Hey guys! I've got a few questions about the new AMD Ryzen platform and the overclocking behavior. I am used to my old but still snappy i7-2600K: With my board, I can define individual clockspeeds, depending on how many cores are currently being hammer. That way i get top single threaded performance and great multi-threaded performance without reaching dangerously high temperatures. Currently I have it running at ~4.2GHz on 4 cores and 4.6GHz if its single-threaded workload. Use imaginations to fill in the 2 and 3 core load scenarios. And when nothing happens, it runs at a cozy 1600MHz. Great! Anyway, I read that the Ryzen 7 1800x boosts to around 4GHz when the load is on around two threads, but lowers that when the coreload increases. Additionally, overclocking always locks the clockspeed for all cores, without downclocking when the load is low or only boosting some of the cores. Is any of that true? Will or can this behavior change with software/firmware/bios updates? TL;DR: Does overclocked Ryzen downclock on idle? Can cores be boosted individually like on intel? Can either change in the future? How is the power consumption on idle with a R7 overclocked at 4GHz compared to stock?
But the IPC is about 30% higher than SB, so overall it'll be faster. This is one of my gripes with Zen presently, there isn't any option to do dynamic overclocking (as you do with your 2600K OP), which I don't like. The ability to tune your CPU's performance within a power budget (say 200 W) with high clocks for single threaded loads and lower clocks for all cores would be great, but isn't there in the customisable domain yet... There is apparently a way of doing it on Zen using P-states, but I've not looked into that yet. This is why I'm still on the fence about Zen and considering an X99 built for my upgrade.
You can have the CPU's frequency change according to load, but only with default values you'll see stuff like 1-2 cores being faster than the others. On this platform, it isn't really a problem though as these CPUs never reach really high frequencies anyhow.
well, for a power efficiency standpoint, it still makes a lot of sense to do independent clockspeeds per core or only increase based on the load, with overclocking that is. it is especially interesting if you get the cheaper lower clocked 1700 and overclock the **** out of it. with great scaling and independent/individual clocks based on the load (threads used), you can get great performance and superb power efficiency. also, thanks to everyone who responded! I greatly appreciate the insight ;-) P.S. i plan on upgrading to ryzen once threadripper launched. i am hoping for an additional price drop on the 8-cores or a cheap entry 10-core threadripper setup for those beautiful additional pcie lanes. plus, the system might be more mature when it comes to RAM compatibility and i can buy cheaper dual rank modules instead. either way, its still over a month away by my estimations. i do not expect a performance increase for gaming, but for everything else, that is properly multithreaded. additionally i hope to see a decent power efficiency increase for identical workloads. and i plan on keeping it for years to come. I expect the future to be more multithreaded, including games, so the ryzen lineup is way better to upgrad to, than basically a new i7 that is just marginally faster than my ~6 years old CPU. P.P.S. not an amd fanboy. darn happy with my 2600k purchase back then and i dont regret it one bit, but intel doesnt have anything "new" to offer over my current setup at a reasonable price. plus, i like how amd doesnt differentiate between products aside from pure performance (think AES extension in earlier intel chips, overclock ability, etc.).
In theory, yes. But here, there isn't much headroom for higher single-core performance anyhow. My old 2600k gained 100MHz for 1-2 core work loads. I can safely assume that this didn't make a huge difference either.
well, its not just getting a bit more performance, its more about stable temperatures for me. so just clocking used cores higher is a lot more efficient than clocking them all to the max. which is what i hope to see with amd soon. not necessarily getting 4.2ghz or more on single core usage, but a more conservative clocking per core to lower overall power consumption and lower temperatures while maintaining performance (compared to the current way a ryzen currently clocks)
Are temperatures really an issue? Apart from the typical full-cores stress testing, I never saw any meaningful numbers. And even while stress testing, these CPUs were rather easy to cool down.
The temperature itself isn't exactly the issue (well, somewhat actually, in summer), but what one of it's symptomse is: fan noise i like it to be as quiet as possible and my current setup is already getting on my nerves. xD
I had a simple Prolimatech Megahalems for my 2600k and a single case gab (exhaust). Never ran into trouble or noise problems with that. Right now, I have to use water for my Ryzen as there's still no mounting kit for AM4 from Prolimatech. Hopefully I can get back to the Mega later on, the pump noise is nothing I'm too happy with.
I haven't upgraded to Ryzen just yet (wheres threadripper and my pricedrop? :banana, but I got myself a new cpu cooler (which is ryzen compatible with a free upgrade kit): BeQuiet Silent Loop 240. Absolutely fantastic for my first aio h2o cooler! Also, no pump noise whatsoever, which is was also why I went for this one (it has a reverse pump design, so it pulls the water through the cpu block instead of pushing it). As i'm new to AIO, i can only compare it to the Cooler Master Nepton 240M (friend is using it), which has a very distinct and noticeable pump noise. Too bad yours is so annoying. P.S. only the fans that come with the aio aren't the greatest
It's just annoying as now I know how silent a system can be Back in the days I loved this pump. DDCs are tiny in comparison to other pumps and still the strongest pumps for normal loops. I might try something less powerful in the future though as I'm only using it to cool my CPU, so there's no need for such a powerful pump.
