[FIXED] Decrease in performance since Microcode update (0x129) on Asus Prime Z790-A and i7 13700KF

[Berdugo]

EDIT : FIXED Disabling CEP in the BIOS made the original performance come back

Hello, first excuse me if I make some English mistakes.

I have an Asus PRIME Z790-A WIFI motherboard, paired with a delidded i7 13700KF CPU, which has always been stable. From the beginning I installed it, I applied an undervolt and disabled Asus Multi-Core Enhancement, because I knew raptor lake CPUs ran very hot with everything set to Auto.

So today I updated my BIOS to the latest version (1663) which includes the 0x129 microcode update.

In the BIOS, at "Intel default settings", the only choice possible is "Performance", while other people can also choose "Extreme". I cannot. How come ? Is the Extreme setting only available on higher-end mobos ? Or with i9 13900K and 14900K CPUs ?

Anyway, so I chose Performance, and dialed in the same parameters that were in my previous BIOS (undervolt with negative offset, see parameters below at the end of the message). My system is stable, but in Handbrake, performance tanks by 50% : when encoding the first 10% of the same movie, the average fps on the old bios was around 32, on the new one it barely reaches 17. I haven't tried Cinebench unfortunately. Note : for long Handbrake encodings, on both BIOSes, I use a custom profile which limits any core  temperature to 75°c, which makes the CPU throttle down to around 4900 mhz on all P-cores. And on both BIOSes, while encoding, the CPU power consumption is around 150W.

Is the decrease in performance due to the fact that the Intel default setting can only be set to Performance and not Extreme ?

BIOS Settings (new BIOS) :

Performance Preferences : Intel Default Settings

Intel Default Settings : Performance

Asus MCE : Disabled

SVID Behavior : Auto (also tried Intel Failsafe, which made my voltages skyrocket)

XMP 1

LLC 3

Actual VRM Core Voltage : Negative offset (-0.05v)

CPU SA Voltage : 1.26v

MC Voltage : 1.4v

C-States disabled

Speedshift and Speedtest enabled

[Silent_Scone]

It's the same method of manipulating the AC Loadline, but manually rather than using SVID Behaviour. Personally, I would just disable CEP if you want to manipulate the loadline. There's a reason it was disabled by default on K series CPUs. If you're using Typical Behaviour, the peak voltage shouldn't be anywhere near Intel's peak 1.55v VID anyway unless you have a poor sample.

[swale]

I assume you mean IA CEP was disabled by default on K CPUs for older Asus BIOSs since IA CEP is certainly enabled by default in the latest BIOS?

[Silent_Scone]

Well, yes. Because newer BIOS are Intel Defaults. CEP fits that definition 😊