ROG Zenith Extreme / 1920X - poor game performance & sluggish?

[faxfan]

Hi All,

Not quite sure where to put this but I suspect it maybe a mobo issue but not sure. Basically running games on the ROG Zenith Extreme / 1920X / 1080 FE SLI (AIO watercooled - both CPU & GPU's) / Samsung 960 EVO NVME - running the first game I came across - WOW - and I'm getting about 1/2 FPS I was getting on a 5930K / 1080 FE SLI and about 1/3 less than a 4970K and 9 series titan X (have a very set routine for testing FPS, so the variance should be minimal).

3d mark spy hunter gives about 12,000 SLI and 7,000 single card - seems well below average.

The system feels sluggish even in windows 10.

More details -

- 1080 FE in SLI with Gsync at 100Mhz to Asus 3440x1440p monitor
- Tried all BIOS revisions including beta 0503 (0211 doesn't work due to requirement to use DIMM2 and SLI)
- Cooling and temps are fine, nothing *appears* to be thermal throttling
- RAM is 2133 in bios, can push to 2400 but it becomes unstable
- Tiried stock 3.5 and o/c 3.8,3.9 and 4.0 - whilst all are stable the same problem persists
- brand new install of Windows 10
- latest drivers from Asus website
- GPU's running in PCIE 3.0

Things I'm going try -

- Another game (obviously) just downloading Doom which was a very solid 100FPS
- Unplug the power of a GPU so it uses a single card only
- Revert to a SLI bridge - I was using a EVGA HB SLI bridge but got the more aesthetically pleasing ROG HB bridge to sync with the mobo (grasping at straws)


Any other things I could try / check? Is there some AMD tools I should look at to check things, seem to recall some people mentioning them in reviews - has anyone has to do that?

 

[faxfan]

Ordered two of the following -

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...4000mhz-dual-channel-kit-black-my-098-tg.html

The mobo is rated to 3600 so the memory will give plenty of overhead for improvements in the future - or at least that's the plan. Arriving tomorrow but will continue to work on things.

But yeah - the memory is a huuuuge hitter.

 

[faxfan]

So some good news, Doom is running silky smooth and like a dream - lots of cores

Good USB problems though - devices are sometimes not recognised i.e. keyboard, HUE+ controller etc. just seems to be 1 per boot or something. Looking for issues around this.

Also BIOS 0503 seems to drop the Nvidia cards, get the message the display is not plugged into a Nvidia GPU - although obviously it is, dropping back to 0305 seems to resolve this although on 1 boot it Windows about 5 minutes to recognise the GPU's. Bit odd.

 

[faxfan]

Out of interest how is SLI 1080's treating you on threadripper?

It seems to be ok on what few games fully make use it there certainly isn't any bottle neck - apart from the RAM at 2133 it seems.

 

[faxfan]

How did you go with the mems?? 3466 c16 or 3333 c14 your best option?? Few cpu can hit 3600 Imc not capable. But those mems can do 4450Mhz on Intel platform all day long.

Just loaded put them in, loaded a samsung b die profile from the bios sub menu's and got a clean boot at 3466.

Now you'll have to bear with me in terms of C16 / C14 etc. as I've never dived into memory overclocking before just followed the intel XMP.

CPU-Z is reporting -

 

[faxfan]

Out of interest does intel love high speed ram as much as ryzen?

From what I've read high speed memory has more of an impact on Ryzen due to the architecture than that of Intel. I'm sure Intel does benefit form high speed ram but not just as much as Ryzen.

 

[faxfan]

Couple of issues at 3466 - a few failed tests (using memtest in windows, followed by failed restarts), just dropping back to 3333 to see if things stabilise a bit more - using the "safe profile". I'm sure with some tweaking 3466 should be fine but want to get a baseline in there.

Using 3333 CAS 14 for a bit.

 

[faxfan]

TR and 3466 often a problem with IMC TBH.

Do you think as the platform / bios matures things will improve?

 

[faxfan]

It's looking like a cas 16 with 4.0ghz o/c to get a stable system.

Cas 15 worked with no mem test errors but when rebooting it just didn't work and had to reset the bios.

 

[faxfan]

what are you getting for aida64 cache and memory bench?

I'll check for you and update later.

