Principled Technologies Responds to Misleading Benchmark Claims – Will Retest AMD CPUs

Principles Technologies Responds to Misleading Benchmark Claims - Will Retest AMD CPUs

Principled Technologies Responds to Misleading Benchmark Claims

Over the past two days, Principled Technologies’ report on the gaming performance of Intel i9-9900K has been critiqued extensively by the gaming press, particularly when it comes to the testing methodology of the company.  

The most notable oddity with Principled Technologies’ report was the company’s use of “Game Mode” on AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X processor, an option which halves the processor’s core/thread count form 8/16 to 4/8, limiting the CPU’s performance in games where multi-threading is an important factor. Such a decision is somewhat unbecoming for a company that claims that their “technical knowledge is beyond reproach”. 

This oddity, as well as several other factors, are discussed in the company’s official response, which is available to read here. This addresses concerns regarding unequal CPU cooler usage, memory configuration settings and the company’s chosen in-game settings. 

Principled Technologies denies allegations that their work is dishonest, but has pledged to conduct additional testing with AMD’s processors outside of Ryzen Master’s “Game Mode” and update their report to include these results. In the meantime, Principled Technologies has released an interim report which addresses some of the “copy/paste error” in their initial report.    

It is also clarified that the company’s Threadripper testing was conducted using Noctua’s TR4-exclusive NH-U14S TR4-SP3 cooler,  a heavily modified NH-U14S cooler, the heatsink used in all of Principled Technologies’ other testing, aside from AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X, which was conducted on AMD’s stock cooler, the Wraith Prism.  
 
Strangely, Principled Technologies’ interim report and response letter contain a noteworthy conflict, with both listing different DRAM setup instructions for AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X processor when used with ASUS’ X470 PRO motherboard. One ensures that D.C.O.P timings are correctly configured, while the other uses slacker default memory timings. Principled Technologies needs to clarify which set of data is correct and make a note of their mistake in their incorrect documentation.

Interim Report (Link)

Setting up the ASUS PRIME X470 PRO BIOS

1. Update the BIOS to 4024.
2. Load Optimized BIOS defaults.
3. Select Advanced mode – AI Tweaker – Memory Frequency – Set to DDR4-2933MHz.
4. Select Advanced mode – AI Tweaker – Performance Bias – None

Response PDF (Link)

Setting up the ASUS PRIME X470 PRO BIOS

1. Load Optimized BIOS defaults.
2. Verify that D.O.C.P is selected for AMD-equivalent memory settings to XMP
3. DRAM Frequency set to DDR4-2933
4. Set performance bias to None
5. Install Ryzen Master Utility

Principles Technologies Responds to Misleading Benchmark Claims - Will Retest AMD CPUs  

At this time, Principled Technologies has not released a timeframe for their updated report. 

You can join the discussion on Principled Technologies’ response to misleading benchmark claims on the OC3D Forums.Â