[PLUS-TOPSELLER] AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: Tuning guide for the 16 core

AMD’s 16 gold coins

Good things take time. In the vastness of the Internet, one often finds the term “fine wine” in connection with AMD, which means that AMD hardware first has to mature at the customer’s site over time. Originally related to the graphics driver, this can now also be applied very well to processors. Many AMD users are eagerly awaiting new versions of the AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture, or AGESA for short. This program library for BIOS developers usually provides the end customer with greater stability, more performance and often unimagined OC reserves for their Ryzen CPU. Of course, this also depends on the quality of the processor, the CPU cooling and the mainboard used. The latter will also benefit from the additional development time after the release of the Zen 3 processors in November 2020. Asus, for example, caused a stir and, with the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, offered a motherboard that offers a dynamic OC function especially for Ryzen 5000 processors. Reason enough for us to tune the Ryzen 9 5950X with this board. We not only dealt with RAM OC, but above all with increasing the clock frequencies, both under the load of all cores, as well as the single-core clock, which is important for games. But before we get down to business, let’s review the basics.

Zen 3 works independently

When you install a Ryzen 5000 processor, AMD configures it to automatically deliver the best possible performance. This means that the clock adapts dynamically to the load, individual cores are overclocked independently within the TDP parameters and energy is saved through power gating, i.e. switching off cores that are not required. Incidentally, an Intel processor behaves exactly the same way, so this is a completely normal procedure for modern CPUs. At AMD, the maximum temperature is linked to the TDP class, our Ryzen 9 5950X with a 105 watt TDP can reach a maximum of 90 °C, CPUs with a 65 watt TDP a maximum of 95 °C. If this threshold is reached, the CPU clocks itself down independently. The Ryzen TDP is divided into three areas, Package Power Tracking (PPT), Thermal Design Current (TDC) and Electrical Design Current (EDC). The former describes the maximum energy that can reach the CPU socket and is given in watts. TDC is the maximum amount of current that the voltage converters are allowed to pass through and has units of amperes. EDC describes the short-term maximum current that the voltage converters can apply if they do not reach the temperature limit, and is also given in amperes. With a Ryzen 9 5950X, AMD provides 142 watts PPT, 95 amps TDC and 140 amps EDC.

If you’re serious about overclocking the 16-core, you’ll need to remove those limits, but more on that later. The next pitfall can be found in the built-in memory controller. As with the predecessors, the clock rates of Infinity Fabric (IF) and RAM (controller) are linked to each other by default in the Ryzen 5000. For example, if you increase the memory clock from DDR4-3200 to DDR4-3600, then the IF and RAM controller are accelerated to the same extent from 1,600 to 1,800 MHz. At higher clock speeds than DDR4-3600, a Ryzen 5000 system automatically switches to asynchronous mode, where the IF clock is fixed at 1800 MHz and the RAM controller clock is fixed at a quarter of DDR4 (e.g. 1,000 MHz at DDR4-4000) is set. High RAM clock rates can be achieved in this way, but the asynchronicity costs performance due to higher latencies.

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The following topics can be found in the tuning guide:

• Problems with analysis tools
• RAM tuning
• OC: Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO)
• Maximum fine-tuning: cooling and ventilation
• Analysis: What do the measures achieve?

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