Trying to understand how "gear down mode" *actually* affects my system.

[Nazo]

So, first of all, my system specs in case it matters:
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X currently set to run at a fixed 4.4GHz.

And of course the RAM: Mushkin Redline Lumina DDR4 4000MHz (PC4-32000) 1.35V

To begin with I want to explain the situation. TLD[n]R people skip down please rather than complain. Now, first of all I want to clarify: I am not at all overclocking this RAM beyond its official specifications. (Ok, I recognize that anything beyond 3200MHz at 1.2V is "overclocking" according to the official DDR4 standard, but I am running this RAM at the official timings and voltage specified by Mushkin.) I've really struggled with this particular system getting just a handful of games to run as smoothly as I really kind of need them to and have chased down a number of different things regarding performance, reliability, etc trying to smooth everything out. One thing I noticed a little while back that had a HUGE effect in this regard was a memory "overclock" function in my motherboard which is confusingly incorrectly labeled because what it actually does is disable the standard downscaling when the system is underutilized done as part of standard powersaving features. Disabling this had a huge effect on general gaming performance. (And as a reminder, even though it says "overclock" it actually just means "don't underclock.")

A bit of an explanation on that: I think a part of some of the problems I've had in some things with this system is too many things incorrectly interpreting as low load situations during an actual game. In part, games just really aren't generally pushing this CPU all that hard most of the time, then suddenly have a sudden demand in some situations (such as sudden terrain generation in things with flight mechanics where it may have to all of a sudden load a large area.) I noticed the CPU was underclocked most of the time in games with the stock PBO and turbo, then would have to climb quickly during those moments with a small delay in the process of actually going up, thus noticeably more hitching during those sudden quick demand moments. I set the CPU to a fixed frequency and it helped enormously. I think something similar has been going on with the RAM (probably specifically tied to CPU usage since I think the actual system doesn't have good metrics on memory demand? In which case the RAM would be down quite a lot in fact.) I saw a significant decrease in hitching in gaming in general by changing this setting.

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(Ok, TLD[n]R people can start paying attention here):
This brings me back to wondering if the issue is more subtle, such as latencies. To this end I'm taking another look at my RAM -- especially in light of the aforementioned issue where the RAM was underclocking and setting RAM "overclock" significantly helped with hitching and such. One thing I never was able to work out was disabling "gear down". Supposedly the difference is very subtle and typically doesn't matter. Supposedly. Yet I'm seeing somewhat inconsistent explanations for it. People basically say that all it truly does is essentially even out odd numbered timings. For example, a CL15 would become CL16. However, my stock timings are 18-22-22-42 -- all even. Yet, if I disable gear down with full stock settings on this RAM my system won't even post. Since the timings shouldn't even be affected supposedly, this is obviously not 100% true. Now, of course, I was also trying to use a CMD rate of 1T for obvious reasons. But here's the thing: setting CMD to 2T still resulted in massive instability. In fact, at full stock speed it's amazing it even posted because I actually got a BSOD probably less than a second after starting up Prime95. Oof. Even setting a lower frequency like 3600MHz still was massively unstable (though at least not BSOD unstable, just immediate errors in Prime95.) Now, with a bit of tweaking and lowering the RAM all the way down to 3200MHz (and appropriately matching FCLK -- btw, to clarify, the 2000 FCLK matching the 4000MHz stock speed is 100% stable without gear down disabled) I can finally get it to post and pass Prime95 for at least more than a few minutes (much more testing needed yet, it may still be unstable.) That's with a 2T CMD rate. I tested a few speeds such as 3600 (and supposedly gear down isn't even needed at that speed) but had to go as low as 3200MHz in my initial testing at least (might be able to get a bit higher, not sure, but this may turn out to be unstable in longer testing anyway, so much more testing needed still.)

So here's what I'm really trying to figure out here: explanation of how gear down really works is that it essentially runs the speed at half clocks for "latching" (not 100% what that really means in this regard.) Doubly confusing because that would mean it would be more a frequency-related thing than a timing-related thing, no? Except I guess it's only for specific points in its operation, which is why it affects timing? Here's the thing: if all gear down did was force even timings, then booting with the stock (already even) timings would essentially mean it already is "disabled" for all intents and purposes and even if the CMD rate counts towards this since it is uneven then when I set CMD to 2T gear down disabled would be 100% stable at the settings that are 100% stable with it enabled. Yet it's not, so obviously there is something else at play here. It makes me wonder if something is causing it to "gear down" more than it really is meant to, perhaps effectively lowering the actual effective RAM speed down to 2000MHz in real usage. If so, I would benefit enormously in terms of many things that could bottleneck there getting a stable system with gear down disabled. The RAM is supposed to be fairly decent (a decent Hynix for instance) but perhaps just isn't as 100% at its rated specs as it should be (though even if not it wouldn't be RMAable considering.)

