i7-3770K + GA-Z77X-UD5H Share your best practices

[Tagny Daggart]

Hi all you 3770K + UD5H owners. This thread is for you! I'm hoping we can all share best practices to getting our rigs working as well as possible. I would like to propose that as a measure of general performance goodness, we share our GeekBench (64-bit please) scores. I'll start.

Mine is 14,768 and I have 2x8 GB Corsair Vengeance RAM. This is not overclocked in any way.

My mobo came with F4, but I flashed it to F7. I have played around with a number of BIOS settings and, so far, here's what has given me the best performance (differences from defaults):

M.I.T.
> Advanced Frequency Settings
> > Advanced CPU Core Features
> > > Intel Turbo Boost -> ENABLED AUTO
> > > Hyper-threading Technology -> ENABLED AUTO
> Advanced Frequency Settings
> > XMP Profile -> PROFILE1 (Your RAM may also have a 'Profile2' to test)
> > Performance Enhance -> TURBO or EXTREME
System
> ATA Port Information
> > [Disabled any unused ports]
BIOS Features
> Intel Virtualization Technology -> ENABLED
Peripherals
> VIA 1394 Controller -> DISABLED
> xCHI Mode -> AUTO (NOT Smart Auto)
> PCH LAN Controller -> DISABLED
> Init Display First -> IGFX (I'm using the HD4000)
Power Management
> Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN -> DELAY 4-SEC.

Using these settings, my GB score is 14,768 and my Geekbench/GHz rating is 4,219. Tonymacx86 has (had?) a similar system that scored 14,842 at stock speeds giving him a GB/GHz of 4,241. I think this is because his RAM has lower latency than mine.

I very much hope that nsbikes shows up here and shares what he has done with his system as he also has a very nice score, albeit overclocked. Regardless, his GB/GHz is the highest I've seen so far at 4,375!

Anyway, let's see what we can do with this setup!

EDIT: Added firmware version info (F7)
EDIT: Changed title of post
EDIT: After better analysis, it is best to leave the Advanced CPU Core Features set to AUTO.

 

[Bomma72]

Can you post your plist, so that I can make sure I have all the standard setting correct? Just want to make sure. Plus I think it would be helpful for others, as there are many different sources of info on this combo.

 

[Tagny Daggart]

Can you post your plist, so that I can make sure I have all the standard setting correct? Just want to make sure. Plus I think it would be helpful for others, as there are many different sources of info on this combo.

I would be happy to, but I'm traveling and won't have access to it until Monday, sorry.

 

[Tagny Daggart]

I recently noticed that after a long session of sleep, the machine would wake up fine, but exhibits a loss of performance as measured by Geekbench of about 20%. The fix for this was to change my System Definition to iMac 12,2. =)

 

[Bomma72]

Can you post your plist, so that I can make sure I have all the standard setting correct? Just want to make sure. Plus I think it would be helpful for others, as there are many different sources of info on this combo.

I would be happy to, but I'm traveling and won't have access to it until Monday, sorry.

Cool!!

 

[Tagny Daggart]

Can you post your plist, so that I can make sure I have all the standard setting correct? Just want to make sure. Plus I think it would be helpful for others, as there are many different sources of info on this combo.

Here you go!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>GenerateCStates</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>GeneratePStates</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Graphics Mode</key>
	<string>1920x1080x32</string>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>npci=0x3000 darkwake=0</string>
	<key>Legacy Logo</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>2</string>
	<key>UseKernelCache</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

[Bomma72]

awesome thanks.

 

[Tagny Daggart]

So, last night I tested every setting in the M.I.T. > Advanced Frequency Settings > Advanced CPU Core Features are of BIOS. I found some interesting results.

Methodology
This was a rather simple test, but essentially, I set everything to 'Auto', tested, then individually set each feature to 'Enabled' and retested then 'Disabled' and retested.

These are the items I tested:
* Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology
* Hyper-Threading Technology
* CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
* C3/C6 State Support
* CPU Thermal Monitor
* CPU EIST Function

The other items on this BIOS page were left to Auto or their default values because this experiment isn't about overclocking, but simple to identify the optimal settings of the CPU Core Features. See this BIOS screen grab for reference:

The simple testing consisted of booting into Lion (10.7.4), waiting a few moments for all background startup processes to complete, then running Geekbench 3 times. Then, I kextloaded MSRDumper.kext, watched the kernel.log and ran Geekbench again. This last step was done just to see which PStates the CPU would reach.

I am attaching the recorded results in the original Numbers spreadsheet and as an image herein, but here's the salient points from the testing:

Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology
In particular, one might think setting 'Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology' to 'Enabled' is a good idea, but testing revealed that performance will suffer because the highest PState reached is only 37, not 39. I presume this is because it forces all cores to enter 'turbo' mode, and the turbo multiplier for all four cores being active is only 37.

Setting this feature to 'Disabled' has the more obvious result of not allowing the CPU to enter turbo mode at all, and the highest PState reached is 35.

Hyper-Threading
The results were too close to call if 'Enabled' had any positive or negative impact on performance vs. using 'Auto'. I suspect that 'Auto' simply enables this feature if it is present (which it is on Core i7's).

Disabling this setting had the obvious result of reducing the number of available cores to 4 from 8, and performance suffered significantly as a result. Interestingly, when enabled, the extra virtual cores only add about 20% to the Geekbench scores.

CPU Enhanced Halt(C1E)
C3/C6 State Support
CPU Thermal Monitor
None of these seemed to make any obvious difference to the resulting Geekbench scores. I suspect that they do have a function, but that in the short time I had the machine running with these options either enabled or disabled, they made little difference. I recommend these are all left to 'Auto' until better testing can be done.

CPU EIST Function
Setting this option to 'Enabled' resulted in the highest avg. Geekbench score reached during these tests, but this is in reality only 0.3% higher than the initial, all-Auto test. Again, I recommend leaving this set to 'Auto' until further, and more substantial testing is done.

Setting this to 'Disabled' had no significant impact on the performance of the system for these tests, but again, perhaps during the short time these tests were run didn't produce conditions where this feature would've been useful.

Combinations
I also tried to cherry-pick some of the better features and set them to 'Enabled' to see if there was any benefit. I didn't see any. I think 'Auto' is already doing that for us!

Summary
Leave all of the above-listed features set to 'Auto' for best results! There may be some slight benefit to forcing the 'CPU EIST Function' to 'Enabled', but the results are convincing or salient enough to warrant anything but an 'Auto' setting.

Here's the image of the results:

 

[mmcakes]

Hey Tagny, do you have Mountain Lion up and running on this? Do you have any new tips? I'm only seeing one core in activity monitor.

 

[kotfu]

CPU's in Activity Monitor

Hey Tagny, do you have Mountain Lion up and running on this? Do you have any new tips? I'm only seeing one core in activity monitor.

In either Lion or Mountain Lion, it will appear as if you only have one CPU. Double click the black box with the green and red dots inside of it, and you'll get a popup window that shows the CPU usage for each of the 8 cores. I assume that the single box is some sort of average usage of the 8 cores.

Cheers.