As we’ve mentioned before, AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs cannot be directly or traditionally overclocked, primarily due to it being locked on a hardware level. In the case of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the lineup’s top-of-the-line SKU was both delidded and “overclocked” to run at screaming speeds of 5.9GHz.
The delidding of the 7950X3D was done by none other than the renowned German overclocker, Der8auer, who posted a video of his endeavour, and giving us a closer look at the naked die in the process. As to how he delids it, he is shown performing the process with the Thermal Grizzly Delid-Die-Mate tool.
As for the overclocking process of the 7950X3D, that was performed by overclocker SkatterBencher. Again, physically overclocking the 7000X3D is impossible, but AMD has made it clear that the CPU can still be pushed to the proverbial edge through a combination of software and embedded technologies, such as Precision Boost Overdrive 2 (PBO2) and AMD’s own Extended Profiles for Overclocking, or EXPO for short.
Now, as you can imagine, the process of overclocking the 7950X3D is no walk in the park, but here’s the gist of it: in order to draw out more performance from the CPU, Skatterbencher needed to mess around with PBO2 and the voltage and frequency curve optimiser. For that matter, the Raphael chiplets on the 7000XD lineup are slightly different from the first generation 3D V-Cache, with the CCD0 runs at a lower max frequency limit of 5.25GHz and lower voltage limit of 1.2V. While the CCD1 running without the 3D V-Cache is capable fof running at 5.75GHz at 1.4V.
This requires a lot of fine tuning but at the end of the day, it is what allows them to push the processor well past its default boost clock of 5.7GHz. Ultimately, Skatterbencher managed to push the 7950X3D’s maximum boost clock to run at 5.9GHz, and stay there.
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At that speed, Skatterbencher says that the 7950X3D generated at 9% better performance in synthetic benchmarks, compared to the CPU’s default clocks, but when produced little to no difference when it came to gaming.
Ultimately, the message Skatterbench is trying to tell us that AMD’s 7950X3D is overclockable, but just not through traditional means. Hopefully, AMD 3D V-Cache’s technology is maturing and hopefully, we won’t have to undergo the same song and dance as they did, in order to see it with our own eyes.
On that note, the 7950X3D is also in our lab for testing, so keep an eye out for our in-depth review.
(Source: Videocardz, Der8auer, Skatterbencher [1] [2])
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