Question about MSI Z77a g43 motherboard performance

[Xenphor]

I read this review here http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2012/06/11/msi-z77a-g43-review/6 and can't understand why the gaming performance would vary that much between motherboards. I guess I thought that by now, the reasons for getting a different motherboard would be based on what features were added to the board and not the raw performance of it. So was this motherboard a bad buy or am I worrying to much about the benchmarks from that site?

 

[Binky]

Something is fishy there. Why would the "stock" performance show a 12.6% variation, while the overclocked chart shows only 9.6% below. In the test setup section, they show that they tested the MSI at 4.4ghz but the others are all at 4.8ghz. Why would it score worse at the same stock speeds, then overclocked with a known 400mhz disadvantage?

 

[Xenphor]

Hm ya that's weird. I don't know what to say.

 

[Ketchup]

Base clock may be a bit low on those boards. It would be interesting to see how much closer those numbers would be if the number was set to, say, 101.

 

[coffeejunkee]

From the review: "After a little investigation we found that the board wasn’t turbo boosting as aggressively as others that we’ve tested"

Seems like the C3/C6 states are disabled by default (just like on the MSI AMD board that was tested here recently) which are required for the turbo boost to operate to its full extent.

 

[Xenphor]

From the review: "After a little investigation we found that the board wasn’t turbo boosting as aggressively as others that we’ve tested"

Seems like the C3/C6 states are disabled by default (just like on the MSI AMD board that was tested here recently) which are required for the turbo boost to operate to its full extent.

Would it be wise to enable those options? Do they usually show up in the bios?

 

[Ketchup]

Would it be wise to enable those options? Do they usually show up in the bios?

Yes and Yes

 

[Xenphor]

Yes and Yes

well I didn't see anything that said c3/c6 state but I did see options for:
Intel Turbo Boost - Enabled
Enhanced Turbo - Disabled

So should I enable enhanced turbo? Are these the correct options?

edit: Nevermind I think I found it under power saving options:
C-state - Enabled, Disabled
Package C state limit - Auto, c0, c2, c6, No limit

C state is enabled and Package C state is Auto.

 

[Ketchup]

Seems like the C3/C6 states are disabled by default (just like on the MSI AMD board that was tested here recently) which are required for the turbo boost to operate to its full extent.

Can you clarify on this part? Specifically, how do the parameters of supporting the different sleep modes help the processor run better?

 

[coffeejunkee]

Can you clarify on this part? Specifically, how do the parameters of supporting the different sleep modes help the processor run better?

Well, without those C3/C6 sleepstates the turbo boost can only go up to the 4 core bin, even if only 1 core is used. With them enabled, the cpu can almost completely turn off unused cores and boost the remaining ones higher.

 

[Xenphor]

So is there anyway to test to see if motherboard and CPU are working properly for turbo boost? I ran 3dmark 11 and on completion it lists my CPU at 3.8ghz instead of 3.4 stock.

 

[coffeejunkee]

That means it's working correctly, 3.8GHz is max single thread turbo. Another way to test is to run SuperPi and check multiplier in cpu-z/realtemp/hwinfo etc.

So nothing wrong with your board, could just be an old bios on the board bit-tech used.

 

[Ketchup]

So nothing wrong with your board, could just be an old bios on the board bit-tech used.

Most likely. A lot of times they test these things as soon as they come out.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Yes, nothing unusual about that.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6506/msi-fm2a85xag65-review-know-your-platform/9

"Addendum 11/12/2012: Based on the findings in this review, MSI have released a BIOS update to v1.4 which should fix the turbo core issue. The issue was related to the default choice of the C6 state in BIOS 1.3 which was disabled. It should be enabled in BIOS v1.4, or users of the 1.3 BIOS can manually change the BIOS option to get the stock performance back on track. We will hopefully release a news update with the latest benchmark results in due course."

