ASRock has released a new BIOS update for its 600/700-series motherboards, offering up to a 10% performance uplift for Intel 14th Gen CPUs.
ASRock's Gift For Chinese New Year Is A Performance-Boosting BIOS For Its 600 & 700 Series Motherboards, Delivering Up To 10% Gains On Intel 14th Gen CPUs
Intel's 14th Gen Non-K CPUs were released earlier this year and targeted both high-end & budget consumers. These chips have TDPs set to 65W at their base power limit and hence feature lower performance than the fully unlocked "K" chips which run at higher TDPs in an unconstrained CPU package.
Today, ASRock has announced that it will be releasing a new BIOS update across its 700 and 600 series motherboards which offers a nice boost to 14th Gen CPUs from Intel. This new BIOS benefits from the latest microcode and there's also a certain feature that further enhances the performance of these chips.
We will get to the feature and its performance benefit in a bit but before that, the following are all of the Z790 motherboards which are now available with the latest BIOS while additional 700 & 600 series motherboards will be updated shortly:
| Model | BIOS Version |
| Z790 Taichi | 12.03 |
| Z790 Taichi Carrara | 12.03 |
| Z790 Taichi Lite | 5.03 |
| Z790 Nova WiFi | 4.05 |
| Z790 Riptide WiFi | 6.05 |
| Z790 Lightning WiFi | 4.04 |
| Z790 PG Lightning | 11.03 |
| Z790 PG Lightning/D4 | 11.04 |
| Z790 PG Riptide | 12.05 |
| Z790 Steel Legend WiFi | 13.03 |
| Z790 LiveMixer | 14.02 |
| Z790 PG SONIC | 11.05 |
| Z790 Pro RS | 11.03 |
| Z790 P roRS WiFi | 9.03 |
| Z790 Pro RS/D4 | 10.03 |
| Z790M PG Lightning/D4 | 10.03 |
| Z790M-ITX WiFi | 11.05 |
| Z790-PG-ITX/TB4 | 11.03 |
So coming back to the performance uplifts, the Intel Microcode update offers up to a +10% uplift for 14th Gen CPUs and then there's the new option to disable CEP (CurrentExcursion Power). This is where the new performance boost is coming from and is enabled in the latest microcode. The CEP feature can be disabled on both Intel Z790/Z690 & B760/B660 motherboards and the results look very promising as we have stated in the table below:
Intel 14th Gen CPU Performance Boost With New Microcode:
| CPU Name | CEP Enabled | CEP Disabled | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core i9-14900 | 38607 | 40123 | 3.93% |
| Core i7-14700 | 32192 | 35431 | 10.06% |
| Core i5-14600 | 21436 | 22540 | 5.15% |
| Core i5-14500 | 19806 | 21823 | 10.18% |
| Core i5-14400 | 16494 | 16570 | 0.46% |
| Core i5-14100 | 9223 | 9322 | 1.07% |
With CEP disabled, the Intel 14th Gen CPUs can benefit from higher performance since they are no longer limited by their current excursion power limits and you can see that certain chips such as the Core i7-14700 offer a +10% boost. This is great for budget users who want better tuning and performance options on mainstream B760/B660 motherboards which are the more popular board choices on the market.