A further update on the system -

-> 1920x with a 4.0Ghz overclock, cooled via Kraken X52
-> 3333Mhz memory @ Cas 16
-> 1080 FE in SLI

A buttery smooth but with a couple of questions / issues -

1. SLI, when using a non SLI game i.e. world of warcraft the FPS will suddenly half every few seconds even when I've set the game to a single GPU in the Nvidia CP, disabling SLI in CP and the game is fine. SLI games work well in SLI i.e. Doom. I suspect this is a BIOS issue but I'll pop up a separate post asking other X399 users.
2. In terms of memory would 3333 @ CAS16 be as good as 3200 @ CAS14? I suspect there is no perceivable difference

 

[faxfan]

I'll check for you and update later.

A further update on the system -

-> 1920x with a 4.0Ghz overclock, cooled via Kraken X52
-> 3333Mhz memory @ Cas 16
-> 1080 FE in SLI

A buttery smooth but with a couple of questions / issues -

1. SLI, when using a non SLI game i.e. world of warcraft the FPS will suddenly half every few seconds even when I've set the game to a single GPU in the Nvidia CP, disabling SLI in CP and the game is fine. SLI games work well in SLI i.e. Doom. I suspect this is a BIOS issue but I'll pop up a separate post asking other X399 users.
2. In terms of memory would 3333 @ CAS16 be as good as 3200 @ CAS14? I suspect there is no perceivable difference

Point 2 didn't turn out to be SLI at all but memory / overclock issues - cinebench also crashed. So starting from the ground up -

-> Tested memory with no o/clock - all the way up to 3466 just using the auto settings, pretty sure 3600 should be achievable.
-> Started the CPU overclocking and things started going wrong, so by process a loooong process of testing the following combinations seem to be available (no real tweaking just auto setting and memory voltage increases) -

1. 3.50Ghz CPU / 3466Mhz memory
2. 3.70Ghz CPU / 3333Mhz memory
2. 3.80Ghz CPU / 3200Mhz memory

I've settled on a conservative 3.70Ghz CPU / 3200Mhz memory for now to test things for a few weeks, I'd consider this a benchmark from which things can improve from.

Aida64 @ 3200Mhz cas16 / 3.70Ghz CPU
Memory read 79144MB/s
Memory write 91549MB/s
Memory latency 97.9ns

Cinebench 2374

 

[faxfan]

Whut that memory read is insane! Is that correct?

Get about 51k with 3200 memory on Ryzen!

Yeah it's right, I'll post up the screenshots later. That is a massive difference though!

 

[faxfan]

The memory timings I've left on auto which results in 16-16-16-39 (bank cycle time of 75). I'm sure these can tightened significantly since I've single sided sammsung b-die.

 

[faxfan]

Pretty much identical system apart from I have a slightly lower spec 1920X and non-TI's and performance test score is a little lower.

HOWEVER I have to say everything seems to have stabilised and working well, games running very smoothly (SLI and non SLI). The main thing I've found is to get a stable system, I've found cinebench invaluable in do this, everything would pass memtests etc. but cinebench would crash and games would jerk around and not be give consistent FPS. I *believe* I've fixed this now the CPU overclock also has a direct impact on the memory overclock i.e. 4.0Ghz would be stable CPU overclock and 3466 memory would be stable but put together it would *appear* to work but a good stress test (cinebench) would crash the system.

Obviously I've been tinkering more, despite what I said on my last post, and got my system to a 3.8Ghz (1.35v - probably overkill?) / 3200 cas14 (3200 safe o/clock profile in the bios) and cinebench doesn't crash (score 2463). I'm sure there is more in the system but right now it works and works well. My BIOS version is 0305, I'll be upgrading to 0503 soon.

One thing on the SLI which may help - Assuming you are running slots 1 and 3 - power off the system (unplug) flick dip switch 3 near the 24 min mobo connector to disable slot 3, power on, let windows sorts itself out. Shutdown, flick dip switch 3 back to on and power up and see if that helps. I did this and it seemed to help but then again I was doing a few things and may have lost track

 

[faxfan]

OK so! HPET WAS to blame for all of my problems...

to fix it:

Open CMD as an administrator

run:
bcdedit /enum

if you see 'useplatformclock' set to true then run thats your problem

I ran:
bcdedit /set useplatformclock false

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

you might get away with just running
bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Well... I tried that, boots up into Windows the startup programs start running and I lots of what looks like lots windows minimising in basic colour mode and I'm left with black screen with a mouse cursor. Can't do anything from there