3700x idle voltages

[adrichardson81]

Hi all

I noticed something odd with idle voltages on my shiny new 3700x. I've uninstalledCorsair ICUE, Core Temp and CPUZ in case they were messing with voltages in the background and am using the Ryzen balanced power profile.

Ryzen Master shows 1.475v idle with Ryzen balanced. Cores downclock and sleep like they're supposed to.

With Windows balanced, idle voltage drops to 0.93125. Cores seem to be downclocking and sleeping at around about the same level as they do with Ryzen balanced.

Temperatures and Cinebench scores are comparable between the two profiles. I also tried Ryzen high performance and Ryzen power saver, which didn't affect anything either way.

Is it safe to ignore Rob AMD's advice to leave it with the AMD profile and stick with the Windows profile? I've seen some suggestion that it may be an issue with MSI x570 boards, so I'd be interested to see if anyone's had a similar experience.

 

[adrichardson81]

whats high performance idle temps ? also what cooler are you using .

Ryzen high performance? Same as balanced - usually sits in the high 30s/lows 40s and I get the same with power saver. I'm running an H115i Pro, so a fairly generic 280mm AIO.

Have a look at the AMD profile and look at what the minimum CPU state is set at. For some reason the AMD profile seems to put it at 90% and so your CPU us constantly boosting. Change it to 5% and you'll gain all the benefits of the AMD plan while allowing the CPU to clock down.

Mine's got 0% for min clocks, but even 5% didn't make a difference.

I should have mentioned that PBO is also disabled, so it's not that either. Really at a loss here.

 

[adrichardson81]

Are you using Geforce Experience? Could you try turning the in-game overlay off in the settings and report back? It puts load on the CPU even on the desktop.

No change there either way unfortunately. I'll give hwinfo64 a go and see what happens.

 

[adrichardson81]

Ok so here's what I get from HWInfo

Windows balanced

Ryzen balanced

I had ryzen master running to double check voltages and interestingly the lowest it dipped to was 1.43 and stayed at 1.47, so the 1.012 reading is a surprise.

There's definitely a temperature difference at idle, but the average difference isn't as great as I expected.

 

[adrichardson81]

Looking at the individual CPU core powers, they are going very low which is good. It seems to be working normally from your screenshots. If you leave it idling for longer without even touching the PC will it go under 1V using Ryzen Balanced? This would make doubly sure, but from your screenshot I am confident it's working as it should.

Remember, don't run Ryzen Master at the same time as HWInfo as they can conflict, skewing the results. Only use one monitoring program at a time.

Thanks - left it idling for 10 mins with only hwinfo64 running and voltsgez don't visibly drop below 1.43, and even then it was for about a second or so. If they're going lower, it doesn't register visibly, whereas windows balanced drops to 0.9 almost as soon as things settle down.

It looks like it's perfectly safe to use Ryzen balanced on this board, but I really can't see what it brings to the table over Windows balanced...

Edit - Interesting that average cpu power seems lower across the board with Windows balanced.

 

[adrichardson81]

I thought min CPU speed was supposed to be 90% under Ryzen Balanced because below 90% the hardware on the CPU is taking control of how the CPU goes into and out of idle states and it is generally much better and faster at this than the generic Windows software implementation that would be in control if you set it to 0%.

Hmm - didn't think of trying that. I'll give it a go later.

 

[adrichardson81]

Don't put it to 0%, it's not supposed to be at 0% unless AMD changed it themselves. Just leave it at 90% if it already is at 90%.

Mine was 0% out of the box. I installed the 7/7/2019 driver direct from AMD, if that makes any difference. I've changed minimum to 90% now, but something odd happened there. Did you use the AMD chipset driver or the one from your mobo manufacturer?

 

[adrichardson81]

It's supposed to be 0%, 90% was for older Ryzen CPUs. I don't have mine yet unfortunately so I just assumed the power plan was the same but it seems AMD have altered it to work better with Ryzen 3000.

Fair enough. Putting it back to 0 and forgetting about it for now.