Performance lower then expected

LukiGi · 13 Sep 2020 at 17:19

Hi,

I've built my first PC, and while it works, after running PassMark software and comparing results to both the world score and my mate's (who both the same components) my machine seems to be under-performing on every single test.

Here is exactly what I'm talking about:

CPU MARK (Ryzen 7 3700X)

My score: 20,219
Reference PC score: 22,713
World Average: ~22,700

Memory Mark (Corsair 3200)

My score: 2626
Reference PC: 2922
World Average: ~3,000

Disk Mark (SSD 860 EVO 1TB)

My score: 4480
World Average: ~4780

There is a trend of over 10% lower performance then the reference machine and the world average. The GPU tests were around average for 2060, although still 10% lower then my mate's reference machine.

None of the machines were overclocked. I presume there is a quality variation when components are produced but 10% seems a lot. Are there any checks I can do? Is the motherboard the issue here?

FloppyPoppy · 13 Sep 2020 at 17:55

Have you turned DOCP on in your bios? if you haven't your ram will be running at 2400mhz with very loose timings.

The cpu, what cooler are you using? Have you checked temperatures? is your bios up to date?

LukiGi · 13 Sep 2020 at 19:36

I definitely run RAM at 3200, here is the CPU-Z screen in case I've missed something

As for CPU cooling I use stock cooler at the moment, but this is also the case with reference machine and none of them are overclocked. Temperatures seemed fine during Benchmarks.

mickyflinn · 13 Sep 2020 at 20:10

Is your motherboard bios up to date ?

LukiGi · 13 Sep 2020 at 20:18

I'll check that as soon as MSI website gets back to normal. At the moment it doesn't display any downloads for my motherboard at all, and seems to be struggling to load.

mickyflinn · 13 Sep 2020 at 21:10

LukiGi said:
I'll check that as soon as MSI website gets back to normal. At the moment it doesn't display any downloads for my motherboard at all, and seems to be struggling to load.

What motherboard do you have ?

LukiGi · 14 Sep 2020 at 09:26

I've just upgraded firmware, but I can't see any improvement in the scores.

I have MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Wi-Fi

mickyflinn · 14 Sep 2020 at 10:47

If your mates pc has the same components are all other settings the same ?

Bios settings, windows power plan, etc.

LukiGi · 14 Sep 2020 at 11:00

We have a different motherboards, but both on the same x570 chipset, so the BIOS settings I presume might be a bit different, but none of us did any overclocking. We both have windows set to performance in power settings.

I keep testing MSI Bios settings, but they rarely do any difference at all. For RAM for example switching between XMP1, XMP2 and XMP off didn't do much of a difference. I did put all timings, voltage clock speed manually.

pp111 · 14 Sep 2020 at 11:36

I always find that "mates" PC's run several times faster than yours until you actually run the test yourself on their PC, then you find out it's a lot slower than they said it was. There is always a certain bravado with PC builders and they often ignore the "average" result in favour of the instantaneous peak albeit it only ever happened once in the last 1000 tests. So, honestly, I would tend to take any other peoples results with a pinch of salt. Even better, just don't even go there. Be happy with what you built. It's amazing! Also, different motherboards do make a lot of difference. Different manufacturers are often guilty of some form of mild overclocking to achieve better base results. Asus caused some controversy in recent years doing this.

LukiGi · 14 Sep 2020 at 11:49

@pp111 I think you are right about the Motherboard. He has an Asus one, and he just send me screenshot of his BIOS setting, he has an option of EZ System Tuning, which is set to normal, however the CPU clock seems to be automatically set to 4050 instead of base 3600, so yes Asus seems to be doing some basic overclocking as a standard.

Would the CPU clock affect my RAM though? And why my RAM is still about 20% lower in speed than the world average for those DIMMs.

pp111 · 14 Sep 2020 at 18:29

Yes, normal in Asus terms is very different to normal for other manufacturers, lol.

I don't know CPU-Z but I am wondering if that is just reading the RAM XMP values but that's not actually what it's running at. In other words, somehow, XMP is not enabled. Because it's strange but that's about the only thing that would account for such a large difference. I am sure there are people around on the forum who will know this.

TrojanWhore · 14 Sep 2020 at 20:55

pp111 said:
Yes, normal in Asus terms is very different to normal for other manufacturers, lol.

I don't know CPU-Z but I am wondering if that is just reading the RAM XMP values but that's not actually what it's running at. In other words, somehow, XMP is not enabled. Because it's strange but that's about the only thing that would account for such a large difference. I am sure there are people around on the forum who will know this.

CPU-Z is showing the actual RAM freq/timings in the first screenshot, the second shows the JDEC/XMP profiles.

Interesting though that they all appear to be running at XMP except for tRC, which is 75 instead of 54 in the profile. I don't know enough about RAM timings to know if this would make much difference...

LukiGi · 14 Sep 2020 at 21:45

Looks like Windows was the issue. After re-installing all scores are as expected.