I found balance with my 5950x.

kwikgta

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 5, 2019
Messages
74
've been playing with my 5950x/Tomahawk X570 for weeks trying to find balance in the system between multi-score and single core scores. I tried an all core overclock first and while the multi-core scores looked nice, the single core dropped like my ex-wife on our first date. I knew this old school overclock wasn't the way to go with the new Ryzen 5950x so I kept working at it, trying various settings and one thing is for sure, I know the Tomahawk bios like the back of my hand now and I even went so far as to install a bios reset switch on the back of my case to save time by not having to open the case up. I made my first real progress last week when I found the PBO 4 setting in bios, all scores looked good after this change but I was unable to improve on them....until today! I was amazed what this little tweak did for me...I took the LLC out of auto and experimented with the various settings and found LLC 8 worked best for me. My Cinebench R20 and R23 scores jumped up quite a bit in both multi-core and single core, and I also achieved new best in time spy as well. This will be my daily driver settings and the best part is everything is still on air, now I can rest :)
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Nice job, have you applied curve optimizer negative offsets as well? Going -10 on the fastest 4 cores and -20 on the balance was worth 125mhz of all core boost on my 5900x (at 180w ppt override for both).

As a fellow 6900xt owner, you might have some margin left there as well. I was able to get to about 19.7 on air, under the waterblock and power limit raised to 370W I'm knocking on 21k graphics score.
 
I wish I could do a negative offset on my best cores. Setting anything there gets me WHEA crashes on idle. At even -10 it drops my load temps by like 8C and 150Mhz clocks on single-threaded workloads too.

Works forever at full load, just not at idle. AGESA needs work, to say the least.
 
Nice job, have you applied curve optimizer negative offsets as well? Going -10 on the fastest 4 cores and -20 on the balance was worth 125mhz of all core boost on my 5900x (at 180w ppt override for both).

As a fellow 6900xt owner, you might have some margin left there as well. I was able to get to about 19.7 on air, under the waterblock and power limit raised to 370W I'm knocking on 21k graphics score.
Yes sir, I've overclocked the card some but still tuning it.
 
I wish I could do a negative offset on my best cores. Setting anything there gets me WHEA crashes on idle. At even -10 it drops my load temps by like 8C and 150Mhz clocks on single-threaded workloads too.

Works forever at full load, just not at idle. AGESA needs work, to say the least.
Same here, I can't adjust the optimizer at all. Hopefully a new bios update will fix it.
 
I have all my bad cores at -20 with perfect stability, which makes sense because they'd never do anything at near-idle anyway. That helps multi-core workloads but does nothing for lightly-threaded ones.

If I really wanted to invest some time in this, I would set a baseline undervolt offset of -30mV (as -10 Curve Optimizer is -30mV at high loads and -50mV at low loads) and then use CO to drop the bad cores by -14 steps for an additional -42mV at high loads and -70mV at low while leaving the good cores at -0 steps CO. This would in theory set my bad cores similarly to -20CO with no offset, and undervolt my good cores by 30mV at all times, as opposed to CO -10 which is -30mV at high loads and -50mV at low loads.

Obviously from the prior paragraph I already put a bit of thought into it. But honestly I don't want to do that, I'm exhausted by this buggy shit and want AMD to fix it already.
 
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Hmm, I had not played with it at all prior to this past weekend when I noticed ASUS had released a new AGESA 1.2 bios for my X470. I've done hardly any research here, someone else had posted the -10/-20 approach to curve optimizer based on what Ryzen Master identifies as top cores. I plugged it in and it worked... this likely means I've got some margin on the table. After all, if you haven't made it crash in the attempt, have you really optimized it?

Anyway, possible my luck has to do with the fresh AGESA. Hope you guys find luck there too..,
 
You may just have a great CPU, or you may hit WHEA crashes at idle in 1-3 days. Or maybe 1.2.0.0 fixes the issue, I'm still on 1.1.9.0 as 1usmus posted 1.2.0.0 had VRM calibration issues on Asus boards.
 
