News AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Not Overclockable, Report Claims

The obvious question after that statement is: which part is not overclockable according to AMD? Is that just the consequence of how the clock management was developed?

Also, in reality, there's no such thing as "not overclockable" IMO and it will depend on what is exposed to the motherboard in terms of voltage control, multipliers and such.

It's definitely not a good message to put out there, but I think the devil will be in the details.

Regards.
 
Mar 19, 2021
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lol lets hope this is not the case. who would buy this chip if that was the case. the current intel chips would smash this chip for the same or less cost.
 
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The problem I'm finding with this is what "overclocking" even means anymore in a given context. Because in my eye, there's two types of overclocking:
  • Forcing the CPU to run over its stock base speed, which I argue when placed in a vacuum, this is what "overclocking" should mean since this is how it's always been done.
  • Allowing the CPU to run over its advertised maximum turbo boost speed.
In any case, if a "locked" AMD CPU simply means you can't change the multiplier past, in this case, 45, then you can still do base speed overclocking. Setting a value on the multiplier forces the CPU to run at that speed all the time. If it's say disabling PBO features or whatnot, a little more painful, but not exactly a huge loss considering you can barely push the maximum turbo speed on Ryzens anyway. Plus said maximum turbo speed is only good for the preferred cores.
 
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hannibal

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This is somewhat stupid claim... Even low end AMD CPU you can "OC"... Not much, but you can. The problem/advantage is that there is no point doing OC. The extra cache needs more power, so it may be even harder to OC 3dcache versions and 3d cache can cause OC bottleneck on its own depending on how closely the cache affect the cpu clockspeeds. All in all you need hefty LN2 or similar level cooling to OC anyways so it does not matter. I also expect that there are no OC locks, but just physical things that just make OC hard (like it is already with 5000 series).

What i expect is that this is engineering sample and there quite often are some limitations with engineering samples...
 
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artk2219

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lol lets hope this is not the case. who would buy this chip if that was the case. the current intel chips would smash this chip for the same or less cost.

PBO effectively makes manual overclocking mostly pointless, and hopefully theyll be a good upgrade option for anyone thats on a B450 board or newer. If youre happy with your current setup why change out your whole platform when you can just replace your cpu and get a nice performance lift?
 
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lol lets hope this is not the case. who would buy this chip if that was the case. the current intel chips would smash this chip for the same or less cost.
None of the latest high-end CPUs from either AMD or Intel have any significant overclocking headroom. Outside of temporary, exotic cooling solutions to push high scores on benchmark leaderboards, overclocking can just manage margin-of-error-level improvements at best, and performance regressions at worst. High-end CPUs are now being designed to get the most out of the silicon at stock, precisely adjusting clock rates and voltages on their own. And due to binning being performed on the chips at the factory, lower-grade silicon is put into more mid-range processors to match with their lower clock rates, so those are less likely to overclock significantly either. So really, overclocking support is mostly just being kept around at this point to check off a box on the product sheet to assure enthusiasts that a chip is in fact a higher-end model, even if there isn't much to be gained from it.

And of course, AMD has stated that the 5800X3D will be the "World's Fastest Gaming CPU", so I don't think the Intel chips will "smash it", as it will likely hold the lead in at least some workloads. Whether that justifies its price is yet to be seen, but there are people who will pay a big premium for imperceptable performance gains, like those putting 12900Ks into gaming systems, rather than processors costing around half as much with very similar gaming performance.
 
As stated...overclocking is pretty much pointless anyway. The way to push my 5800X is undervolting with Curve Optimizer. So the question is: has AMD taken PBO and Curve Optimizer off the table too?

It doesn't sound like a hardware lockout if AMD's asking board partners to not allow overclocking. I expect leaked...or hacked... BIOS's to show up for some boards anyway and attempts made.
 
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wifiburger

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PBO effectively makes manual overclocking mostly pointless, and hopefully theyll be a good upgrade option for anyone thats on a B450 board or newer. If youre happy with your current setup why change out your whole platform when you can just replace your cpu and get a nice performance lift?
problem is that PBO is also blocked on this cpu
 
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I thought the "may be" implies "possibly not and this is complete speculation". Unless it was confirmed by an independent entity?

Then again, I stand by what I said: you can always overclock. It'll come down to how user friendly it is.

Regards.
 
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Lord_Moonub

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None of the latest high-end CPUs from either AMD or Intel have any significant overclocking headroom. Outside of temporary, exotic cooling solutions to push high scores on benchmark leaderboards, overclocking can just manage margin-of-error-level improvements at best, and performance regressions at worst. High-end CPUs are now being designed to get the most out of the silicon at stock, precisely adjusting clock rates and voltages on their own. And due to binning being performed on the chips at the factory, lower-grade silicon is put into more mid-range processors to match with their lower clock rates, so those are less likely to overclock significantly either. So really, overclocking support is mostly just being kept around at this point to check off a box on the product sheet to assure enthusiasts that a chip is in fact a higher-end model, even if there isn't much to be gained from it.

And of course, AMD has stated that the 5800X3D will be the "World's Fastest Gaming CPU", so I don't think the Intel chips will "smash it", as it will likely hold the lead in at least some workloads. Whether that justifies its price is yet to be seen, but there are people who will pay a big premium for imperceptable performance gains, like those putting 12900Ks into gaming systems, rather than processors costing around half as much with very similar gaming performance.

you wrote that “high end” chips don’t have too for overclocking. But hate you seen the amazing things possible on the newest i5 Alder Lake chips? With a permitting motherboard there is a BLCK OC which takes that $200 chip up to performance that outpaces my 5950X in games. It is remarkable. So there is huge headroom on these chips still (the devil is in the detail though - today, only higher end z690 motherboards have these feature needed to let these chips OC all the way… but it would just take a Chinese manufacturer to add it on a $120 board and this easily wins “best gaming CPU”)
 
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