Matisse (Ryzen 3000) overclocking/undervolting

[delshay]

I have a technical general question about undervolting CPU/GPU/RAM/CHIPSET,ect,ect.

Undervolting is good for silicon, but it's still subjected to manufacture standard voltage from cold boot. Would it not be better to change this in software/hardware so that the silicon always receive the lower voltage at all times?

 

[oobymach]

I tested some undervolting with previous bios with mixed results. Cpu always going to require certain voltage to run a set speed, undervolting at best drops performance and at worst causes issues. Best to leave voltages on auto unless you're underclocking or overclocking when a few mv matter. Once set in bios your computer will boot with whatever voltages you set.

Ram will generally work underclocked with lower voltages just fine as will cpu but chipset on the other hand, I messed with sb soc voltage and it made windows audio play at reduced speed so my advice is test it for a few min in p95 while listening to a song or watching a video to see if there's corruption/degradation. You can test p95 for days but generally a few (5 or 6) passed tests per worker is enough for most people. Unless you're using it for super critical tasks and stability is a must you're fine with 20mins stability.

 

[cowboy44mag]

I have a technical general question about undervolting CPU/GPU/RAM/CHIPSET,ect,ect.

Undervolting is good for silicon, but it's still subjected to manufacture standard voltage from cold boot. Would it not be better to change this in software/hardware so that the silicon always receive the lower voltage at all times?

I've done a lot of testing on Ryzen 3000, but my answer may change with the next bios updates coming this month. AMD's new agesa may change everything we understand about Ryzen and performance as it stands right now as it is supposed to fix "over 100" issues with Ryzen 3000. With the current bios available for most of us (only a select few X570 motherboards have the new bios) I have found that undervolting is really only advantageous when letting XFR and PBO scale the processor, ie letting Ryzen be Ryzen and doing the boosting by itself. For manual overclocking I have found that undervolting tends to be an issue and leads to bad performance.

If your going to run on Auto and let Ryzen scale itself with XFR and PBO undervolting yields higher boost clocks and better performance. By default the auto scaling of Ryzen uses more voltage than necessary and by undervolting you keep the temps lower and it allows the processor to boost higher. The very best clocks I've been able to get with my 3800X have been 4.35Ghz all core with XFR (PBO off) and 4.3Ghz with PBO enabled. Surprisingly PBO enabled actually lowers the boosting behavior and highlights one of the issues that will hopefully be addressed with the upcoming agesa/ bios.

If your going to manually overclock with a multiplier and utilize CCX overclocking then I would be very careful trying to undervolt. I see a lot of people out there quoting 4.3 and 4.4 Ghz at very low voltages and although their systems are "stable" their benchmarks scores are low. The low voltages that some are utilizing is actually hampering performance even though it can technically run the frequency at the given voltage. A lot of times bumping the voltage up just a little bit will lead to better performance even though technically the overclock is "stable" at the lower voltage.

 

[Space Lynx]

The new BIOS was just released for my MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX, installing it now.


edit: so far it is very stable. my temps have improved at stock and with overclock. this new BIOS is great

 

[cowboy44mag]

The new BIOS was just released for my MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX, installing it now.


edit: so far it is very stable. my temps have improved at stock and with overclock. this new BIOS is great

That's great, gives me something to look forward to. Asus is taking its sweet time getting the new bios rolled out. I have the Strix X470-F gaming and still nothing. I think the only updated bios they have is for the X570 boards.

 

[thesmokingman]

Can't say I agree with the findings but kudos for the effort involved.

 

[Space Lynx]

Can't say I agree with the findings but kudos for the effort involved.

I'm very happy I went with MSI now, I decided to give "gameboost and A-xmp" a try. Just two little buttons you hit with BIOS. Well, old BIOS voltage was way too high so I had to do it all myself. But this new BIOS, 1.345v max and temps are great and I had do 0 work.

Also, I rebooted PC after turning on both, then dialed in my ram higher and its all stable. I settled on 3400 cas 14-14-14-34 at 1.450v and the 4.2 all core is good on temps now. Quite happy. Now I just want an RX 5800 Navi gpu.

 

[cowboy44mag]

I'm very happy I went with MSI now, I decided to give "gameboost and A-xmp" a try. Just two little buttons you hit with BIOS. Well, old BIOS voltage was way too high so I had to do it all myself. But this new BIOS, 1.345v max and temps are great and I had do 0 work.

Also, I rebooted PC after turning on both, then dialed in my ram higher and its all stable. I settled on 3400 cas 14-14-14-34 at 1.450v and the 4.2 all core is good on temps now. Quite happy. Now I just want an RX 5800 Navi gpu.

Don't get me wrong, I have been very happy with Asus, and with my X470-F motherboard. I have had top end performance with my 2700X, which I could run @ 4.35Ghz all core, and with my 3800X which I can validate at 4.5Ghz all core, but have to run at 4.475Ghz all core to be stable enough to run demanding benchmarks. It is frustrating that Asus still doesn't have the new bios rolled out for its X470 boards, but its hard to find fault with the quality of their boards. I'm really hoping that with the improvements of the new agesa PBO will be fixed and get boosts of at least 4.4Ghz all core (with good cooling of course), and I'm also hoping that I can get that little bit extra so my manual overclock is totally stable at 4.5Ghz all core. Its already so very close to being stable at 4.5Ghz all core the new agesa improvements have to put it over the top...