You may just have a great CPU, or you may hit WHEA crashes at idle in 1-3 days. Or maybe 1.2.0.0 fixes the issue, I'm still on 1.1.9.0 as 1usmus posted 1.2.0.0 had VRM calibration issues on Asus
Unfortunately, I've gone as far as I can for now until I get a better bios. As it stands, if I put -1 on just 1 core it won't boot at all.
 
You may just have a great CPU, or you may hit WHEA crashes at idle in 1-3 days. Or maybe 1.2.0.0 fixes the issue, I'm still on 1.1.9.0 as 1usmus posted 1.2.0.0 had VRM calibration issues on Asus boards.

Interesting, where did you read that? 1.2.0.0 on my ASUS Prime X570 Pro is a real POS. I had finally managed to get a basic DDR4-3600 with matching IF frequency stable in 1.1.9.0 and the new beta ruined it ... WHEA error 19 by the thousands. Now I can't downgrade so I gave up, just running my 3200 MHz XMP profile and will sit tight until the platform matures.

Really feel like a beta tester these days. Asus hasn't had a non-beta new BIOS in months, and my 3080 crashes browsing the web unless I put it in high performance mode, where it uses 110 W and idles at 60 C (yes, common problem and that is the suggested solution .. what a joke).
 
On his twitter feed. 1usmus is an extremely reliable source, he writes dram calculator and clocktuner.

Note he didn't say prior beta releases didn't have the same VRM calibration problems, so who knows? I'm sticking on 1.1.9.0 for now, as Asus keeps releasing then pulling BIOS versions.
 
On his twitter feed. 1usmus is an extremely reliable source, he writes dram calculator and clocktuner.

Note he didn't say prior beta releases didn't have the same VRM calibration problems, so who knows? I'm sticking on 1.1.9.0 for now, as Asus keeps releasing then pulling BIOS versions.

Yep I know he's a reliable source so went looking for something on overclock.net where I know he used to post, but didn't see anything. Will check out his Twitter, thanks. Finally got an account recently to get stock updates for PS5 :rolleyes:

I managed to roll back to 1.1.9.0 with ez-flash and back to no problems.
 
Off-topic for this thread but I really suggest the Hotstock app for hard to find stuff like Zen 3, 3080, 6000-series GPUs, PS5, etc.
 
Interesting, where did you read that? 1.2.0.0 on my ASUS Prime X570 Pro is a real POS. I had finally managed to get a basic DDR4-3600 with matching IF frequency stable in 1.1.9.0 and the new beta ruined it ... WHEA error 19 by the thousands. Now I can't downgrade so I gave up, just running my 3200 MHz XMP profile and will sit tight until the platform matures.

Really feel like a beta tester these days. Asus hasn't had a non-beta new BIOS in months, and my 3080 crashes browsing the web unless I put it in high performance mode, where it uses 110 W and idles at 60 C (yes, common problem and that is the suggested solution .. what a joke).
Interesting, perhaps I'm having a better time because of X470? I'm running an Asus Strix X470-F with 1.2
 
I'm trying to dial in my 3950x still. I think PBO and negative voltage offset is going to be the way to go, I just wish I could squeeze a bit more out of multicore.
 
I'm trying to dial in my 3950x still. I think PBO and negative voltage offset is going to be the way to go, I just wish I could squeeze a bit more out of multicore.
Until the recent bios updates that enabled the 5000 series on my X470, I had never noticed the PBO option to change the PPT wattage limit. Setting it to "Motherboard" on my system suddenly allowed 180W full load vs 142W. Combined with the negative offsets, it was worth several hundred mhz of all core boost on my 5900x.
 
Until the recent bios updates that enabled the 5000 series on my X470, I had never noticed the PBO option to change the PPT wattage limit. Setting it to "Motherboard" on my system suddenly allowed 180W full load vs 142W. Combined with the negative offsets, it was worth several hundred mhz of all core boost on my 5900x.
I will give it a shot on my 3950x. Don't know if I need the latest BIOS, but I'll install it just for the hell of it. Maybe there are some new features.
 
