PC Processors

[pxabstraction]

Hey everyone. This post is going to be quite long, but I have spent I don't know how many hours trying to figure this out and I think context is important for it to make sense. I've also been building my own PCs since the DOS era and have never seen something this strange.

To start, here's my current hardware:

• Ryzen 5800X (system started with a 3700X)
• ASUS ROG Strix X570-F Gaming (latest BIOS)
• Corsair H150i Pro 360mm AIO
• 32GB (2x 16GB) Corsair PC-3200 DDR4, running in XMP
• 2x WD SN850x NVME SSDs
• Sapphire Radeon 9070 XT Nitro+ (was previously a Gigabyte 3080, important in story)
• Windows 11 Pro 24H2
• 3 1440p displays, one OLED (360Hz), two LED (144Hz)
• Seasonic 1000W PSU (was a Corsair 750W before new GPU)
• No overclock or undervolt applied to anything

The core issue:

In several games, particularly Spare Marine II and Helldivers II but also others like Cyberpunk 2077, I'm getting poor performance, well below what I should be getting with specs like these. Using those two games as examples, I'm talking near constantly running below 60fps at 1440p, no matter how low or high the settings are. Literally seems to make no difference. Even on my old 3080, things weren't right and since upgrading to a 9070 XT, they literally don't run any better. A number of games I play do run quite well, but when I compare my frame rates to benchmarks I see online, it's clear they're running worse than they should be and that the GPU doesn't seem to be the issue.

What I also noticed was odd is that even though the games listed above are known to be very CPU intensive, my 5800X rarely shows as running at 100% utilization when these games are struggling and I have friends who play them on worse CPUs without issue. It's also not throttling and is holding boost for long periods. Stranger still, if I say, run a CPU stress test or try to render a video in Davinci Resolve, it shows that the CPU can indeed run at 100% load for sustained periods.

The thing that really throws my noggin off though is that my CPU-Z benchmark scores are way off the average (566 vs. 639 average for single core and 5839 vs. 6400 for all core).

What I've tried:

• Full uninstall and reinstall of the AMD chipset drivers (using HiBit Uninstaller) and multiple DDU and reinstalls of both NVIDIA drivers for my old card and AMD drivers for my new one
• Closing as many background processes as possible when playing
• Doing the same, while also disabling as many startup applications as possible
• Fully resetting BIOS settings
• Disabling PBO
• Undervolting CPU via PBO
• Fully repasting CPU with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut
• Ensuring temperatures are running well within spec
• Disabling (disconnecting) non-primary displays

You'll notice that I don't have a full reload of Windows in that list. I am running a Windows install that's fairly old, but I work, play and create on this PC and reloading Windows from scratch and reconfiguring everything I use will be a multi-day endeavour for me. And as someone who works in IT and has been using Windows since v3.0, this really doesn't smell like a general OS or software problem to me. I could be wrong and if people can make a compelling case for a reload, I will do it, I just really don't want to and find out all the effort was for nothing.

In addition, this could be coincidence or not, but this is the 3rd CPU this machine has had due to the first two failing. The original 3700X and the first 5800X both had their memory controllers go bad well over a year apart, to where the system was blue screening multiple times a day. In both cases, AMD replaced the chips under warranty and the current one has been in use for I want to say two years without issue. However, I do wonder if there's...something going on with the machine that could be causing both the poor performance and slow destruction of the CPUs themselves.

I'm really at my wits end here as I've tried just about everything and can't nail down why this CPU just doesn't seem to be performing the way it should. Needless to say, that it's crimping the performence of my brand new 9070 XT is extra frustrating. I'm planning to build a new machine eventually, but it's not in the budget for a while and I'd like to figure out what's wrong with this one first as I hope to sell it when I build a new one.

Does anyone out there potentially have any ideas or has maybe seen this before? At this point, I'm willing to try just about anything, no matter how whacky. Like I said, I will commit the time to do a full reload if necessary, I'd just really like more certainty that will fix the issue first.

I appreciate any thoughts anyone has on the matter. Cheers everyone!