MAG B760 DDR4 / i5-13500 Cinebench score low

[eturk]

When I first booted my system, I was getting 19416 (red bar in chart)
Now I can only get to 18555 (orange bar)

Hitting 4.5GHz & ~136w during R23.

Two problems:
#1 I've seen other test get 21000 on 13500. So I'm slower there.
#2 Can't figure out what had me drop yet another 1000 since I haven't changed anything I know of other than setting the case fans to be quiet at idle.
I do see the new MSI Center limits the CPU when User Scenario is set to Balanced or Silent but not seeing other settings.

Could my RAM be limiting speed overall?

EDIT:
Solution: Disable "Intel vitualization technolgy" (VBS) in BIOS. See comment #21 for details.

 

[fatedust]

I know of other than setting the case fans to be quiet at idle.

How's CPU temperature when running Cinebench?
Maybe try to revert the fan curve and pay attention to the CPU temperature differences?

 

[citay]

Yes, let's check the sensors with HWinfo64. Run it and open "Sensors", then expand all sensors by clicking on the little <--> arrows on the bottom. Also expand the columns of the sensors a bit so everything can be read. Make it three big columns of sensors. First let it run in idle for a while (couple minutes), so the "minimum" baselines for the values are established. After a short time in idle, produce full CPU load with Cinebench R23, and after the 10 minutes, when the CPU temperatures have stabilized at the highest level, take a screenshot. This will show all the important sensor data at once, both for no load and full load. Then i can tell you what's going on.

In the end, it should be a screenshot with all the sensors visible at once, like this:

Also, what is your CPU cooler?

 

[eturk]

Thanks for the help!

Is it that I'm on DDR4-3200 not DDR5?
This review shows only slightly slower CB23 but 15-20% slower for some apps:
https://www.techspot.com/review/2612-intel-core-i5-13500/

I'm hitting a high of ~71c w/ my Thermalright Assassin X 120 SE cooler. I don't think it's throttling. I removed MSI Center to remove that variable and set to Ultimate power plan.

 

[citay]

High/Best/Ultimate Performance power plans are snake oil that will only cause unnecessary load, waste power and cause higher temperatures, see here.
"Balanced" is the only proper one, it is not limiting the boosting in any way.

Your temperatures are good, power draw seems normal. Are you on the newest BIOS version?
One thing i see about your RAM, it's running in Gear2 mode, you want to set it to Gear1 mode. See 4) in my RAM thread.

In a week or so i should finally be building my new system with an MSI Z690 DDR4 + i5-13500. Then i will be able to tell you more about the CB23 score.

 

[eturk]

One thing i see about your RAM, it's running in Gear2 mode, you want to set it to Gear1 mode. See 4) in my RAM thread.

Great catch!
Strange, set to Auto, it's using Gear 2. I changed to 1:1/Gear and it's still stuck in Gear2.

latest BIOS

 

[eturk]

RAM:
G.SKILL Aegis 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Memory Kit Model F4-3200C16D-32GIS

Is it the XMP profile that's forcing Gear2?

 

[citay]

No, the RAM or its XMP profile cannot influence that, it's something that the BIOS decided by itself. The CPU SA voltage might need to be raised for the memory controller to become stable enough for Gear1 mode. Because that still seems to be at the low default of 0.91V, when it should be automatically raised once you go to XMP speeds. Test with SA Voltage mode set to Override and set it to 1.1V (that's still very safe), then see if Gear1 takes.

 

[eturk]

Looks like SA voltage override is also ignored

 

[citay]

Try to set everything by hand. XMP disabled, DRAM Frequency to 3200, Gear 1, CPU SA 1.1V and DRAM Voltage 1.35V. F10 to save and reboot.

 

[eturk]

really appreciate your insights citay!

I reset BIOS to default & only changed DRAM settings so I could get it to POST.
Just slightly better speed on G1 than I was able to get when I first built the PC. Not the 21000 I've seen in reviews. Seems G1/G2 didn't make a big diff?

I've ordered new (RAM F4-3600C16D-32GVKC) that's listed on the compatibility page & as I've had a few BSoD crashes. Not thinking that will give a big speed jump, just more stability & maybe working XMP G1.

