Overclocking is a dying industry nowadays. Both Intel and AMD have allowed their CPUs to boost within certain clock speeds for years without user intervention. For many people, that’s good enough.
Hardcore users still prefer to keep up with the clock, however, often hoping to squeeze out a few extra percentage points of “free” performance from the system. This is less the case with AMD’s Ryzen family of CPUs, however, because these CPUs have never been particularly good at overclocking. The company is reportedly looking to replace it with Zen 4.
In a recent Ask the Experts webinar flagged by Wccftech, an AMD manager stated that the company intends to make a “big splash” in overclocking with its upcoming “Rafale” 7000 series CPUs. Although the webinar was about memory support for Samsung’s Epyc Genoa server processors, a Q / A was followed. It was during that discussion that Joseph Tao, a memory enabling manager at AMD, made the following comment. “Our first DDR5 platform for gaming is our Rafale platform and the great thing about Rafale is that we will really try to make a big splash with overclocking and I will leave it there but the speed you might have thought ‘is not possible, probably with this overclocking spec. Possible. ”
Accept us? We will believe it when we see it. AMD has been offering CPUs that can overclock well for many years. While there are some exceptions, such as the Threadripper 3990X, most AMD chips aren’t great overclockers today. Most recently, AMD blocked overclocking the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, possibly to prevent speck-off-spec operation from damaging the chip.
Robert Halek, AMD’s director of technical marketing, has previously stated that the company does not like to lead clockwise headrooms on the floor of the cutting room. The reason is obvious: there is not much to give up in the first place. And second, why would it be?
Times have changed in the CPU world. Years ago, producers could rely on a 25-50 percent increase in clock speed when introducing a new node, with further gains possible as yields improve. Legendary overclocking CPUs such as the Duron 600 and Celeron 300A have gained their reputation because Intel and AMD are selling chips far less than their potential clock speeds to supply parts at different price points and volumes. The Celeron 300A was regularly capable of 400Mhz or more (a 1.33x OC) whereas the Duron 600 could reliably hit 900MHz (a 1.5x boost). This is equivalent to a 4GHz Ryzen 7 overclocking 6GHz.
Even if AMD offers some overclocking headrooms, the benefits may be small. A 4.5GHz CPU with enough headroom to hit an all-core 5GHz is only boosting the optimal 1.11x performance. That’s enough to make some buzz for AMD, but we’ll never go back to the days when consumers could buy a new chip and increase the watch by 30 percent. .
It has already been rumored that it will offer Raizen Accelerated Memory Profiles for its Zen4 CPUs. It is not out of the question that overclocking will be a big part of the launch of Zen 4.
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