Monday, October 17th 2022
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Posts Significantly Higher Gaming Performance with a CCD Disabled
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor exhibits some strange behavior with regards to the max boost frequency spread among its cores. A multi-chip module with two 8-core CCDs (CPU complex dies); we noticed early on in our review that the cores located in CCD-1 boost to a higher frequency than the ones in CCD-2, with differences as high as 300 MHz. CapFrameX noticed that when CCD-2 is disabled on a machine running Windows 11 22H2, the processor actually puts out higher gaming performance, by as much as 10%. This is mainly because the cores in CCD-2, with a lower maximum boost frequency no longer handle processing load from the game; and with CCD-2 disabled, CCD-1 has all of the processor's power budget—up to 230 W—to itself, giving it much higher boost residency across its 8 cores.
Source:
CapFrameX
47 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Posts Significantly Higher Gaming Performance with a CCD Disabled
In Single thread you are not going to use up all your TDP!
So to clear things up, why are we not seeing overclocked 7700X beating 7950X in games? 30% increasing in peformance is pretty high.
AMD could just cut the 7950X in half make 2 CPUs and double their sales instead of selling the 7700X. :p
Ok maybe not double their sales but a 8 core 16T CPU with that peformance would outsell most CPUs on the market today if priced right? Yes/No?
You don't need 16 cores to play a game, and with 2 different quality CCDs these are the results.
I experienced something similar with 3900X and 5900X, but the situation was less noticeable because even if CCD2 was worse, the boost was quite similar.
I think what's happening is you've got less thread contention and more thermal headroom primarily, but the same amount of cache and also outside of thread contention where scheduling is dynamically changing around thread assignments the second CCD is going to cause some latency even though AMD has minimized it you can't eliminate it outright same goes with E cores which is why some have preferred disabling them for Intel likewise.
What is a little strange is why Intel/AMD aren't just including the full shared L3 cache across the lineup regardless of cut down core count parts. I wonder what the cost of the larger L3 cache is relative to additional cores to manufacturer and how that trade off balances out.
That way you still have the other CCD operating for other background processes and such.
You are not supposed to lose gaming performance because someone at that ecosystem doesn't know what to do.
Note: what is important, and affects performance, is the latency to access slices of L3, which are located at various distances from the core that wants to access data. It's impossible to reliably measure that directly. But there's an indirect way, which is to measure core-to-core latency, and we know that each core is paired with a slice of L3 (at least in x86, E-core clusters being an exception).
This is beyond undervolt to up your performance, it`s undercore and underCCD.. Better CCD binning for 7950x.
It appears that more than 1 CCD hurts FPS that is countered by higher frequencies with 5900\5950\7900\7950.
Might be why the 5800X3d is so much faster in some gaming beside the extra cache- just 1 CCD.
If AMD will successful engineer the 7800X3d without the frequencies limit it will dominate gaming easily.
"Windows 11 22H2 can cause performance issues on PCs with Ryzen CPUs. This is a comparison of feature update 22H2 vs reinstallation OS (including 22H2)."
I'm not so sure about that, since limiting power draw even down to 65 W (see below), which should affect clock frequency much more than binning IMO, doesn't make much of a difference in 1080 gaming benchmarks compared to what's happening in the OP.
Although the CPU doesn't run nowhere near max power draw in games to begin with, TPU measured 87 W. That's why I doubt that the fully enabled 7950X is power limited in games, compared to when disabling one CCD.
A 5,6 % higher clock speed (comparing 7700X & 7950X) won't translate into the 16 % higher FPS in the OP.
I would like to know if the performance boost from closing the CCD happens on Win10 (7950X)
Recently I've seen AMD claiming that there's no issue here, but I still doubt that..