 

[thesmokingman]

Don't get me wrong, I have been very happy with Asus, and with my X470-F motherboard. I have had top end performance with my 2700X, which I could run @ 4.35Ghz all core, and with my 3800X which I can validate at 4.5Ghz all core, but have to run at 4.475Ghz all core to be stable enough to run demanding benchmarks. It is frustrating that Asus still doesn't have the new bios rolled out for its X470 boards, but its hard to find fault with the quality of their boards. I'm really hoping that with the improvements of the new agesa PBO will be fixed and get boosts of at least 4.4Ghz all core (with good cooling of course), and I'm also hoping that I can get that little bit extra so my manual overclock is totally stable at 4.5Ghz all core. Its already so very close to being stable at 4.5Ghz all core the new agesa improvements have to put it over the top...

If/when that bios comes out you will love it. You'll be able to compensate for weaker CCX and not have them hamstring your stronger CCX. I took one of my CCX up to 4525mhz and only needed 1.33v ish, since I didn't have to overcome the weaker CCXs.

 

[Space Lynx]

Don't get me wrong, I have been very happy with Asus, and with my X470-F motherboard. I have had top end performance with my 2700X, which I could run @ 4.35Ghz all core, and with my 3800X which I can validate at 4.5Ghz all core, but have to run at 4.475Ghz all core to be stable enough to run demanding benchmarks. It is frustrating that Asus still doesn't have the new bios rolled out for its X470 boards, but its hard to find fault with the quality of their boards. I'm really hoping that with the improvements of the new agesa PBO will be fixed and get boosts of at least 4.4Ghz all core (with good cooling of course), and I'm also hoping that I can get that little bit extra so my manual overclock is totally stable at 4.5Ghz all core. Its already so very close to being stable at 4.5Ghz all core the new agesa improvements have to put it over the top...

I mean you shouldn't be frustrated at all, MSI announced they would be first and was the first to rollout the new BIOS and it literally just happened lol

I am 100% stable and loving it. I really hope they get Navi drivers up to par by the time 5800 xt launches, I really want an all AMD rig

 

[cowboy44mag]

Have been working on my memory voltages and sub timings. Ryzen really responds well to fast memory and tight timings / sub timings.

Ryzen R7 3800X @ 4.475Ghz all core:

Cinebench R20 - 5456
Time Spy CPU score - 11815
Fire Strike Physics score - 27013

 

[Space Lynx]

Have been working on my memory voltages and sub timings. Ryzen really responds well to fast memory and tight timings / sub timings.

Ryzen R7 3800X @ 4.475Ghz all core:

Cinebench R20 - 5456
Time Spy CPU score - 11815
Fire Strike Physics score - 27013

Care to share all your timings with us?

 

[cowboy44mag]

Care to share all your timings with us?

I already posted all of my "base" RAM settings on page 5 of this thread. I really don't want to go back into bios and take pictures of everything again. From my notes I only tweaked a couple of things and all the other timings are the same.
I tweaked:
Dram Voltage - was 1.48V now 1.46V
CLDO VDDG voltage - was 0.998V now 1.000V
Trc - was 42 now 40
Trfc was 298 now 280

 

[cowboy44mag]

Just started optimized single core execution and was wondering what kind of single core scores everyone was getting with Ryzen 3000.

Cinebench R20 Single Core- 531

 

[thesmokingman]

You're on target I think as 3900x scores roughly 520 ish and it has a single core boost of 4.6ghz.

 

[cowboy44mag]

You're on target I think as 3900x scores roughly 520 ish and it has a single core boost of 4.6ghz.

You know, I would really love to see AMD release a "special edition R7 3800X" maybe call it R7 3850X... If they would use the incredible silicon binning of the R9 3950X only use the R7 3800X I really think it could be clocked upwards of 5Ghz all core. Don't get me wrong, the 3800X is already a great processor and can outperform the 9900K in some areas, such as productivity, however a 3800X using the extreme binning of the 3950X would take away Intel's last refuge. I really believe that a processor like that could take away the gaming crown from the 9900K(S) and leave Intel with no areas where they can claim "the best".

At any rate, I'm really happy with the performance of my 3800X.

 

[thesmokingman]

Don't get yer hopes up as clock frequency is hard to achieve as the process shrinks and shrinks. I doubt Intel would want to keep the clock frequency if it meant getting their asses beat this soundly, honestly man. And to put that into context having 5ghz clock frequency scaling advantage that only shows itself in gaming when you remove the gpu as a bottleneck, that's like meh right? That really is only for epeen because no one games w/o a gpu or at a resolution that makes the cpu a bottleneck. You know what I mean?