I'm not really 100% sure how to benchmark just the RAM in this scenario. Especially since the bigger question is probably latencies of operations rather than bandwidth which would be even harder to benchmark anyway. That makes testing much more difficult (since monitoring performance during gaming can be much more subjective than objective due to perceptions, even if there are metrics that can theoretically be objectively benchmarked.) After stability testing I'll try both ways to see which seems to play better in actual real world results gaming-wise (after all, bandwidth-speaking the drop to 3200MHz is fairly significant -- however, if that's actually an effective increase from 2000MHz then it's very significant in the other direction!) It may still not pass even at 3200MHz though. And, as I said before, I don't want to raise voltage (lost too many system components due to that over the many many years I've been overclocking things. They all ultimately began producing errors or failures far too quickly for my uses since I keep most computer components longer than many people seem to.)

I'm wondering if someone who understands it better can tell me what is better for real life actual usage (particularly in gaming where latencies and bandwidth both play roles) given that if I can even get it stable with geardown disabled it may have to be at a significantly lower speed. So far in my initial gaming tests I haven't seen a huge difference, but I'm still trying to pin down bottlenecks in a few (like 7 Days to Die) which have been very stubborn, so I want to eliminate as many variables as possible.

 

[Edwired]

Looks like you might need to update the bios for the motherboard to iron out the kinks. There must a reason why your computer is behaving strangely. Do you have a lot of bloatware apps and softwares running in the background in the operating system. You might well set the bios back to default settings and observe the issue than fiddling it too much and getting no where in fixng it. It could be a number of things like memory unstable, the IMC in the CPU is degrading due to overvolting and overclocking to far past the stability safe zone. Memory bottleneck is pointing toward the memory controller speed is not performing correctly due to the memory sticks are overclocking more then the memory controller can handle. This is where the dram/blck ratios must be used to correct the problem in setting the correct speed based on memory sticks speed divided by 2 or 1.5. Example math of my system my memory stick speed is 1600 then multiplied anywhere from 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2 2.25 like example to find the current IMC speed so I want to get 2400mhz IMC speed I do 1600x1.5=2400mhz or higher speed like 3200 by multiplied by 2 and so fort. In your case your IMC speed you divide memory stick speed by 1.25 or higher number = less IMC speed = bottlenecking the memory performance there for stability issues you are having. You have to remember memory speed and imc go hand in hand in synchronized manner get one side too much speed affect the other same with less speed without accounting the changes that you didn't do correctly as some boards don't do this automatically meaning you have to set them manually but the main problem is the cpu imc quality may be objective means you have great cpu core overclock but poor imc that can't overclock at all or pretty unstable from stock then other sample is great imc overclock but cpu core is a crapshooter can't go above stock speed.

Might be well the cpu degraded from overvolting as these and chips have a habit of setting the vcore in auto meaning it receiving more vcore than it really needed like it swallowing 1.40v to 1.50v at idle as well too much heat is produced when fully loaded

 

[Nazo]

Looks like you might need to update the bios for the motherboard to iron out the kinks.

First thing I did upon getting the motherboard was update it. I find it's best to do that before even installing things where possible. I actually had updated it again not that long ago again (and forgot to save my settings so had to redo them all since the BIOS flasher for this board completely wipes the entire thing.) However, I do see a new update (it says it's a security update, so probably doesn't really add anything stability/performance-wise) and did go ahead and update it. It is a relatively significantly higher number (3002 versus 2803) so if the number corresponds to builds, then there have been almost 200 builds since then which might mean a lot of little tweaks here and there potentially, but nothing said on the download page would imply I should expect anything major. Guess time will tell if that makes any difference.

There must a reason why your computer is behaving strangely.

Agreed. Some of it I think is the components are designed to sort of push things. I found out the hard way the 5600X and above were designed for benchmarking first and foremost. On stock if you run anything that hits really hard like Prime95 (ok, admittedly Prime95's calculations are unrealistic for normal user operations) it jumps up to 80C in a single tick on the stock cooler (this CANNOT be good for the silicon!) and hits 90 and starts throttling basically just immediately outside of the time a benchmark would usually stop running. Intel and AMD seem to be going at each other's throats on benchmarks specifically atm (hence Raptor Lake) and this CPU and its bigger brothers was a result of that. (I'm convinced these chips won't last out their warranties on the stock cooler and settings and AMD is just counting on people to not keep them that long, not bother with the warranty, etc. That is some SERIOUS thermal throttling!) The memory is DDR4, whose specifications only go up to 3200MHz at 1.2V running 4000MHz at 1.35V -- essentially an "overclock" in regards to official DDR4 specifications. However, a stock, 100% tested as stable overclock. Basically each is pushing the envelope a bit for their respective generations. I kind of suspect a lot of similar things may show up with the latest generation too.

