Tuesday, July 16th 2024
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Supports PBO After All
AMD's upcoming flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 9950X, supports Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) overclocking. In the comments section of our Zen 5 Technical Deep Dive article, a keen-eyed user noticed a footnote in one of the slides that reads that PBO is supported on Ryzen 9000 series desktop processor with the parenthesis "excluding the 9950." Add to this, the company's presentation slide for PBO on Ryzen 9000 series only highlights performance gains for the Ryzen 9 9900X, the Ryzen 7 9700X, and the Ryzen 5 9600X, but not the 9950X. We reached out to AMD seeking a clarification on this.
AMD got back to us and confirmed that the Ryzen 9 9950X does indeed support PBO overclocking: "Confirmed that PBO is supported with 9950X", just like the 9900X, 9700X, and the 9600X, and that there is an "Error in the footnotes." It would be highly unusual for AMD to disable PBO on a specific SKU, especially considering that all non-APU Ryzen processors in the past have supported PBO, not just some special overclocking SKUs, like the "K" models on Intel.
Source:
@Visible Noise (TechPowerUp Forums)
AMD got back to us and confirmed that the Ryzen 9 9950X does indeed support PBO overclocking: "Confirmed that PBO is supported with 9950X", just like the 9900X, 9700X, and the 9600X, and that there is an "Error in the footnotes." It would be highly unusual for AMD to disable PBO on a specific SKU, especially considering that all non-APU Ryzen processors in the past have supported PBO, not just some special overclocking SKUs, like the "K" models on Intel.
16 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Supports PBO After All
I am more interesting in how much oc and tweaking the 3D variants support and off cause pbo use on these cpu's. Cause according to some leaks zen 5 3D will now support full overclocking or at least way more pc and tweaking than it was with zen 4 and specially zen 3 that was pretty much locked.
Someone with an engineering sample was pushing it really hard on the anandtech forums and temps were pretty reasonable on water.
Always found that a bit confusing actually remounted my cooling countless times thinking it was poor contact causing it.
N4P is far cheaper than N3B and not much worse in key metrics. Look at this comparison to N5 and N4P is 6% denser and not much different to N3B. N3E is imprved version of N3B.
I think AMD is smart to use cheaper but more refined node. When Zen 6 comes out they will probabbly use N3P while Intel may have a lead with 18A for Panther Lake with GAAFET. TSMC not using GAAFET until N2 I think.