configuring something in the BIOS like voltages or something idrk what it's doing but once it's done this it will boot up at normal speeds and, more importantly, remain stable and no longer power off when benchmarking).

Once it's stable...like it is now...not only are the scores BETTER with perfdrive optimised but also the temperatures are better too. Intel default will run above 250W (but below 253W) when benchmarking but some (not all) cores will hit 100 degrees, others in the 90s, and it will throttle down to as low as 5.1GHz hence the lower scores.

Now with perfdrive optimised the wattage doesn't seem to exceed 240-245W when benchmarking (despite perfdrive optimised having unlimited power limits)...but more importantly the temperatures on most cores were in the 80s and I didn't see a single core go above 94-95 degrees during a 10 minute run. More importantly it never throttled and was always max clock and the scores were higher (obviously).

Based on my testing I think the intel default profile is either incorrectly configured or is, for whatever reason, WORSE than perfdrive optimised (at least for me).

With that said though I believe these intel fixes are mostly aimed at 13th gen and 14th gen i9 users who, from what I've read, have been having lots of problems with "out of video memory" errors, crashing, etc (I have an i7 13700KF). While some games like hogwarts legacy crash for me (as it does for a lot of people since the last update) I can confirm I don't get crashes during shader compilation or "out of video memory" errors like the ones these i9 users are getting.

Based on my testing and now that I have got perfdrive optimised back to being stable again I am going to leave it as it is. It was fun (and frustrating) testing out the new intel default profile but I really do not like it. Higher temps, worse performance AND higher power draw? No thanks.

What's this Intel turning software you mentioned btw?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I would not leave any of the cpu voltage stuff on AUTO. Learn what each does and adjust them so they actually run a lower max voltage. This can help quite a bit

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

I would not leave any of the cpu voltage stuff on AUTO. Learn what each does and adjust them so they actually run a lower max voltage. This can help quite a bit

What I've just done now (and am in the process of testing) is keep the perfdrive optimised profile enabled, leave everything on their auto setting except I have now forcibly enabled a PL1 and PL2 power limit of 253W (to match intel spec). I'm a bit nervous to fiddle with anything else (since everything is stable as described in my previous comments) so hopefully the new changes I've made will keep it stable and performing well while prohibiting it from ever trying to use above 253W.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well there are also tons of benchmarks you can compare to and if yours is close enough to be considered "on-par" or better then that should speak for itself. Unless you manually OC the CPU, are are only get to get results based around stock settings for the most part.

But again, use Cinebench R24; not the old and outdated R23 which has been around since either before or just after Intel Skylake came out over 10 years ago.

But also try other benchmarks as well; latest 3DMark and PassMark (free versions are on the makers website) as well as MSI Kombuster, AIDA64, Unigine Superposition

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Well there are also tons of benchmarks you can compare to and if yours is close enough to be considered "on-par" or better then that should speak for itself. Unless you manually OC the CPU, are are only get to get results based around stock settings for the most part.

But again, use Cinebench R24; not the old and outdated R23 which has been around since either before or just after Intel Skylake came out over 10 years ago.

But also try other benchmarks as well; latest 3DMark and PassMark (free versions are on the makers website) as well as MSI Kombuster, AIDA64, Unigine Superposition

I do use 3DMark. CPU score is above 20k typically and GPU score above 24k typically (i7 13700KF and RTX 4070 Ti Super). That's on their Timespy test.

[TechManMax]

Just done a Cinebench 2024.

Here are my results:

Single Core: 123 pts
Multi Core: 1718 pts
GPU: 24070 pts

(i7 13700KF + RTX 4070 Ti SUPER)

Temps didn't exceed 94 degrees (similar to R23). Average temps in 2024 multi core test were in the 80s compared to R23 where they were often in the low 90s (but not above 94).

Originally posted by Alice Liddell:

If the new BIOS revision is junk, then revert back to the one you were using.

You NEVER update the BIOS IF the system is running stable.

→ NEVER EVER UPDATE BIOS WHEN THE SYSTEM IS STABLE.

I do not care if the Motherboard Manufacturer gives you money to update a BIOS on a stable system - just don't do it.

Laptops are the exception to the rule, however.

Well this new BIOS also introduced Intel DTT for APO which I wanted to try out (in the few supported games). But yeah the system appears to be currently stable. In future I'll only update if there's something I specifically need I think.