Thursday, March 17th 2022
AMD's Robert Hallock Confirms Lack of Manual CPU Overclocking for Ryzen 7 5800X3D
In a livestream talking about AMD's mobile CPUs with HotHardware, Robert Hallock shone some light on the rumours about the Ryzen 7 5800X3D lacking manual overclocking. As per earlier rumours, something TechPowerUp! confirmed with our own sources, AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D lacks support for manual CPU overclocking and AMD asked its motherboard partners to remove these features in the UEFI. According to the livestream, these CPUs are said to be hard locked, so there's no workaround when it comes to adjusting the CPU multiplier or Voltage, but at least AMD has a good reason for it.
It turns out that the 3D V-Cache is Voltage limited to a maximum of 1.3 to 1.35 Volts, which means that the regular boost Voltage of individual Ryzen CPU cores, which can hit 1.45 to 1.5 Volts, would be too high for the 3D V-Cache to handle. As such, AMD implemented the restrictions for this CPU. However, the Infinity Fabric and memory bus can still be manually overclocked. The lower Voltage boost also helps explain why the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has lower boost clocks, as it's possible that the higher Voltages are needed to hit the higher frequencies.
That said, Robert Hallock made a point of mentioning that overclocking is a priority for AMD and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a one off when it comes to these limitations. The reason behind this is that AMD is limited by the manufacturing technology available to the company today, but it wanted to release the technology to consumers now, rather than wait until the next generation of CPUs. In other words, this is not a change in AMD's business model, as future CPUs from AMD will include overclocking.
Hallock also explained why AMD didn't go with more cores for its first 3D V-Cache CPU and it has to do with the fact that most workloads outside of gaming don't reap much of a benefit. This is large due to how different applications use cache memory and when it comes to games, a lot of the data is being reused, which is a perfect scenario for a large cache, whereas something like video editing software, can't take advantage of a large cache in the same way. This means that AMD's secret to boosting the performance in games is that more game data ends up sitting closer to the CPU, which results in a 12 ns latency for the CPU to retrieve that data from the L3 cache, compared to 60-80 ns when the data has to be fetched from RAM. Add to this the higher bandwidth of the cache and it makes sense how the extra cache helps boost the performance in games.
For more details, please see video below. The interesting part starts around the 45:30 mark.
It turns out that the 3D V-Cache is Voltage limited to a maximum of 1.3 to 1.35 Volts, which means that the regular boost Voltage of individual Ryzen CPU cores, which can hit 1.45 to 1.5 Volts, would be too high for the 3D V-Cache to handle. As such, AMD implemented the restrictions for this CPU. However, the Infinity Fabric and memory bus can still be manually overclocked. The lower Voltage boost also helps explain why the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has lower boost clocks, as it's possible that the higher Voltages are needed to hit the higher frequencies.
Hallock also explained why AMD didn't go with more cores for its first 3D V-Cache CPU and it has to do with the fact that most workloads outside of gaming don't reap much of a benefit. This is large due to how different applications use cache memory and when it comes to games, a lot of the data is being reused, which is a perfect scenario for a large cache, whereas something like video editing software, can't take advantage of a large cache in the same way. This means that AMD's secret to boosting the performance in games is that more game data ends up sitting closer to the CPU, which results in a 12 ns latency for the CPU to retrieve that data from the L3 cache, compared to 60-80 ns when the data has to be fetched from RAM. Add to this the higher bandwidth of the cache and it makes sense how the extra cache helps boost the performance in games.
For more details, please see video below. The interesting part starts around the 45:30 mark.
222 Comments on AMD's Robert Hallock Confirms Lack of Manual CPU Overclocking for Ryzen 7 5800X3D
On one hand you have:
OMG! AMD! How dare you limit voltages and OC capabilities on your new CPU! We can't manually adjust settings! Your product is bad and you should feel bad! You suck like Intel and Nvidia!
On the other hand if limits weren't in place and bad things happened:
OMG! AMD! How dare you not limit the voltage and OC capabilities on your new CPU! CPUs are dying! Your product is bad and you should feel bad!
Looks like AMD is just f'ing things up, no matter what choice they make. Not sure if I feel bad for AMD or the people that just have to complain about the situation one way or another.
