AMD's AGESA 1.0.0.4 Update Reportedly Increases Ryzen's All-Core Boost Clocks

Tsing

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There's a possibility that AMD's next AGESA update will improve the already-impressive performance of its Ryzen processors even further. Computerbase.de has tested a beta version of 1.0.0.4 and found that it increased the all-core clock speeds of its Ryzen 7 3800X processor from 4.245 GHz to 4.325 GHz. This was without Precision Boost Overdrive enabled.

While this testing is far from conclusive, as it only tests a single motherboard and a single processor, it showcases what could be another notable step forward for AMD's AGESA code. In a recent livestream, MSI confirmed that AMD had AGESA plans which extended to AGESA 1.0.0.7, which means that even more improvements are on the way.
 
That's great,

Though I am less concerned with all coor boost clocks than I am with lightly threaded boost clocks.

For instance, I want to see what the 12-24 core moanters do when they are - for instance - running a game that hits 4-6 threads.
 
ASRock is a bit slow on their BIOS updates (anything below the X570 anyways) .. I won't see this for a loooooooong while for my lowly X470 :cry:
 
People need to understand that clock speed increases do not necessarily equal performance. When we've seen this in the past, it sometimes retards performance even if the clock speeds are actually higher.
 
Dan_D said:
People need to understand that clock speed increases do not necessarily equal performance. When we've seen this in the past, it sometimes retards performance even if the clock speeds are actually higher.
Click to expand...

I've seen that at the border of stability when overclocking, if you push it too far, but it isn't quite crashing you can sometimes get better performance by backing off just a tiny bit, but other than that, I don't expect this behavior.

I certainly expect a diminishing return with clock speed (as with everything else in the world), as the further you push it, the more you move the bottleneck to another system component, but provided the system is fully stable I have never seen this.

What systems have you seen it on? Do you have a theory as to why it happened?
 
I saw this in a few tests in my follow up to the first AGESA code updates we published awhile back. A regression in performance was seen in WinRAR (single-thread), POV-Ray, V-Ray, and Cinebench (multi-thread). The bulk of the tests showed anywhere from a minimal to a noticeable difference. However, the bulk of the tests showed performance gains ranging from minimal and significant in some cases.

The problem is, we don't really know what all the AGESA code contains. However, keep in mind that elements that impact performance beyond clock speed are present in the AGESA code. This would include settings that impact the onboard memory and PCIe controllers. Sometimes to gain clock speed, you have to make adjustments to these other values. When you do, that can have a negative impact on performance in some applications which may benefit from different values for these controllers.

We have been seeing this sort of thing for years. Back in the day, NVIDIA released a BIOS for its 680i SLI reference boards to improve overclocking headroom on quad-core CPU's. This was done by disabling PCIe spread spectrum. This caused issues with LSI SAS controllers and other third party controllers like the Dell Perc5 and offerings from Areca. As a result, people like myself who were running one of these controllers weren't happy because our drives literally disappeared and the controller stopped working.

This change effected a minute amount of customers, but did improve CPU overclocking. It's a situation like that where some values in the AGESA code can impact performance negatively. However, for the most part increases in clock speed will compensate for that. The differences are usually relatively insignificant.

I am simply pointing out that these improvements are generally not something to get excited about. The slight clock speed increases are the kind of thing you'll only see in benchmarks.
 
ThreeDee said:
ASRock is a bit slow on their BIOS updates (anything below the X570 anyways) .. I won't see this for a loooooooong while for my lowly X470 :cry:
Click to expand...

IDK.. they were pretty quick with the initial BIOS updates. Last I read they were skipping ABBA all together for the next update for anything below x570. I feel you though. I have a 3600 on an x370 from ASRock. And while it's rock solid, it doesn't go over 4.0ghz on its own.
 
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