AMD Ryzen 3000: How high does Zen 2 clock?

tl; dr: AMD Ryzen 3000 (test) is a big hit, even if teething troubles with the BIOS and the delivery situation clouded the start. And then there’s the discussion about the advertised maximum turbo speed, which picked up speed on the weekend. BitcoinMinersHashrate provides an overview and once again calls for testing.

AMD Ryzen 3000 still dominates the reporting even seven weeks after the launch, the interest in Zen 2 is undiminished. Nevertheless, many users now feel reminded of the teething problems of the first generation. The ecosystem of processor, mainboard, BIOS and AGESA code still leaves an unfinished impression in many places.

The discussion about the promised turbo clock

For weeks, the discussion has also been about the maximum turbo clock speeds promised by AMD. The official maximum clock rate refers to the maximum clock rate that can be achieved by Ryzen 3000 with Zen 2 under load on one core. Many users have never seen it in relevant tools, others have. So far, it has not been possible to determine whether the CPU, the mainboard or its BIOS and its AMD microcode AGESA are responsible for this. For a short time, AMD only said that the maximum turbo speed was possible under standard conditions. AMD didn’t say what they look like.

The topic was picking up speed at the weekend. The testimony of an Asus employee who was in the forum of Overclock.net had commented on the turbo clock speeds of AMD Ryzen 3000. His claim: AMD slowed down the turbo clock with new AGESA versions. AMD was too aggressive with the turbo clock in the older versions, with a view to long-term reliability it was now designed lower (than advertised).

They were being too aggressive with the boost previously, the current boost behavior is more in line with their confidence in long term reliability and I have not heard of any changes to this stance, tho I have heard of a ‘more customizable’ version in the future.

shamino1978 in the Overclock.net forum

Nothing will change about the new direction of the AGESA code towards more reliability due to less aggressive turbo clock rates, at least not with AGESA 1.0.0.4, the Asus employee continues.

Every new BIOS I get asked the boost question all over again, I have not tested a newer version of AGESA that changes the current state of 1003 boost, not even 1004.

shamino1978 in the Overclock.net forum

Available tests do not support the claim

But after a closer inspection, the Asus employee’s statement does not stand up to the comparison with available data. Like a broad-based test by Hardware unboxed has resulted in an AMD Ryzen 3800X, in turn advertised by AMD with a maximum of 4.50 GHz turbo clock, on fourteen different mainboards between 4,370 MHz and 4,550 MHz and this completely independently of the AGESA version used. On the contrary, the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Extreme achieves the highest turbo clock of 4.55 GHz with the latest AGESA code 1.0.0.3.abb – which is even higher than the promised turbo. The test does not give a clear picture.