I simply do not see any fantastic upswings in performance in the near future. The days of getting great performance for the average diy'er is long gone. My Rig will be fine for 2 to 3 years from now because of its fantastic price + performance + value I got on this setup.
The last desktop CPU I bought was a 2600K, the one before that was an Opteron 146. I don't see the point in sticking with one brand only as they both go south once in a while, or for years in worst case.
You know if you accepted Intel CPU's as an option you'd find it easier to process the news of less desirable AMD CPU's.Sure, but that's off topic here. When I asked if they're greedy, I was talking about the topic in this thread, not old news.Well then what's the point? AMD would get so bashed, and rightly so, for falsely claiming that it's overclockable yet wouldn't allow raising the voltage. Now that would have been misleading.
See post #103. :D
I still think the it should be called 58003D tho, as it's not higher clocked than the 5800.That doesn't make sense. This quote of yours is spreading fear, and it's based on all speculations and no facts, ie baseless:
"It's a slippery slope. Its one CPU, or its just the low end, oh its just the ryzen 7 and lower, its not like you can do much, ece ece."
SO ok AMD, SO ITS NOT an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D its SHOULD BEEN CALLED RYZEN "5800 GIMPED EDITION" or 58003D cache NO OC NOT AN X MODEL TEHN Y FREEKING AHOLES... NOT BUYING ONE NOW EVER, NOT BUYING ZEN4 / AM5 EITHER, so
IM GOING INTEL. AMD, IM DONE WITH UR BS.
zen3 wsa never worth the 300+ that they were, i wish I NEVER BOUGHT ANY OF YOUR BS RYZNE CPUS NOW IM SELLING EVERY MTHE FREEPHUCJING AMD CRAP I HAVE IM DONE, IM DOEN WITH AMD.
Strange how you chose to ignore what's literally the most obvious option.
At the end of the day, though, AMD is just shooting themselves in the foot with this Franken-CPU. Because someone will release a BIOS that "accidentally" removes the limit (or maybe AMD will do it themselves by fucking up AGESA, it's a coin toss), and idiots will flash that BIOS and burn their shiny new 5800X3Ds, and they'll moan and whine and complain about it on social media, and regardless of the fact that those users were the stupid ones, AMD's reputation will suffer.
It's amazing, Intel releases a line of CPUs that's actually competitive again and AMD immediately goes full retard and dreams up a product that nobody asked for and will do them harm over the long run, when what they actually should've done was just fucking lower their prices. But they've been riding the gravy train for so long that they've become greedier than Intel, something I thought impossible.
Boy the ragers in here are just stupid...
very well, if you go by extremely rough (no GPU for easy 1:1 :^))) comparisons of very juiced configs for both :- )
Not well enough that I'd rate it worth your while to bruteforce (yes, that is Reboot, Enter voltage, Test, Reboot ... Compare, Pick Best Performers, Test, Reboot, Enter voltage ...) a working SOC, IOD and CCD voltage.
As without those, you're gonna have a lot more stutters than if you do.
It's especially hard to recommend with pretty sweet deals on 12700k's being suspiciously frequent.
Though if you're sitting on a Ryzen 1600x or 2600 - then it's probably a sweet processor.
no deal breaker here for me ... i do not look at manual OC since quite a while ... my last "OC for fun" were a E8500, a i7-920 and the only one that yielded substantial advantage in addition of being fun was a DIP switched Athlon 650 (slot A Pluto core) that pushed nicely to 800mhz
my 3600 is stock and plenty in most task and games i usually do/play ... and given that i can find a 5600X for between 199chf and 230chf atm, i might rather go for that one later instead (will depend on the pricing and since MSRP is dead, i do not really trust press release prices reveal (PRPR? sounds nice ... try it))
i prefer when they announce OC locked rather than F' it up later with a botched microcode update, my 6600k never recovered from it ... did feel almost like a rental OC
although when it was OC'ing ... hardly going above 4.1ghz .... and for a 3.9ghz boost CPU it's a crying shame ... i guess only reviewer get "cherry picked" units to make brands look good ... pfeh!
At least I see it that way. Things will improve in time as people always claim it has to mature. Let it mature.
Besides, how much of a difference does a X3D do if you have a 3070 or slower? People seem to forget from time to time that CPU gaming benchmarks are usually done with one of the fastest cards available.
The 12 series is hard to ignore if you don't have an AM4 board.