Earlier we reported that Intel is investigating the stability of 13th/14th Gen Core processors in games. And last Friday, ASUS launched a new version of BIOS for its Z790 series motherboards, introducing an option called "Intel Baseline Profile", which is a temporary solution to this problem. After all, Intel has not yet responded to this matter.
As the name suggests, this option will adjust the corresponding voltage, power consumption, etc. settings to Intel's recommended level, and some limits will be turned on to ensure stable operation of the processor. At the cost of reduced performance. But how much will it go down? That's what we're going to talk about today.
Because players report that stability problems generally appear on the flagship models of the 13th/14th generation Core, so this time we will directly test the two top models, the Core i9-14900KS and the Core i9-13900KS. The motherboard is the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO BTF. The BIOS used was version 1202, which was updated on Friday, April 19th.
Actually, this Intel Baseline Profile is not a completely new thing, it just gives you some of the options that the BIOS already has for you to set up in a unified way, just like XMP. As you can see, when enabled, it adjusts the options of ASUS MultiCore Enhancement, SVID Behavior, IA/SA CEP, and IA TDC Current Limit: for the sake of stability, their parameters are set to be conservative.
Note: This was taken on a blowing snow motherboard, as is the case with other ASUS Z790 motherboards
Benchmarking
基准测试这块包括CINEBENCH R23、3DMark和Blender Benchmark这些大家耳熟能详的CPU测试应用,这里就不详细介绍了。 用于对比的"解限"设置则是指ASUS MultiCore Enhancement中的Remove All Limits。
As can be seen from the tests of CINEBENCH R23 and POV-Ray, Intel Baseline Profile basically does not have any impact on single-core performance, but multi-core performance is different: after turning on Intel Baseline Profile, the Core i9-14900KS score dropped by 14.5% in the maximum thread test of 3DMark CPU Profile, which is in CINEBENCH This is a 10% drop in the R23 and Corona 10 benchmarks, as well as most multicore tests.
Looking at the Core i9-13900KS, its score drop is even a little bigger than that of the 14th generation. Places like Corona 10 and V-RAY are 2-3% higher than the 14th generation. However, the 3DMark CPU Profile is about 14%.
Comparing the scores of the two generations of Core i9 with Intel Baseline Profile enabled, you will find that there is still a difference between the two of them, and it is larger than the time limit is solved, so although this configuration is conservative, it will not really cut the two processors to the point that everyone is equal.
Power consumption test
It can be seen that after the Intel Baseline Profile is enabled, the power consumption and temperature of the two processors have been controlled to a certain extent. Among them, the average power consumption of the Core i9-13900KS is about 210W, while the Core i9-14900KS is 5W higher than it, around 215W. The temperature is similar, all below 75 degrees.
Gaming testing
There may be a lot of concern that Intel Baseline Profile will sacrifice performance as well, but that's not the case — at least not in terms of gameplay frame rate. Because most games don't push all the cores of the processor to the limit when playing, it's possible to get the CPU full when loading. Here's a recap of previous reports, NVIDIA's announcement in GeForce Game Ready 552.12 is as follows:
"If your system is using an Intel 13th/14th Gen unlocked desktop CPU and you're experiencing stability issues/low video memory error messages/crashes to your desktop while compiling shaders for your game, please visit the following website for troubleshooting help..."
That alone can be unconvincing, and we also use the Core i9-13900KS to demonstrate that. You can see that under different settings, there is almost no difference in the frame rate of the game, and the difference is within 1%. However, given the impact of the Intel Baseline Profile on multi-core performance, gamers who enable the profile may experience longer shader compilation times when the game is first launched after a graphics card change/graphics driver update/major game update.
summary
The new profile brought by the BIOS will undoubtedly reduce the multi-core performance of the 13th/14th generation flagship CPUs, but it should have different effects on different users: if you need to use the CPU for rendering or compilation, then the Intel Baseline Profile will really make your wait longer from CINEBENCH This conclusion can be drawn from renderer-based tests such as R23, and for gamers, the impact is not too big, anyway, the frame rate when playing is not much changed, and when it comes to shader compilation time, the behavior that generally triggers shader compilation occurs very infrequently - Unless you're playing with a different graphics card every day, or if you delete the shader cache every day before starting the game, you shouldn't see the shader compilation progress bar two or three times a month (and that's when you take into account graphics drivers and game updates).
Of course, we are not suggesting that you must turn on or off the Intel Baseline Profile here, and this quick test can only be regarded as a display of data at most. After all, the Intel Baseline Profile is really set to be stable, rather than finding a balance between stability and performance. This option shouldn't be the best option for gamers who have been on the battlefield for a long time and have a lot of experience with CPU tuning, but if you're already experiencing instability and don't really want to dig into it, you can also consider using this ASUS solution before Intel gives a final answer.