Frequencies reached:
As with every new processor test, our first concern is to check whether the advertised frequencies are actually achieved. To do this, we’re going to use the Cinebench R23 benchmark. Two scenarios will be used: a single-core benchmark and a multi-core benchmark. The idea is to be able to judge the frequencies achieved and compare them with what AMD has announced in its slides.
It’s worth remembering that the Boost frequency in the bench is different for each processor. As AMD points out, when we talk about maximum Boost frequency, we’re talking about the maximum frequency achievable by one of the processor cores running a single-core(mono-threaded) workload. Boost max varies according to several factors: the load, the cooling system and therefore the temperature of your processor. It’s important to keep this in mind. Here are the frequencies we expect to reach on a single core during our Cinebench R23 run.
Please pay close attention to our information, as we’ve encountered a multithreaded performance problem with the RYZEN 7 9700X.
Test with Ryzen 5 9600X :
Here we go with the smallest of the ZEN 5 processors, the Ryzen 5 9600X. As you can see, we’ve opened several windows to check frequency and temperature.
In single-threaded mode, we can see that core #1 reaches a frequency of 5455 MHz, which is higher than the 5.4 GHz announced by AMD. The reason is undoubtedly the cooler temperatures brought about by our liquid cooling.
A single CCD encloses the 6 cores, and on our multithreaded Cinebench run , the core frequencies stabilize at 4900/4950 MHz. It’s also worth noting that each CCD has a higher-performance core than the others, which can be identified in Ryzen Master by a small yellow star.
Test with Ryzen 7 9700X :
This is where we came up against performance concerns. In single-core mode, we can see that core #1 reaches a frequency of 5530 MHz, which is higher than the 5.5 GHz announced by AMD. So far, so good.
On our very first multithreaded Cinebench run , the core frequencies stabilize at 4375/4425 MHz, which seems to us to be very low indeed, far too low. Looking at AMD’s reviewer guide and comparing against the performance of the Ryzen 7 7700X, our score is lower, which is not logical. After several exchanges with AMD, we identified the SOC voltage as the problem. When our EXPO memory profile is activated, the SOC voltage, despite being set to AUTO in the BIOS, seems to be too high, preventing the cores from reaching higher frequencies.
By opting for a manual SOC voltage of 1.0 volt, frequencies rise from 4625 to 4675 MHz, thus improving the score and coming close to AMD’s reviewer guide. We’ve also contacted ASUS, who will be checking this on their own, and are working on a fix. Only the ROG Crosshair X670E GENE model seems to be affected.