 

[cowboy44mag]

Don't get yer hopes up as clock frequency is hard to achieve as the process shrinks and shrinks. I doubt Intel would want to keep the clock frequency if it meant getting their asses beat this soundly, honestly man.

I hear you, but binning has a lot to do with clock frequency. On average the 3800X can hit higher clocks than the 3700X due to better binning. The 3950X has way better binning than the 3900X. Quite frankly the 3950X is simply amazing, but a big part of that amazing performance is due to the very impressive binning that the processors have. Utilizing the silicon that is used for the 3950X but substituting a 3800X... I really believe that a processor like that could totally dethrone the 9900KS across the board. But as you said, I don't think that will ever happen. I think that AMD is happy with the product stack as it stands now, and really its a very impressive product stack

 

[Zach_01]

We as consumers, may want and desire a lot of things, but AMD is not willing to sacrifice anymore high binned chiplets for mainstream products other than the 3950X. They need all the high staff they can get for the Threadripper/Epyc packages that can return the highest margins, and very important... to be able to start the “next chapter“ war with Intel for HEDT/Server market share.

And for all I can understand, ZEN2 is not capable of 5GHz boost clocks, even the high end chiplets. They can certainly run the 4~4.5GHz at much lower voltage than the low end chiplets but after a point all advantages vanish. It must be a silicon restriction, and by that I mean the current 7nm UV process.

IMHO the next series ZEN3 on 7+nm will do better, still not 5+GHz. 4.7GHz is the fastest we have today and that’s it. Next we will get another 1-200MHz max. But it will come with another IPC upgrade (5-10%) which is more important.
2020 things are getting darker for Intel on almost all aspects of CPU market. The only section that’s left to fight is the mobile market. But Intel will come back for sure and strong, but that’s not happening before 2021, ...could be 22. They don’t say it, but they know it.

We will see a lot the next 5-10 years from both Intel and AMD. The previous decade will look like a bad joke...

 

[R0H1T]

5Ghz could well be a relic of the past, if ICL is any indication Intel isn't going to achieve that clock any time soon either. Not to mention 5Ghz on their 7nm will be even harder given the energy/heat density as well as die space.

 

[Zach_01]

...and to add something more... Overclock eventually is going to die for both AMD and Intel. We saw the first signs** with ZEN and now the ZEN2 diminishes the "value" at almost 0 point. Intel holding this relic too (the only one left) but I see the next all new architecture following AMD.

**CPU wise, because the GPU section already has dismissed it, first by nVidia and AMD done the same.

 

[Space Lynx]

...and to add something more... Overclock eventually is going to die for both AMD and Intel. We saw the first signs** with ZEN and now the ZEN2 diminishes the "value" at almost 0 point. Intel holding this relic too (the only one left) but I see the next all new architecture following AMD.

**CPU wise, because the GPU section already has dismissed it, first by nVidia and AMD done the same.

You need to look at differently, sure CPU overclocking is dead, but now ram overclocking is alive. I gained 1000 points using ryzen dram calculator to take my b-die 3200 cas 14 to 3800 cas 16, doing all the sub timings manually, etc.

it made a real measurable difference in performance, higher time spy score even. this is a trend that will continue with Ryzen, maximizing your setups 1:1 infinity fabric.

 

[biffzinker]

sure CPU overclocking is dead, but now ram overclocking is alive.

Just you wait, there coming for your RAM overclocking ways.

 

[Zach_01]

Oh you have missed the point entirely. We are talking about CPU speeds and OC and the moving on from old habits as CPU/GPU tech is progressing.
Ram is irrelevant, CPU OC is dying and GPU is already dead.
And I have OC the RAM to 3800 (1:1:1) so I'm looking it alright.

 

[cowboy44mag]

Oh you have missed the point entirely. We are talking about CPU speeds and OC and the moving on from old habits as CPU/GPU tech is progressing.
Ram is irrelevant, CPU OC is dying and GPU is already dead.
And I have OC the RAM to 3800 (1:1:1) so I'm looking it alright.

I can see CPU overclocking by pure definition and in the most strict sense being "dead" but there was and still is manual "optimization" and "overclocking" in bios. With Ryzen+ and now Ryzen2 we can definitely see that pushing the clock speed above the boost clock is near impossible. I have seen a select few "golden binned" processors that could do it but overall, its impossible. With that said it is however possible to get all core boost clock with the proper optimizations in bios given a good motherboard, psu, and processor. I have found that all the 3800X I have worked with can manually overclock with multiplier to 4.4Ghz and some like mine can push 4.5Ghz all core. The 3700X I have worked with can all hit 4.3Ghz and some can hit 4.4Ghz. While this is not "overclocking" so to speak as you are never exceeding the boost clock, it is still overclocking as it is exceeding the standard clock by a decent margin. As long as there is still the capability to enter bios and optimize the system to run all core at the boost clock then overclocking isn't dead, it has just changed from what it once was.

Maybe with the next generation of Ryzen they will have XFR and PBO to the point where its just one click and done, but for now there are still many aspects of overclocking and tweaking for system optimization.