Question 7-max, large pages support in Windows and improved benchmark scores

[igor_kavinski]

I've known about 7-max for some time now but I was waiting to benchmark my Zen 2 128 thread ES chip before talking about it.

7-max enables any application to use large pages (don't quote me on that though. That's just how I understand it). Interestingly, @Tuna-Fish also talked about large pages today: https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ranite-ridge-ryzen-9000.2607350/post-41278842

Running 7-max is simple. Just install it, preferably run it with admin privileges (to avoid any Windows bugs like the one that's reducing game fps on Zen 5), then choose whatever software's executable using the Run option in 7-max and hopefully your chosen software will see some boost (not everything does and some applications either refuse to launch or they may crash).

So for my testing, first I ran Rapydmark at High setting using 7-max. It finished in roughly 200 seconds.

I thought that was decent because my 12700K@7000 MT/s CL34 usually does it in about 188 seconds. So 128T Zen 2 score was pretty nice.

Next I ran Rapydmark High without 7-max (admin mode) and got about 260 seconds. So it shaved off 60 seconds! That's very nice "free" performance boost.

I decided to see what would happen if I turned off SMT.

So with SMT off, Rapydmark score was 337 seconds. Using 7-max, it got down to only 327 seconds. Seems 7-max really helps the virtual threads if enough RAM bandwidth is available? (8-channels on the Epyc ES).

Hope some of you feel inspired to do some of your own testing and post the results.

7-max

By the way, the developer is also the author of 7-zip.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Happy to report an interesting development, folks!

Rapydmark High almost 197 secs with 128 threads.

Passmark 128 thread CPU mark 69005 where the highest I had seen before was 68000 something.

And this without needing 7-max!

Turns out, the hidden Administrator account does the same thing as 7-max which makes things really easy (double click and launch and you get max memory performance!).

So how do you enable the account? Easy.

Type cmd in Start menu, right click the cmd icon and run as administrator.

Then type Net user Administrator /active:yes

Then type Net user Administrator *

It will let you set a password to that account.

Now just sign off from your current account and you will see the Administrator account listed on the bottom left of the login screen.

DISCLAIMER: don't use this trick on any PC where you login to banking sites or anything sensitive related to your personal life. This account will let any virus/malware that somehow finds its way onto your system, run amok!