We tested AGESA 1202 105W TDP mode on the 9600X
The update has come in the form of a BETA BIOS from ASUS, this seems to be the first release of the update.
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ASUS is the first to release a set of BETA BIOS’ that featured the AGESA 1202 update, the final stable update for the 105W TDP mode for 9600X and 9700X processors. We decided to test it out, to see if it really made a difference.
ASUS recently released a set of BETA BIOS‘ that includes the last stable update to the 105W TDP mode for the 9600X and 9700X. While it is important to note that these BIOS’ are still in BETA, the AGESA update that they contain is reportedly stable, says VideoCardz, and is supposedly the last update to the 105W TDP modes for the bottom-end 9000 series processors.
AMD chose to up the TDP of its bottom two chips after facing community backlash for the underwhelming performance. The main culprit of these issues was Windows, but those issues seem to have been addressed with update 23H2, which is the Windows version we are using.
Increasing the TDP essentially increases the CPU’s ceiling, allowing it to consume more power to get the job done. This setting is optional, you do not have to enable this setting if you’re conscious about power draw.
As we mentioned in a separate piece, The BETA BIOS’ are available to download on the ASUS forums, but they are not yet available to download through Motherboard BIOS pages.
AGESA 1202 test results in Cinebench R23
Here are the results of our testing with the 105W TDP update. (These tests were performed on Windows version 23H3)
| Result | 9600X (65W) | 9600X (105W) |
|---|---|---|
| CB Multi | 15,697 Score | 16,561 Score |
| CB Multi Package power | 88.023W | 136.628W |
| CB single | 2,134 Score | 2,151Score |
| CB single Package Power | 86.102W | 68.005W |
| GB Multi | 14,909 Score | 14,928Score |
| GB Multi Package power | 86.256W | 122.008W |
| GB Single | 3,260 Score | 3,267 Score |
We had to exclude the Package power metric from the GB single as the test is conducted simultaneously and there’s no way to differentiate between the two.
Cinebench saw the best gains, we got roughly a 900-point increase that is far outside the margin of error, single core did see a little bump as well with a 17-point increase. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but as you can see with the Munti-core results, it adds up.
Geekbench is a much wider array of benchmarking, it tests basically every function of a CPU and this includes areas where a simple TDP increase won’t be enough to improve the benchmarking performance. That’s why we see a much more modest improvement of 11 points in the Multi-core scores. A push in the right direction nonetheless.
As you can see there is a tangible increase in performance over the base 9600X, Package power is the amount of power used by the entire CPU package, not just the CPU itself for processing. We included this metric to make sure the CPU is indeed allowed to use up to 105W and to be able to see the performance per watt of each ‘mode’.
Conclusion
All in all, the CB multi scores equate to a 5.50424% performance bump, for a power increase of 55% but this is package power though, it encompasses all of the power that a CPU uses, and some values will not change because they won’t be directly attributed to components that improve performance. This increase will likely be more predominant when gaming thanks to the single-core bump.
Because this is a BETA BIOS, we recommend you wait for a stable release until you update. Whilst the AGESA update is stable, other lesser-tested portions of the BIOS may not work as intended. Only update to BETA BIOS’ if you must.