New bios dropped for the Tomahawk this week. I got new best scores and still on PBO4 and LLC8, no optimizer used.
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What do you mean PBO4?
Also I don’t see any new bios this week only 153 for the tomahawk X570.
 
Sorry I hadn't checked in a while but I flashed last night to the newest non beta. There's is a menu that let's me choose PBO1,2,3 OR 4.
 
Can you link me to the non beta bios? Also post a screenshot of the menu. I must’ve missed it. I also have the MSI Tomahawk X570.
 
PBO can be in two places, under your normal menus with overclocking and voltage adjustments and in a special "AMD Overclocking" menu. You want the second one, ignore the former. AMD's usual lack of polish.

My Asus board doesn't have PBO levels like that and I haven't heard of them before. My I guess is they're probably preset PPT/TDC/EDC values between stock (off, 142/95/140) and level 4 (commonly called "motherboard", with everything maxed out).
 
PBO can be in two places, under your normal menus with overclocking and voltage adjustments and in a special "AMD Overclocking" menu. You want the second one, ignore the former. AMD's usual lack of polish.

My Asus board doesn't have PBO levels like that and I haven't heard of them before. My I guess is they're probably preset PPT/TDC/EDC values between stock (off, 142/95/140) and level 4 (commonly called "motherboard", with everything maxed out).
Yeah my board doesn't have the levels either, however I was impressed with the options under "AMD Overclocking" menu. It would be super easy to not realize you have the opportunity to raise the PPT in here (my board maxes at 180W) and instantly bump your all core boost even before you start playing with voltage offsets.
 
Can you link me to the non beta bios? Also post a screenshot of the menu. I must’ve missed it. I also have the MSI Tomahawk X570.
I'm on 7C84v14 now. This bios was apparently released in November and somehow I had missed it, sorry for any confusion, I was previously on 13.
 
There is a newer one released in Jan which has the correct PBO.

On MSI boards with latest bios you need to ignore the AMD overclocking menu and use PBO settings under the big OC button. Just FYI.
 
There is a newer one released in Jan which has the correct PBO.

On MSI boards with latest bios you need to ignore the AMD overclocking menu and use PBO settings under the big OC button. Just FYI.
Are you talking about the one marked as beta?
 
Yes the new beta 153. It has been the most stable for me and has full PBO functionality.
 
I dunno if it's me, but anytime I try using the PBO/Curve overclocking method, I don't get shit. Under load it'll ramp to 4.0Ghz @ 1.5+V which I don't get. Yet I clear cmos, overclock the old fashion [H] way and I'm able to get 4.9Ghz rock steady stable @ 1.4v.

Dafawk am I doing wrong? Is the PBO/Curve method conservative overclocking or what? Because if it is, it's lame overclocking.
 
I dunno if it's me, but anytime I try using the PBO/Curve overclocking method, I don't get shit. Under load it'll ramp to 4.0Ghz @ 1.5+V which I don't get. Yet I clear cmos, overclock the old fashion [H] way and I'm able to get 4.9Ghz rock steady stable @ 1.4v.

Dafawk am I doing wrong? Is the PBO/Curve method conservative overclocking or what? Because if it is, it's lame overclocking.

Did you play with your PPT,TDC and EDC settings?
I have a thread going here if it sheds some light for you-
https://hardforum.com/threads/asus-...bo-temps-questions-for-non-gaming-pc.2010304/
 
Anyone know a good thread to follow for the 5950x and the Asus dark hero iv want to tweak this cpu so it doesn't spike to 1.5 and 4.9ghz it works great but would rather a cleaner OC method then just auto.
 
Anyone know a good thread to follow for the 5950x and the Asus dark hero iv want to tweak this cpu so it doesn't spike to 1.5 and 4.9ghz it works great but would rather a cleaner OC method then just auto.
Following as well. Just ordered a Dark hero x570 board and 5950x as well.
 
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