Corona benchmark with i9

V-Ray V-Ray Common Hardware
1

Hello to everyone!
I’m in desperate search for help to use Corona at its best on my new workstation, which has the following specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i9-9960X @ 3.10GHz
RAM: 64GB DDR4 @ 2666Mhz
MB: ASUS WS X299 PRO (LGA 2066 R4)
GPU: ASUS Turbo GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
SSD: Samsung 960 PRO 512GB M.2

The problems are:

  1. I’m getting VERY bad results with benchmark v1.3 (around 7 mins with less than 1 million ray/s).
  2. The PC become unusable while running the benchmark (CPU always @ 100%), when older machines allow me to work in the same scenario (CPU @ 90-98%).

I’ve already tried to update MB BIOS, re-install Windows 10 and and change SSD, RAM, GPU, but still no luck.

Any ideas would be much appreciated, thanks a lot in advance.

2

From the start check temperature of cpu while running test.
Check cpu usage and make sure what 100% load for corona test or other process?
Make sure what you install all drivers in device Manager

3

Thanks for your very quick reply, sprayer.
Here are the sceenshots of all the things you said.

Something could be strange or wrong, in your opinion?

CPU temp.jpg
CPU temp.jpg1280×1024 357 KB

CPU usage.jpg
CPU usage.jpg1280×1024 310 KB

Device manager.jpg
Device manager.jpg1280×1024 77.9 KB

4

Looks all fine.
Check CPU frequency during test maybe it has wrong values.
Did you try to reset BIOS?
Also you may try other benchmarks like cinebench and games.

5

Does it happen with any other apps that put the CPU under load? Lots of things out there that will do that to test stability. Just thinking aloud, any issues with the PSU?

6

Ok, I’ve found the solution and obviously it was a bulls***.

I went on Asus’ website looking for a BIOS update and I discovered that my BIOS version (1001) wasn’t available anymore for download (last one was 0905). So I searched on Google another download link for version 1001, and I found this post on ROG Asus forum: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?111420-WS-X299-Sage-10G-Memory-issue-with-BIOS-1001

The guy basically had my same problem, so I performed a BIOS flashback via USB to version 0905 and the magic happened: Corona benchmark now runs in about 1min at more than 8millions ray/s, just as it should be. LOL.

Thanks to all of you for your support and your suggestions, I just hope that my experience could help someone else in the future.

7

Classic bios shanenigans of niche boards (Asus WS series) on niche platforms (x299/x399), always suck : /. The manufacturers just don’t care.

Sometimes it’s good to check overclockers.co.uk or how is the URL, there are user groups where people offer custom bios so they can fix your issues faster.