World News – CA – AMD explains why it didn’t go for 5 GHz with Ryzen 5000: «  We always want to keep our promises  »

Joe Macri from AMD explains why the Ryzen 9 5950X sits at a tantalizing 4 shutdown 9 GHz clock speed but no more

Ever since we first laid eyes on the leaked specs of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors, we’ve all wondered if this generation would see AMD breaking the 5 GHz barrier right out of the box. We now know it doesn’t intend to, even with the Ryzen 9 5950X, but we also know these chips are capable of such high clock speeds. So what gives?

“Well first of all, we always want to keep our promises,” says Joe Macri of AMD at an engineering roundtable “It’s important to build trust with all of our users around the world and, you know, what allows the hearts to go at a high frequency is two things

« One is what we call a voltage frequency curve which is basically associated with each of the cores of the devices You know, process technology is not a constant, there is variability Some cores will simply be better than other hearts « 

Macri alludes to the so-called ‘silicon lottery’, which arose from the lithographic process on which these processors are built Each wafer contains hundreds of processor chips, each different, usually in a minor way, until ‘to the last that creates variance, and that variance is what separates the cream of overclocking from those that fall without a generous portion of voltage.

As Macri explains, AMD wanted to make sure that any given chip will actually hit its rated clock speed under normal and normal operating conditions. Basically, since the Ryzen 9 5900X is rated at 48 GHz, every chip available on the shelf should be able to hit 48 GHz while in use

All is not the same What you see is that variability allows you to break through what we promise

What’s interesting about the Ryzen 9 5900X is that in our testing and with a little help from AMD’s Precision Boost 2, this chip often flips at the 5 GHz limit without any overclocking But as Macri explains, it’s not just about the silicon lottery

« It’s a factor The other is the environment We look at the local voltage, the local temperature at the transistors And therefore efficiently if you have a good cooling solution, if the ambient temperature and the ambient temperature are at the right place, this will allow you to boost higher Power delivery is another part Again, this is not a constant, there is an inductance in the path that goes through the package Everything is not the same What you see, is that variability allows you to break through what we promise « 

So it’s up to you to decide, and if your PC configuration is up to par, whether or not you break through the 5 GHz barrier with some lucky chips. Moreover, which seems clear from the statement Macri is that AMD doesn’t want a rerun of the Ryzen 3000 launch, which has seen some users complain about not hitting the boost clocks advertised on some CPUs.

“But what we want to do is always keep our promises,” Macri continues. “So yes you will go above and in many cases you will go above And it may not be not a core when you go over it, that’s the beauty of the system we’ve built It’s dynamic, it reacts to the environment and it reacts to the real transistors that are based on that particular piece of silicon « 

So don’t be surprised if your brand new Ryzen 5000 chip underperforms or outperforms your peers – that’s natural, and that shouldn’t mean you’re getting slower than advertised speeds, even in the worst of circumstances. case In fact, for those unfamiliar with it, the silicon lottery was a much bigger deal for processor performance, where some of the best Intel chips had so much leeway that you could sometimes overclock them by 1 GHz and never not encounter any problems Those days are apparently over now, as Intel and AMD are running both processors to the extreme to stay as competitive as possible.

AMD’s Ryzen 5000 processors are out right now, and according to retailers’ predictions, they’re going to scale fast

There is no « Silicon Valley » where Jacob grew up, but a part of his home country is known as « The Valleys » and can therefore be easily mistaken for a happening place in the tech world From there he graduated to smash things professionally and then write about it for money in the city of Bath, UK

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Ryzen, AMD, Advanced Micro Devices, BOXX Technologies, Central Processing Unit