AMD has discovered an issue in its Ryzen 3000 firmware which reduces its processors’ boost frequency “in some situations.” It has just now released a statement about its findings after recent investigations and feedback has suggested that as many as 94% of its 12-core Ryzen 3900X CPUs failed to reach their advertised boost clock speeds.
The company is currently working on an update it hopes to release soon which will be disseminated to its motherboard partners for them to create new BIOS software to spread out to the affected AMD processor users.
Yesterday CPU guru, De8auer, released the results of his public investigation into the widely reported failures of AMD’s latest 7nm processors to hit their advertised clock speeds. He found that the Ryzen 9 3900X was the worst offender, with less than 6% capable of their rated speeds, but that the slower Ryzen 5 3600 came out on top with a one-in-two chance of users being able to hit its advertised 4.2GHz boost frequency. Though, it has to be said, even taking that into account they’re still the processors we would recommend to PC gamers.
“AMD is pleased with the strong momentum of 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors in the PC enthusiast and gaming communities,” reads the AMD statement. “We closely monitor community feedback on our products and understand that some 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen users are reporting boost clock speeds below the expected processor boost frequency.
“While processor boost frequency is dependent on many variables including workload, system design, and cooling solution, we have closely reviewed the feedback from our customers and have identified an issue in our firmware that reduces boost frequency in some situations.”
So yes, there is some problem at the heart of the AMD Ryzen processors which is stopping them from performing at their best. That might not sound like particularly great news – and I’m sure there will be some within AMD feeling pretty frustrated right now – but the flipside of it is that the Ryzen 3000 CPUs are about to get a performance boost if the touted BIOS update works.
Looking on the bright side, eh?
“We are in the process of preparing a BIOS update for our motherboard partners,” says AMD, “that addresses that issue and includes additional boost performance optimizations. We will provide an update on September 10 to the community regarding the availability of the BIOS.”
So roll on September 10, and roll on the update. Looks like we’re going to have a whole lot more benchmarking to do soon. Fingers crossed that means the upcoming 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X will be regularly able to hit its promised 4.7GHz boost clock, making it the ultimate enthusiast gaming processor we were hoping for.
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