Testing a new 3900X processor for gaming
Testing a new 3900X processor for gaming
So I ran some tests with my Ryzen Master and scored 6600 on Cinebench 20 using the default speed. When I turned it up to 4Ghz, my score went up to about 7000. The issue is that in games, I get fewer frames per second when the CPU is overclocked. Why does this happen? It looks like a two-core gap exists.
Using manual overclocking on a Ryzen 3000 chip hurts multi-thread speed while hurting single-thread speed too. Games need to choose one or the other because both get worse if you turn it off when you really need it. If you play games that rely mostly on single threads, turning down the CPU's boost limits how fast it can run at its full potential of 4.6GHz. This is why manual overclocking feels so bad for Ryzen 3000 CPUs even though people keep doing it anyway because it beats other methods. The best trick to get the most out of a Ryzen 3000 CPU is just to leave it alone: set the power plan to normal and don't mess with cooling. High performance settings do nothing, but more than enough room for heat helps the CPU boost its multi-thread performance.
Turning on manual overclocking for a Ryzen 3000 chip hurts your one-thread speed but helps your many threads at once. So games will change depending on whether they care more about single threads or multi threads. If your favorite games rely heavily on single thread power, stopping the CPU from going up to its fastest speed of 4.6GHz when it really needs that boost makes things worse. This is why people say turning the OC off is a good idea for Ryzen 3000s, even though some do turn it on anyway because they know the alternative isn't better. The best fix for Ryzen 3000s is usually to leave everything stock: keep power settings balanced, cool enough without being too cold, and RAM speed tuned just right. Then check if you can squeeze out a bit more speed by tweaking timings using the Ryzen DRAM Calculator.
Actually, looking at RAM is the top priority for gaming speed. But when it comes to Ryzen CPUs, turning on auto-OOC or letting them do their thing has a lot of rules and surprises. For me and my R5 3600, I got the best heat, safety, and performance by manually overclocking it. At stock settings while stressing the CPU, the voltage settled at 1.3v, but all cores were maxed out at only 4ghz. My temperatures hit around 75c. When PBO was on with auto-OOC turned up high, all cores hit over 4.2ghz, but that came with higher voltages and heat spikes like EDC, TDC, and PPT too. It would also slow down often to keep things cool. That made my benchmarks better than at stock settings, just with more ups and downs in performance and higher voltage costs. With a manual overclock, I set the CPU to 4.2GHz @ 1.3vcore. My voltages stayed safe, never going past chip limits, while my PPT, EDC, and TDC were all under specs. My vcore ranged between 1.287 and 1.3, and I stayed locked at 4.2ghz. At high stress, temperatures stayed around 75c for the most consistent scores. Single-core speeds were only about 1% or less worse than with PBO, but my multicore scores went up roughly 4%, which was much better compared to PBO and way more than stock speed.
When you watch your computer's clock speeds while playing a game, it looks like many cores are spinning faster than 4GHz. This happens because the CPU gets pushed harder when the game needs more power to run smoothly. You can see this in CPUs like the R5 3600, which get big boosts on their cores just for gaming. The R5 3900X isn't as lucky because it is built to handle those extreme speeds better than others. It's really hard to push all your cores up by even a tiny bit past 4GHz, so getting them to 4.6GHz or higher is almost impossible.
I never meant that. Don't twist my words. I said "the best tweak a user can do..." but I didn't mean specifically for gaming or focus on RAM being most important. It's all up to debate. I won't let you use AMD engineers' word over their own safe parameters, especially when overclocking is just running a CPU past its normal limits. PBO and auto-OC are mostly useless because they don't really go beyond what the CPUs were designed for. The real limits aren't about raising power; it's about temperature. You could have just left the computer at stock settings with a good cooler on it. Everything else seems like crowd psychology. For the average person: big cooling and memory. Everyone else? Do whatever they want. I wish people would stop treating them like Intel CPUs, because they aren't really that way.
I don't know why you got mad. I thought about how to tweak your RAM and talked to myself on those last thirty hours while I tweaked my CPU. I do have a beefy cooler attached. All that testing, including stock settings, was done using an AIO with a 360mm radiator.
You messed up on my point, and that means your version doesn't match what was written down there.
I'm sorry for messing up your words. I meant to agree with you. I talked about gaming performance because that's what Ryzen helps most with memory tweaking, at least what I know. I think running the CPU faster makes other things like rendering and compression better. EDIT: The only reason it matters so much in gaming is because of cross-chiplet lag compared to speed or IPC. You see big gains in gaming because faster RAM (especially 3800 MHz with 1900 fclk) helps communication between chips, lowering the latency.