 

[bomond197155f02d2]

Try to set everything by hand. XMP disabled, DRAM Frequency to 3200, Gear 1, CPU SA 1.1V and DRAM Voltage 1.35V. F10 to save and reboot.

The motherboard based on the B760 chip will not allow you to increase the CPU SA voltage on a non-K processor.
This was a big disappointment for me!( I had to change 13500 to 13600KF because of this. Only then I was able to run the memory in GEAR1 mode.

 

[citay]

The motherboard based on the B760 chip will not allow you to increase the CPU SA voltage on a non-K processor.

You're completely right. I wrongly assumed that he had a combination where that didn't happen, but i must've confused something with another thread or so.
I posted about this VCCSA limitation all the time before, like here. So yeah, totally missed it in this thread, apologies. But not only a B-chipset will not allow it with a non-K CPU, even the Z-chipset cannot raise VCCSA with a non-K CPU. Which is the combination i plan on using, so we'll see about that, maybe i have to go 13600K as well. Because for DDR4-3600 it can definitely be a challenge, especially with my dual-rank 2x 16 GB B-Die.

However, at DDR4-3200, it should be able to do Gear1, which the latest HWinfo screenshot confirms. @eturk, i would cancel the order for the new RAM. With being unable to change CPU SA Voltage, it might not make DDR4-3600 Gear1, then you'd be worse off than your DDR4-3200 Gear1. Or, if you suspect that the RAM is the cause of your stability issues, ok, try the new RAM, you might have to resort to running it at DDR4-3200 Gear1 though. But i wouldn't bet on it solving the stability issue, that can be due to other things as well. If you want to list all your components, maybe i can spot something. Drives, PSU model, everything.

 

[eturk]

New RAM in. Was able to enable XMP and just set Gear 1. Done.
Tiny bit faster than my first run @19100 but each run varies.

I'm defeated on getting the 21000 reviewers are getting. Could it be the motherboard? Maybe we'll see if one of you get the 13500

 

[citay]

Ok, so you're in luck and it actually does DDR4-3600 Gear1 with a locked VCCSA of only 0.9xV. That's not bad.

Yeah, hopefully in a week or two i can tell you more about the scores. I've got the 13500 sitting here for a while now, and the board even for a couple months, it's just that i had to do other things first.

 

[eturk]

very much appreciate your tips citay! super helpful and hopefully this thread helps others

looking forward to your results.

Wondering if I ought to dump the DDR4 board for DDR5? Just a few days left for return.
I was trying to save a little but am seeing some DDR5 tests are showing up to 20% faster in workloads like video compression, which is my use case.

Any way to test if RAM is a bottleneck, other than swapping hardware?

 

[citay]

If you do a CTRL-F on here for AV1, you can see some benchmark results for RAM scaling, with media encoding: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/ddr5-memory-performance-scaling/2.html

They also included DDR4-3600 as reference. You won't see a 20% difference, unless you compare low-end DDR4 to high-end DDR5, and then only in a few specific instances.
DDR4-3600 can hang pretty well. Hence me not going DDR5 either.

 

[eturk]

Just a thought...
could it be overhead of built-in Windows 11 security?

running AIDA64 I get this on memory benchmarks.Hyper-V is not installed and turned off in BIOS & Memory Integrity turned off but still complains benchmark because they're on..

Edit:
Another benchmark on i5-13500 shows I'm at that 7-10% slower on everything.

Review: Intel Core i5-13500 - Page 7 of 10 - Overclocking.com

Test review of the new Intel Core i5-13500 processor announced by Intel at CES 2023 and direct competitor to the non-X Ryzen 7000.

en.overclocking.com

Interesting is AIDA64 hitting 90806 read BUT I'm only able to get 52345 with the warning above.

Also all reviews I've seen are on Z690 or B660, no new 7x0 tests.

 

[citay]

Can't say much until next week when i build my system.

 

[eturk]

Windows 11 is the problem on my system!

It may be that all the benchmark reviews are being done on Win10?
I'm looking forward to seeing what others score on Win11. The 19411 in first post was fresh install, just a few drivers.

Windows 10: (11% faster. CI off by default.)

Windows 11:
red: Core Isolation ON (baseline)
orange: Core Isolation OFF (1.2% faster, it's not just CI. CI off is same improvement in Win10.)