Assuming this was the issue in the bit-tech review ofcourse. Another possibility (which I think is unlikely) is that the board actually has problems maintaining the turbo boost. You could also simply check this with cpu-z and prime95 or any other stresstest. I have never seen the turbo not being fully used, even after hours of stresstesting.

 

[Xenphor]

Well I tried superpi with cpu-z and the multiplier goes to 37 but not 38.

And another thing-- with prime95 and all cores active the multiplier goes to 36; shouldn't it be at 34??

edit: I just tried Intel's turbo boost monitor and it also only showed 3.7ghz

edit2: Looks like the problem was that Enhanced Halt State was disabled in the bios. I enabled it and now the turbo goes up to 3.8ghz. Is it better to leave that option on and get 3.8ghz or run with it off and get 3.7ghz?

 

[coffeejunkee]

3.8 is obviously better than 3.7 so leave it on, in fact it's how the cpu is supposed to work.

Here you can find the different turbo states for i5 cpu's: http://www.intel.com/support/processors/corei5/sb/CS-032278.htm

And like I said, I've never seen my cpu work at the nominal 3.4Ghz speed, 3.6Ghz turbo is what it's supposed to run at with 4 threads.

Seems like your mobo is working completely fine.

 

[Xenphor]

I hate to bump the thread again but I actually ran the benchmark (http://video.cloudfront.bit-tech.net/CPCSuite2007.zip) they were using myself, and I discovered that my motherboard can't even post the low numbers they got, let alone match the other boards. I really don't understand what the problem could be.

My scores:
Image editing: 1743 points.
Video encoding: 3008 points.
Multitasking testing: 1331 points.
Overall score: 2027 points.

Theirs:
Image editing: 1787 points.
Video encoding: 3190 points.
Multitasking testing: 1614 points.
Overall score: 2197 points.

I mean I suppose the numbers are okay for my MB but they are quite lower from the other boards there, and that's after fixing the turbo boost problem. Also, reading on the internet, it seems like MSI is not a good brand for a MB.

 

[coffeejunkee]

You didn't actually mention it, but from the numbers I take it you have a 3570K? Bit-tech uses a 3770K so that would explain.

MSI ain't that bad imo and usually do very good on power consumption. I don't like them for overclocking though because you can only set a fixed vcore.

 

[Xenphor]

Oops I didn't catch that, thanks for correcting. And yes, I do have a 3570k.

I don't suppose anybody with a 3570k@3.4ghz would want to download that benchmark and run it? Otherwise I guess I could see how my numbers would be lower.

And about MSI -- from what I gather, yes, they are harder to overclock because of the bios. Honestly, I'd just be happy if I can get good stock speeds right now.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I was curious now myself and wanted to try it, but it keeps saying I need to set my monitor to 32-bit color when it's already set to that...

 

[Xenphor]

I was curious now myself and wanted to try it, but it keeps saying I need to set my monitor to 32-bit color when it's already set to that...

Are you running it as admin? Don't know what else it could be.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Yep, otherwise it won't start at all. Else check with LinX 0.6.4...GFlops should be around 100 for stock i5 3570K + 8GB ram.

 

[Xenphor]

I only get 50 gflops when using Linx. I upped the ram to 6335 and problem size to 28764, and that configuration caused an error in Linx after 5m 44s. It still did not go higher than 50.

 

[coffeejunkee]

You need latest version of Linx with AVX support. Or try Intel Burn Test, it's basically the same. But 50 GFlops without AVX is about right since AVX doubles througput.

That error is nasty though, that shouldn't happen. Also check your temps if you use the stock cooler.

 

[Xenphor]

Hm well I got another error using the same settings around the same time 5min 41s

Results:

Size: 28764
LDA: 28776
Align: 4
Time:308.536
GFlops: 51.4275
Residual 8.544900e-004

Is that a problem with my CPU? I checked the temperatures and they were around 58 for the CPU. Everything else looked fine.

edit: I got an error in intel burn test as well. I haven't touched my CPU or bios settings at all so I have no idea what's wrong. Running with stock everything and never have overclocked.