Resolved Imac i9 poor Geekbench score...what are your scores? Solved!

[davidm5]

I just picked up a new 27" Imac with the 3.6ghz 8 core i9 and 1tb SSD with the Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB.
I added 2 X 16 gb Ram from OWC for a total of 40Gb ram.

My Geekbench score of 6400-6900 is quite low compared to what others are getting at the 8200+ range for the multicore score.
My single core score is 1200-1320 which is within the range of what others are getting.

Do I have a defective machine?
Should I return it while I still can and try another one?

 

[azentropy]

I've found my scores really vary. Might still be some background tasks slowing the scores down a bit.

 

[tlaw81]

How long did you have it set up? Could it be that the background process is to set up the machine are still going? Like syncing emails iCloud settings etc.?

 

[davidm5]

@tlaw81 It was done over quite some time including rebooting and swapping out the ram to see if it was a ram issue. I have the 2 original 4gb Apple sticks plus 2 X 16gb OWC sticks. Results are pretty much the same. Even tried running the test with the Imac on 'safe' mode. I am going to try it again to see if the ram position makes a difference.

 

[davidm5]

Solved! It was the ram slot position!
On an hunch, I decided to try swapping the positions of the ram sticks and the Geekbench score went from mid 6000s to almost 8000!

Didn't think the ram position would have made such a difference.

 

[rstsauveur]

Solved! It was the ram slot position!
On an hunch, I decided to try swapping the positions of the ram sticks and the Geekbench score went from mid 6000s to almost 8000!

Didn't think the ram position would have made such a difference.

What position did you change to?

 

[davidm5]

I changed the ram position from:

to this:

Being dual channel memory, the DIMMs have to be on both channels A & B.
This is for my situation because I am using the 2 original 4GB Apple RAM and 2 OWC 16GB RAM. If you are using 4 identical RAM, then it probably will not matter.

 

[priitv8]

I changed the ram position from:
View attachment 889584

How did you manage to start from this layout? When I upgraded mine, it came from factory with interleaved DIMMs and I had to insert my modules into slots 2 & 4.

 

[davidm5]

That's a good question...LOL.
During the install, I pulled out the existing RAM and then put them all back, I guess not in the optimal position originally. It's all good now. Lesson learned.