Roman, der8aur, recently held a reasonably extensive survey asking followers who own new Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs to share their CPUs boosting results. A total of over 2726 users joined in with valid results by indicating what CPU, Motherboard, BIOS revision, and AGESA version that they were running. Roman took the time to cull out the bad results and blatant outliners to reduce the error margin in order to get a more realistic look at the boosting behavior that the new Ryzen 3000 Series processors are experiencing.
AMD may be dominating in CPU sales, but they've been dealing with one very annoying issue since they launched on July 7th this year and that would be their Boosting. Take for instance the Ryzen 9 3900X features a Boost clock of 4.6GHz and while you would expect it to be for a single or maybe dual-core application, the reality for myself and many others is that it's just a blip on a monitor radar and comes and goes so fast you'll likely never actually see it. Mine typically does best at around 4.45GHz on one board and maybe 4.5GHz on the other if I'm lucky. That's not a bad clock speed by any means, but it's also not the advertised 4.6GHz either. AMD even went into depth on their new PBO+ Auto OC showing how you could get up to 200MHz of additional power, maybe but I haven't seen that one work either.
The above chart shows the expected boost behavior for the Ryzen 9 3900X according to the reviewers guide as posted by Level1Techs and demonstrates the Ryzen 9 3900X sitting at around 4.25-4.3GHz when heavily loaded as well as the single-core boosting to 4.6GHz. This chart was pretty much the reason I bought the Ryzen 9 3900X, sadly I have not seen such opportunistic clocks with mine.
The included video has Roman explaining the results of the survey in a very digestible manner and I highly encourage any and everyone to sit patiently through the 20 minutes of explanation and well constructed bell curve graphs.
One of the things that Roman touched on as reported by Guru3d was the potential that AMD has reduced the boosting behavior of their Ryzen 3000 Series processors in order to extend the life of the CPUs. This was shared by an Asus employee over on Overclock.net. The reality is these chips perform great, no one is questioning that, but the advertised boost clocks as well as the many variable results that users are getting shine a bit of light on the opportunistic marketing of the maximum boost frequency. Temper expectations and I think the negativity surrounding this will go away, as I said these are very solid performing chips and my Ryzen 9 3900X is serving me well in my personal computer just like my Core i9 9900K is serving me well in my Test Bench.
If you're using a Ryzen 3000 Series CPU join in down below with your Single-Core Boost and All-Core Boosts so that we can see what our readers are experiencing.
UPDATE:
AMD has issued an official response regarding the boosting behavior for their 3rd Gen Ryzen 3000 Series Processors.
Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core / 24 Thread CPU For $499 US
The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X is a 12 core and 24 thread part featuring the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture. The chip features a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a boost clock of 4.6 GHz. There’s 70 MB of L3 cache, 40 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (CPU + PCH) and a TDP of 105W (derived from the base frequency). The CPU is going to hit retail for $499 US. In terms of pricing, the chip is positioned against the Intel Core i9-9900K and offers more cores, threads, cache, PCIe lanes and support for next-gen I/O such as PCIe Gen 4.0.
Ryzen 7 3800X 8 Core / 16 Thread CPU For $399 US
The AMD Ryzen 7 3800X is an 8 core and 16 thread part featuring the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture. The chip features a base clock of 3.9 GHz and a boost clock of 4.5 GHz. There’s 36 MB of L3 cache, 40 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (CPU + PCH) and a TDP of 105W (derived from the base frequency). The CPU is going to hit retail for $399 US. In terms of pricing, the chip is positioned against the Intel Core i7-9700K and offers more cores, threads, cache, PCIe lanes and support for next-gen I/O such as PCIe Gen 4.0.
Ryzen 7 3700X 8 Core / 16 Thread CPU For $329 US
The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is also an 8 core and 16 thread part which features the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture. The chip features a base clock of 3.6 GHz and a boost clock of 4.4 GHz. There’s 36 MB of L3 cache, 40 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (CPU + PCH) and a TDP of 65W (derived from the base frequency). The CPU is going to hit retail for $329 US. In terms of pricing, the chip is better positioned against the Core i7-9700K than the Ryzen 7 3800X because it's not only more efficient in terms of TDP but also has a lower price point.
Ryzen 5 3600X 6 Core / 12 Thread CPU For $249 US
The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X is a 6 core and 12 thread part featuring the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture. The chip features a base clock of 3.8 GHz and a boost clock of 4.4 GHz. There’s 35 MB of L3 cache, 40 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (CPU + PCH) and a TDP of 95 W (derived from the base frequency). The CPU is going to hit retail for $249 US. In terms of pricing, the chip is positioned against the Intel Core i5-9600K and offers more cores, threads, cache, PCIe lanes and support for next-gen I/O such as PCIe Gen 4.0.
Ryzen 5 3600 6 Core / 12 Thread CPU For $199 US
The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X is an entry-level 6 core and 12 thread part featuring the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture. The chip features a base clock of 3.6 GHz and a boost clock of 4.2 GHz. There’s 35 MB of L3 cache, 40 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (CPU + PCH) and a TDP of 65 W (derived from the base frequency). The CPU is going to hit retail for $199 US. Based on the pricing, the Ryzen 5 3600 is going to be an extremely popular 6 core chip for gamers who are planning to build budget gaming PCs with a focus on price/performance.
AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPU Lineup
| CPU Name | Ryzen 5 3500 | Ryzen 5 3500X | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3600X | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 7 3800X | Ryzen 9 3900X | Ryzen 9 3950X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cores/Threads | 6/6 | 6/6 | 6/12 | 6/12 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 12/24 | 16/32 |
| Base Clock | 3.6 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.9 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.5 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.1 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 4.6 GHz | 4.7 GHz |
| Cache (L2+L3) | 16 MB | 32 MB | 35 MB | 35 MB | 36 MB | 36 MB | 70 MB | 72 MB |
| PCIe Lanes (Gen 4 CPU+PCH) | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 |
| TDP | 65W | 65W | 65W | 95W | 65W | 105W | 105W | 105W |
| Price | $149 US | $179 US | $199 US | $249 US | $329 US | $399 US | $499 US | $749 US |
