Performance Test on an old high-end PC - Very low 2D and RAM scores.

[PJSocks]

I've been contending with noticeably poor Windows interaction speeds for years and I've spent a lot of money sending my computer to be tested and tried to update everything. I've also read the FAQ and so many other posts on this forum. None of the suggestions have worked for me unfortunately. I'm so close to packing it all in and using my savings to buy a new computer but I'm really hoping someone will be able to help me before I have to do that!

My test scores are below:




My spec is below:
ASUS ROG ZENITH EXTREME Alpha motherboard Socket TR4 E-ATX AMD X399
AMD Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core Processor 3.00 GHz
8 x 16GB Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 3600MHz CL18 AMD Ryzen Computer Memory
2 x RTX 3090 EVGA FTW3 Ultra gaming 24GB
Samsung 980 PRO SSD with Heatsink 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2
WD_BLACK SN850X 4TB NVMe M.2 SSD, M.2 2280 NVMe SSD
500GB Samsung EVO 2.5"SSD
2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA-III 3.5" HDD
Corsair AX1600i Digital 80 PLUS TITANIUM Full Modular ATX Power Supply Unit - Black
Fractal Design Torrent Case
Corsair iCue H150i RGB Pro AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
Windows 11

Since getting awful performances on my PC compared to a friend's who had a very similar spec apart from less RAM and only one GPU, I have tried everything to fix the low RAM and 2D scores.

I have:

• Replaced the motherboard
• Increased the ram to 128GB
• Increased the ram speed from 3200 to 3600 (although my computer can't seem to handle speeds over 2666 without failing to load up)
• Tried overclocking in various different ways
• Upgraded my C drive from a 2TB SSD to a 2TB M2 Nvme
• Started with a fresh Windows install
• Upgraded my drive from a 2TB Nvme to a 4TB Nvme
• Upgraded the PSU
• Upgraded the AIO cooler
• Ensured all drivers are up to date including the BIOS, Windows and Graphics driver
• Checked if I have GSync or any alternative turned on in my graphics driver and on my monitor. It was not visible on my driver so I installed Nvidia Profile Inspector and turned it off there. My monitor is not compatible so doesn't have an option to turn off any kind of sync or hardware acceleration.
• Turned off Spectre and Meltdown
• Checked if my CPU has in internal graphics card that I need to turn off. It doesn't

I'd really appreciate anyone's advice and I'm willing to try any other suggestions if anyone has one.

Many thanks for your time!

[David (PassMark)]

PassMark rating 76% percentile. This isn't awful for a 5 year old machine.

CPUMark was 90% percentile. Also not awful. Average CPUMark was 32,090 for this CPU. You are getting 34,385. So well above the average for your hardware.
This is the opposite of awful.

Disk and 3D performance are also pretty good.

But lets talk about the RAM:
The highest officially supported memory speed is DDR4 at 2933 MT/s. This is just the way that CPU was designed. The world has moved on to DDR5 however. New CPUs are hitting 7000MT/s now with DDR5. So 2933 is always going to look bad compared to new machines. And if you can only get to 2666, then this is going to hurt a bit as well. Also this CPU was special. AMD Threadripper 2990WX has chiplets with NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) problems because it has a unique quad-die configuration where only two of the four dies have direct access to memory channels, while the other two must access memory via the other dies. This creates performance issues in applications that are not NUMA-aware (which is 99.9% of applications), particularly in certain Windows workloads, as threads on the memory-less dies experience higher latency. Again this is just the way that CPU was designed, nothing you can do to fix this.

These Threadripper CPUs were always a trade off. They only make sense for some specific work loads. Single thread performance is pretty ordinary. In many cases a 2 core or 4 core machine would be faster. Even an iPhone is around x3 faster. This impacts the 2D performance.

But still I agree 2D performance does seem a bit lower than expected. Not sure of the cause. Might be worth removing one of the 3090s as an experiment. There is very little use of having two of them.

[PJSocks]

Hi David,

Thanks so much for getting back to me with this very useful information. I forgot to add that I'd tested the GPU's separately too. I've just tested again and either alone do not improve the 2D score, unfortunately. I guess I'll have to look into upgrading my CPU to a newer Threadripper, because the Windows response time and 2D programs like Illustrator and Photoshop are almost unusable at times. I feel like I'm out of options.

Thank you so much for taking the time to get back to me. I really appreciate it.

[David (PassMark)]

If you were local (Sydney, Australia) I would suggest to bring the machine into the office. As we would like to get to the bottom of some of these 2D performance issues. As some are a mystery to us as well.

You might find the RAM can be faster if you have less RAM. It might allow higher clock speeds. Some of these memory controllers were (electrically) a bit weak and had problems driving lots of RAM sticks quickly.

You don't really need a Threadripper for Photoshop. The extra cores are, generally speaking, wasted.
Something like a Ryzen 7 9700X. might be better value.

[PJSocks]

Hi David,

Thank you so much for the very kind offer, but unfortunately, I'm in the UK. I have resigned myself to buying a new CPU and hoping this fixes all my lag and issues.

I have tried testing with less RAM but the RAM scores don't seem to change. I've also run memory diagnostics on each stick to make sure there aren't any duds.

Just FYI, I use my computer mostly for After Effects, Cinema 4D, Redshift and Octane. My comment about Photoshop and Illustrator was just that these are shockingly slow with my computer in its current state. After Effects is also horribly slow, and I assume this is also show by the low 2D performance score.

No matter. I will update with new scores once I've installed the new CPU, motherboard and RAM.

Thank you!