Gigabyte has released its "Intel Baseline" BIOS option for Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPUs to improve gaming stability but it leads to severe performance degradation.
Gigabyte Also Offers an "Intel Baseline" BIOS Option On Its Motherboards Which Improves Gaming Stability On Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPUs But Leads To Severe Performance Degradation
Gigabyte has announced that its Z790 & B760 chipset motherboards now support a new Turbo Power Limit option which sets the CPU to the Intel recommended "BaseLine" profile. Rather than users manually tuning their chips to achieve gaming and overall CPU stability, this option can be enabled to set all values to their default targets, unlike the over-spec defaults that motherboards have been using for Intel's 13th and 14th Gen CPUs.
The "Intel BaseLine" BIOS option can be found within the Tweaker menu under the "Advanced CPU Settings" tab on Gigabyte's Z790 & B760 motherboards. You have to go to the "Turbo Power Limits" tab to select this option.
In addition to the Intel BaseLine option, Gigabyte motherboards also offer a "PerfDrive" option for enhanced performance but enabling the Baseline option will gray out this option and users will have to be disabled to gain access to the other option, that is if users want to sacrifice CPU stability for better performance.
However, enabling the Intel "BaseLine" BIOS option for Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPUs comes at a cost, especially on the high-end chips such as the Core i9 series (Intel Core i9-14900KS, 14900KF, 14900K, 13900KS, 13900KF, 13900K).
In testing conducted by Uniko's Hardware, it looks like Gigabyte takes a very aggressive approach when following Intel's official baseline spec for the Core i9 series. The power limits are reduced to 125W (Long Duration), 188W (Short Duration), 249A (1.7m Ohm ADDC Load-Line). So the difference is (Long/Short/IccMax):
- Gigabyte AUTO Profile: 4096W/4096W/Unlimited
- Intel Extreme Config (150W): 320W320W/400A
- Intel Extreme Config (125W): 253W/253W/400A
- Intel Standard Config (150W): 253W/253W/307A
- Intel Standard Config (125W): 125W/253W/307A
- Gigabyte BaseLine Profile: 125W/188W/249A
So what's the performance impact like when running the "Intel BaseLine" default BIOS settings on a 14th and 13th Gen CPU? Well it's quite hefty, in multi-threaded workloads, the Intel Core i9-13900KF was tested and it saw a drop of almost -30% from the "Auto" settings to the "BaseLine" settings:
- Core i9-13900KF (Gigabyte Auto): 40,021 (100%)
- Core i9-13900KF (Gigabyte Base): 28811 (71.9%)
This performance degradation turns the Intel Core i9 CPU into a Core i7 chip. The Core i7-13700K offers slightly better performance when running at default mode so you can see just how hard Intel and its partners have to push 14th & 13th Gen CPUs to achieve the required CPU performance which makes them competitive against the AMD Ryzen offerings. The same losses can also be seen in the gaming benchmarks with up to -10% drops.
Intel Core i9-13900KF "BaseLine vs Auto" CPU Performance In Cyberpunk 2077 (Image Source: Uniko's Hardware):
Core i9-13900KF "BaseLine vs Auto" CPU Performance In Red Dead Redemption 2 (Image Source: Uniko's Hardware):
Core i9-13900KF "BaseLine vs Auto" CPU Performance In Shadow of The Tomb Raider (Image Source: Uniko's Hardware):
Now it is advised by the tech outlet to manually tune the chip to ensure better stability however, the games tested here aren't prone to "Out of Video Memory" issues so we can't say for sure if other power limits will eliminate the issue. ASUS also saw a -15% performance drop with its Intel BaseLine default BIOS option which is designed to offer better gaming stability while MSI has a guide for its motherboards, telling users how to manually tweak the settings to achieve the same results.
As of right now, Intel's 14th & 13th Gen CPU issues are mounting by the day with severe stability problems outside of gaming. Users running these chips are facing random BSOD's, sometimes failing to enter their operating system and sometimes just failing to open non-gaming apps.
Intel has yet to officially release a statement outside of the "We're looking into the issue" but board vendors such as ASUS, MSI & Gigabyte are offering solutions to mitigate these problems until a proper one is discovered which we doubt will ever happen since the silicon has already been pushed too hard and the only way to keep it in check is to reduce the power limits which will lead to performance losses and Intel might further lose its performance crown against AMD's Ryzen offerings.
News Source: Uniko's Hardware