Do you have a lot of bloatware apps and softwares running in the background in the operating system.

Not other than Windows 10 itself. I keep things pretty minimal generally. Most of the time the biggest bloat is just Steam itself when playing a Steam game (no choice, yay for DRM, but at least it's less bloaty than things like Denuvo.) I might add that when gaming my CPU generally sees very low overall usage (I mean per core, not only looking at the total. I am aware you can have a core maxed out and other cores not and the total would show a low percentage, but this is not occurring here.) I don't see any sudden spikes that go anywhere close to 100% on any core. (I also am testing with SMT off from time to time so I get better metrics and trying to see whether SMT on is really better or not -- very hard to actually determine actually. It benchmarks better for obvious reasons, but in actual practice may not be. When I say no single core is close to max I mean it literally since I can see what it's actually using with SMT off.) In fact, load is typically low enough that one of the first things I had to fix was the CPU and RAM underclocking too much in normal gaming then having to step back up to full speed, causing frequent hitches in gaming. The biggest problem ultimately turned out to actually be the RAM -- it was still underclocking under the default power saving when there was low CPU load and I had to enable a "memory overclock" setting in my motherboard which is inaccurately named because what it actually does is just disable the underclocking (thus putting it at full stock speed at all times.) Getting the CPU and RAM to run full speed at all times had an enormously positive effect on hitching in games.

[You might well set the bios back to default settings and observe the issue than fiddling it too much and getting no where in fixng it.

I mean I started on stock to begin with and tweaked from there. Exactly what are you even suggesting I do with this? Stock means all the problems with hitches and stuff that I've solved come back. I've tweaked things one variable at a time as much as I possibly could. Going back to stock means bringing all those problems back which I worked so hard up to now specifically to fix... What's more, I don't accept the default handling of the CPU as valid (I want my CPU to not only last through its warranty, but potentially beyond. It can't do that if its temperature spikes randomly from 25 to 70+C instantly and back just as quickly -- thermal cycling like that is murder on silicon. I've narrowed it to something more like 29-39 for those sudden spikes, which is at least less rough even if still as fast.)

It could be a number of things like memory unstable

On the normal settings it tests at 100% stable in Memtest and Prime95 both for more than a day. When I messed with RAM settings (and especially when I set 1T CMD rate) I tested stability as I went.

the IMC in the CPU is degrading due to overvolting and overclocking to far past the stability safe zone.

I bought this CPU new, so to the best of my knowledge it has never ever been above the stock boost speed or voltage. In fact, I've lowered it. The stock PBO curves have it probably going at least as high as 1.35 (I think official specifications say 1.4 is within tolerance for these chips, so it may even go that high on turbo but I never actually watched the voltages on stock) but I have it running at around 1.16250 or so. The CPU (and RAM) tests 100% stable on Prime95 for more than a day. (I might add here that Prime95 may actually be testing too hard and these days CoreCycler is probably a more realistic and more reasonable testing method, but Prime95 is definitely a worst case scenario test and if it passes that it passes anything.) I set the speed at 4.4GHz because above that it needs a much more significant voltage jump and produces way too much heat in Prime95 (ok, again, Prime95 is unrealistic and I possibly should not use it as my standard anymore, but I feel safer knowing that in even in the absolute worst case scenario possible -- or probably not even possible actually -- I won't have thermal runaway and damage the core.) Stock turbo boost is 4.65GHz, so this is a decrease of 250MHz from normal stock under load.

Memory bottleneck is pointing toward the memory controller speed is not performing correctly due to the memory sticks are overclocking more then the memory controller can handle.

Remember, it's 100% Prime95 and Memtest stable for longer than even overnight at the official rated stock specifications even with a 1T command rate as long as I don't disable gear down. Just a reminder that these tests are 100% digital. Even only one single bit being off somewhere would throw an error.


A lot of the biggest bottlenecks I kept running into was, ironically, the components performing too well. Games using roughly 1/3rd of the CPU's capabilities for example resulting in the CPU deciding it wasn't really under heavy load and downclocking, causing latencies as they have to scale back up during momentary heavier demands. I noticed in Ryzen Master when using it for testing that the CPU, when using PBO, seems to take a while to actually scale -- it's not just an instant straight up to max, but more akin to the CPU governors that are used in *nix systems that attempt to find a balance of power saving and load handling so step up one step at a time until load is within a certain margin. The RAM was doing something somewhat similar (though I couldn't actually watch to see if it had to step up or if it could actually jump straight to full when it eventually got around to going back up under load.) The problem is games are dynamic and produce sudden load demands without really waiting around for the CPU or RAM to catch up. (It's actually kind of interesting because this chip has such incredible thermal cycling that I can actually hear the fans spin up for a moment during those sudden high load demands and don't even have to watch a performance graph to know the CPU just took a big hit.)

