[SOLVED] 3900X OC performance in games

[RandomGamer1235]

so I did some tests with ryzen master I got a score of 6600 in cinebench20 with the stock speed, after that, I set it to 4Ghz, and I got like 7000, The problem is that in games I get less fps when the cpu is overclocked.. why is that? there is like a 2c difference.

 

[Phaaze88]

Because manual OC'ing on Ryzen 3000 increases MULTITHREAD performance at the cost of SINGLE THREAD.
Games are going to be more dependent on one or the other. If some of the games you play are more dependent on single thread performance, guess what's going to happen...
You stopped the cpu from being able to boost to 4.6ghz when it needed it the most.

This is part of the reason manual OC on Ryzen 3000 is so garbage, but people keep doing it anyway, even though it's inferior to the following.
The best performance tweak for Ryzen 3000 is to do 'nothing' to it:
-balanced power plan. High performance does nothing.
-go overkill on the cooling: the better the thermal headroom, the higher the cpu will attempt to boost it's multithread performance towards that 4.6ghz single thread clock.
-ram frequency up to 3733mhz and CL16/17. Then see if you can tighten the timings using Ryzen Dram Calculator.

 

[konawolv]

Because manual OC'ing on Ryzen 3000 increases MULTITHREAD performance at the cost of SINGLE THREAD.
Games are going to be more dependent on one or the other. If some of the games you play are more dependent on single thread performance, guess what's going to happen...
You stopped the cpu from being able to boost to 4.6ghz when it needed it the most.

This is part of the reason manual OC on Ryzen 3000 is so garbage, but people keep doing it anyway, even though it's inferior to the following.
The best performance tweak for Ryzen 3000 is to do 'nothing' to it:
-balanced power plan. High performance does nothing.
-go overkill on the cooling: the better the thermal headroom, the higher the cpu will attempt to boost it's multithread performance towards that 4.6ghz single thread clock.
-ram frequency up to 3733mhz and CL16/17. Then see if you can tighten the timings using Ryzen Dram Calculator.

Yes, focusing on RAM is the most important thing for gaming perf. However, when it comes to Ryzen and ocing it, or allowing it to auto oc, there are ton of caveats and variance.

For me and my R5 3600, i was able to achieve the best thermals, safest operating voltages, and best performance by doing a manual OC.

At stock settings, when stressing my cpu, my SVI2 TFN voltage settled at 1.3v, but my all core oc was only 4ghz. My thermals were were around 75c.

With PBO on and the auto OC settings cranked up, my all core OC would exceed 4.2 ghz, but at the cost of higher vcore, edc, tdc, and ppt. Also at the cost of higher temps. It would throttle itself often too to keep temps down. This resulted in higher benchmarks than at stock settings, but it came with the added cost of performance variance and higher voltages.

With a manual OC, i was able to set my CPU to 4.2 GHz @ 1.3 vcore. My PPT, EDC, and TDC never went past the chips max specs, my vcore ran between 1.287 and 1.3, and i was always at 4.2 GHz. my Temps were around 75c when stressed, and it gave me my highest and most consistent benchmark scores. My single core scores were only about 1% or less behind those achieved with PBO but my multicore went up about 4% compared to pbo( and around 5-10% higher than stock).

 

[konawolv]

so I did some tests with ryzen master I got a score of 6600 in cinebench20 with the stock speed, after that, I set it to 4Ghz, and I got like 7000, The problem is that in games I get less fps when the cpu is overclocked.. why is that? there is like a 2c difference.

At stock settings, if you monitor your core clocks while gaming, you may see that, while not all, many cores cores are likely running at higher speeds than 4GHz. The CPU is being boosted on the cores under load from the game to achieve higher frequencies for better performance.

CPUs like the 3900x see less of a gaming improvement from all core overclocks than ones like mine (R5 3600) because the CPU is designed to boost so high. The odds of you being able to OC up to 4.4-4.6 ghz all core on your cpu is very slim.

 

[Phaaze88]

Yes, focusing on RAM is the most important thing for gaming perf.

I did not say that. Don't go and twist my words.
I said "the best performance tweak that the user can do..."
I did not say specifically for gaming, nor did I say focusing on ram was the most important tweak.

For me and my R5 3600, i was able to achieve the best thermals, safest operating voltages, and best performance by doing a manual OC.

Debatable.
I'm not going to take your word over AMD's own engineers on parameters that's considered 'safe' for the cpus they designed.
Especially when the very concept and act of overclocking is running a cpu over the original specs...

With PBO on and the auto OC settings cranked up, my all core OC would exceed 4.2 ghz, but at the cost of higher vcore, edc, tdc, and ppt.

PBO and auto OC are, for the most part, useless.
The limits that it’s raising - PPT, TDC, and EDC - aren’t limits that are restricting performance. What matters far more is temperature.
You could've just left it at stock and put a beefy cooler on it.

Everything else appears to be from herd mentality.

For the Average Joe: big cooling + memory.
Everyone else: do whatever you want.
I wish people would stop treating them like Intel cpus, which they are not.

 

[konawolv]

I did not say that. Don't go and twist my words.
I said "the best performance tweak that the user can do..."
I did not say specifically for gaming, nor did I say focusing on ram was the most important tweak.


Debatable.
I'm not going to take your word over AMD's own engineers on parameters that's considered 'safe' for the cpus they designed.
Especially when the very concept and act of overclocking is running a cpu over the original specs...


PBO and auto OC are, for the most part, useless.
The limits that it’s raising - PPT, TDC, and EDC - aren’t limits that are restricting performance. What matters far more is temperature.
You could've just left it at stock and put a beefy cooler on it.

Everything else appears to be from herd mentality.

For the Average Joe: big cooling + memory.
Everyone else: do whatever you want.
I wish people would stop treating them like Intel cpus, which they are not.

I don't know why you got offended.

I agreed with you on tweaking the ram, and shared my own experience over the last 30 hours of tweaking my CPU.

And I do have a beefy cooler installed. All this testing (including stock) was conducted using an aio with a 360mm rad.

 

[Phaaze88]

I told you why: you twisted my words. Doing so can deviate from what the poster originally said.

 

[konawolv]

I told you why: you twisted my words. Doing so can deviate from what the poster originally said.

Well, I apologise for twisting your words. It was my intention to attempt to agree with you.

I emphasized gaming performance because that is what common task ryzen benefits the most from with memory tweaking, at least that I'm aware of. I think that having the cpu run at higher frequencies assists more in other tasks such as rendering and compression.

EDIT:

And the only reason it matters so much in gaming is because ryzen's weakness is cross chiplet latency as opposed to frequency/ipc. You see huge gains in gaming because faster ram (especially 3800 MHz with 1900 fclk) aids in cross chiplet communication, lowering latency.