I updated the BIOS firmware on my 2 week old PC, as well as some drivers like chipset, bluetooth etc, and now my CPU is performing 20-25% worse

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M_S_F

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Bought a prebuilt from ABS w/ a i7 14700F and MSI PRO B760-VC WIFI motherboard

Here's a benchmark I ran when I first received it:
View: https://i.imgur.com/5O5sLyQ.png

Yesterday I decided to update the firmware BIOS, and also update some drivers that were available from MSI Center (which shipped w/ the system). Some of these drivers were critical ones like chipset etc.

I now know it's best not to update BIOS unless you're experiencing issues. I did have a few random BSOD's and other quirks which I why I decided to in the first place. There were 5 new BIOS versions since the one that shipped with my system and the notes sounded like there were improvements made. This was my initial reasoning.

After updating the BIOS I noticed XMP was disabled by default so I had to manually enable it. This got my RAM running from stock 4800 to 6000. Other than that I made no other changes after updating BIOS.

I then ran the same benchmark and this was the result:
View: https://i.imgur.com/8u6kCi9.png

Scores on max, 16 and 8 threads are significantly lower. Look at the first screenshot I posted, the CPU frequency maintains itself throughout the entire bench, but in this one it drops significantly like it's falling off a cliff (I used red arrows to highlight this).

I noticed this in games too, the performance cores no longer settle on 5300mhz while I'm gaming, they jump around, from 4.7 to 4.9 to 5.1 to 5.3 back down etc etc. I also noticed that the wattage stays around the 65w TDP whereas before it was hitting 100-125w more regularly. It's like the CPU is scared to stretch it's legs now.

I reverted the BIOS to the one that shipped with the system and I'm getting the same benchmark and gaming result. It's like I'm missing a setting somewhere in the BIOS or windows that's making the CPU be more conservative. I can't figure it out. In the BIOS all the settings I would think that need to be turned on are.

The CPU even seems to be running cooler in Windows when it's basically idle and I'm not doing much. So again it feels like some kind of power management thing. BTW, it's definitely not throttling because of heat.

Here's another before and after test,

Before BIOS and driver updates:
View: https://i.imgur.com/bd7Waki.png

After:
View: https://i.imgur.com/AijXwbQ.png

The CPU score went down 5,000 pts, or 25%. Checkout the red arrow! What is happening there??
 
What is your CPU frequency under Task Manager/Performance? Make sure you're hitting your turbo speed of your CPU.

Also check this. It should be 100%.

1711481729369.png
 
There's been a few OC rule updates, and XMP is considered overclocking, so wouldn't surprise me if it set something different which reduced performance.
 
Valnar said:
Not to pick on the OP, but sometimes people change things and forget.
Click to expand...

It's a new PC as stated in the first sentence of the post. First thing I did was reach out to ABS in an attempt to find out what they change in the BIOS before they ship it out, so I can revert back whatever it might have been. The system comes with the XMP enabled so I know they at least change something. They weren't very helpful.

What I did discover, thanks to a reply on Tomshardware, was that the BIOS defaulted back to "Boxed cooler". Changing this to "Air Tower Cooler" woke up the CPU again and it no longer throttled. I assume this was what the change was but I can't be for sure since ABS support is essentially useless.

pendragon1 said:
lol yeah, this is normal once you apply all the security patches...
Click to expand...

Could you be more specific? and why "lol"? I genuinely have no idea. Last PC I built was 10 years ago, I've been out of the game for quite some time.
 
M_S_F said:
It's a new PC as stated in the first sentence of the post. First thing I did was reach out to ABS in an attempt to find out what they change in the BIOS before they ship it out, so I can revert back whatever it might have been. The system comes with the XMP enabled so I know they at least change something. They weren't very helpful.

What I did discover, thanks to a reply on Tomshardware, was that the BIOS defaulted back to "Boxed cooler". Changing this to "Air Tower Cooler" woke up the CPU again and it no longer throttled. I assume this was what the change was but I can't be for sure since ABS support is essentially useless.
Click to expand...

It's nice you took measurements before and after. Not all of us would do that, or even notice. So Kudos. Glad it's working "back to normal".
 
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M_S_F said:
Could you be more specific? and why "lol"? I genuinely have no idea. Last PC I built was 10 years ago, I've been out of the game for quite some time.
Click to expand...
because its not new. intel chips have a massive amount of security patches to do and there is always perf loss. but it looks like that may not have been the case here, since you found whatever setting in the bios. which ive never seen before...
 
M_S_F said:
I also noticed that the wattage stays around the 65w TDP whereas before it was hitting 100-125w more regularly
Click to expand...
This to me seem a big clue, some eco mode was enabled by default during the bios update maybe ? (if in windows you let it go 100% during load as show a couple of message above)

index.php
 
LukeTbk said:
This to me seem a big clue, some eco mode was enabled by default during the bios update maybe ? (if in windows you let it go 100% during load as show a couple of message above)

index.php
Click to expand...

I believe it was the cooler setting which adjusts the power limits: https://www.msi.com/blog/cpu-cooler-tuning-optimized-power-limit-based-on-cpu-coolers

What I did discover, thanks to a reply on Tomshardware, was that the BIOS defaulted back to "Boxed cooler". Changing this to "Air Tower Cooler" woke up the CPU again and it no longer throttled. I assume this was what the change was but I can't be for sure since ABS support is essentially useless.
Click to expand...
 
M_S_F said:
It's a new PC as stated in the first sentence of the post. First thing I did was reach out to ABS in an attempt to find out what they change in the BIOS before they ship it out, so I can revert back whatever it might have been. The system comes with the XMP enabled so I know they at least change something. They weren't very helpful.

What I did discover, thanks to a reply on Tomshardware, was that the BIOS defaulted back to "Boxed cooler". Changing this to "Air Tower Cooler" woke up the CPU again and it no longer throttled. I assume this was what the change was but I can't be for sure since ABS support is essentially useless.



Could you be more specific? and why "lol"? I genuinely have no idea. Last PC I built was 10 years ago, I've been out of the game for quite some time.
Click to expand...
This was a good move, after the fact.

Updating a BIOS results in a default profile. So, there are a bunch of things that can be reset to "motherboard factory defaults", that a reseller may have tweaked, which can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

You checked the cooling, good. If temps are in check you can look at power limits and duration. Those can impact your performance - especially since you noticed a performance hit at the upper usage levels where cooling, power and time all play a bigger role.

Switching your cooler type in the bios likely adjusted a handful of settings to get you the performance your system is capable of, theoretically. Setting that correctly appears to have solved your issue.

You may be able to save your bios to a text file, so you can read it, and if you update it later, save it again and compare the two files for differences. or, you can screen shot it now that it's in good order. Compare those after an update.
 
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I take pics of all the bios pages with my phone, before each bios update.

**in general, I recommend updating the bios for modern systems. Usually for a few months after release, they improve stuff like memory compatibility, core to core latency, clockspeed stability, voltage/power algorithms, etc.
12th, 13th, and 14th gen Intel also have a hardware thread manager for the big/little design; which has been updated a couple of times.


***and rather than using the resource sucking apps provided with motherboards and are often behind on drivers, etc: I prefer to manually update the drivers. This person consolidates all of it and updates it regularly:
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/index-all-my-drivers-firmware-software-threads.11360/

However, some of them don't have installers. So I usually manually grab Intel wireless/bluethooth/ethernet from Intel's site.

manually download the latest bios from your mobo's support page. Asus also posts the ME firmware as a separate installer tool, rather than combined in the bios update process.
 
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