At this point my biggest gaming issue may be that my GPU just is insufficient, but I keep finding points where I'm getting low framerates or hitching and the GPU is at something like 50% usage, so, unless a bunch of things are stuck in its pipelines or something, I have to at least look into other things at least being connected to the bottlenecking (such as latencies between components.)

 

[Edwired]

I can understand where you are coming from but this issue I was in the same boat with xeon x5675 not one setting would make it run smooth as butter but took me a long time to figure it out then it dawn on me using a software called Process Lasso where I can control the upper level of what the operating system is doing including application behavior as well disabling hyper threads per app even reduce or disable threads completely as well control power plan on the overall system meaning games get the high performance plan but power saving is applied to the operating system once the game exits. Now talking about game hitching and stuttering is where I end up dealing with it on a regular basis. Managed to fixed it with crucial secure erase as I had nothing but issues but wasn't going to give up on it now not a sign of stuttering or hitching since with many registry tweaks adjusted to suit my pc. Seems to me there's a conflict between your operating system and the current build. To be honest with you I would turn off anything that is automatic state in the bios. I get low cpu usage but high gpu usage in pcsx2 and on pc games it balance between the two depends on settings. As I have evga gtx 1060 6gb sc that does the job for me don't see the point in upgrading till it breaks. You might to do investigation on it as something is not running right not even the fresh install would fix it either
List out all of your pc specs from top to bottom of the pc well

Drivers have a awful lot to do with the issues as well believe me I learnt the long hard way to solve my pc issue including frame limiting per apps and games due to it pushing the gpu where it wasn't running smooth and not consisting correctly. The way I see it that per build it does not behave correctly as well ssd can cause this where it not set up correctly it limits the bandwidth of data going in and out

It is a long list of possibility of trouble shooting like
Pcie signal speed
Achi needs to be configured
Changing the power plan
Is the thermal paste been replaced
Ssd degrading and firmware updated if possible
Turning off auto tuning settings in the bios
And the list goes on and on

 

[Nazo]

as well control power plan on the overall system meaning games get the high performance plan but power saving is applied to the operating system once the game exits.

Do bear in mind that AMD from Zen 2 on up doesn't really use the OS to manage the CPU very much. I think Intel will eventually figure out that they need the same design (Raptor Lake should never have been made without it -- it's a good design principle, but needs the SoC to control its utilization) and will likely do the same. I found a better balance in setting a fixed rate, but the Ryzen Master can manually handle performance closer to a per-application basis. I just like how snappy my entire system is with the constant (near) full speed since the CPU doesn't have to step through clocks to meet demand but is already there. Interestingly enough I measured and found it really doesn't use that much more power anyway (I think it ultimately comes down to the current being what truly matters and that's just going to vary with the actual CPU usage no matter what.)

Seems to me there's a conflict between your operating system and the current build.

It is not impossible, but I don't really think it's the OS itself. While I'm not a huge fan of Windows 10 (and less so of 11) it's generally pretty smooth running once you regain control over some of the crap enabled by default (like that "Xbox Gaming Bar" thing that just plain needs to go outright.) It really is mostly the same basic underlying OS as 7 and 8/8.1, just with a bit of bloat that has to be cleaned up and fought with (which is not a thing the end user should have to do, but we, as a consumer market, created this monster by refusing to put our collective foot down, so here we are.)

To be honest with you I would turn off anything that is automatic state in the bios.

Well, I think from later in your post you mean "auto tuning" by this. I never used such a thing. They do indeed do more harm than good. I even have the "ASUS performance enhancement" option turned off (I think it's mostly just PBO unlimiting, but still, I'd rather set reasonable values if I ever do decide to use it again. (It sets values like 1000 amps for current limit for example, lol. I set something just barely over the most I measured it as actually using and that way if I ever use PBO I can count on it not going terribly wrong in a runaway situation.) However, to be clear, I basically have all auto stuff off and that's a huge part of what this thread is about. I've been, one by one, eliminating individual variables by learning and controlling individual components as much as I reasonably could.

List out all of your pc specs from top to bottom of the pc well

This isn't a generic "trying to fix game hitching in general" thread. It's more specific. I already had a thread like that and could go back to it with more details if needed, but really gaming in general seem to mostly be good now. While I did have issues with one specific game I'm working in general to address, I think it may not be related to any of this anyway from what I've been able to find out since. This is more of a general process going through individual pieces of the way modern systems handle, learning how to have more individual control -- but also when and where it is necessary. (For example, I just plain don't have the patience to manually adjust every single one of the many many different memory latency numbers and it wouldn't have a noticeable result anyway, so that is on the when and where not to side.) I don't know if gear down is one such thing because I'm just not sure how to measure it really, but those who know more about how it works will likely know the answer to that.

 

[Edwired]

Right no problem