AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X & 1950X Review

Overclocking Results – In Search of 4GHz

The ability to overclock through unlocked multipliers will always be one of jewels within Ryzen 3’s crown. To get that same feature on the Intel side will cost you significantly more since Team Blue has effectively locked out overclocking from all but their K-series SKUs and Z270 motherboards. AMD on the other hand has the B350 / Ryzen 3 combo that can go for over $150 less but do these processors actually have anything left in the tank or is the unlocked multiplier just window dressing? The answer to that is a bit complicated.

Overclocking Ryzen processors hasn’t changed one iota since their launch earlier this year. The process is straightforward: grab a good cooler, increase VCore, boost SOC voltage and start fiddling with multipliers until your system black screens. Then step back one level and try again. All of these CPUs have a predetermined power input limiter in place that’s determined by AMD’s algorithms and a specific processor’s attributes. As a rule of thumb, most Ryzen samples I’ve seen max out between 3.9GHz and 4.1GHz with a few trending lower than that. Ryzen 3 is no different but unlike with i3 processors, that still means there’s performance on tap for you to find.

To get the clock speeds you see below, I did things a bit differently than usual. I ended up using an ASUS B350 PRIME PLUS motherboard and a GTX 1080 (hence why the 3D results are a bit different).

Start off with the Ryzen 3 1300X and I was actually a bit surprised to see all the cores running at a constant 4GHz. That’s a pretty notable increase from the All Core Boost 3.6GHz and the resulting performance increases put this processor in direct competition with the i5-7500.

The Ryzen 3 1200 didn’t fare quite as well from an overall frequency standpoint but its rise from a lowly 3.1GHz all the way to 3.7GHz on all cores was impressive to say the least. This little guy can really put down the pedal to the metal through overclocking but you’ll need a good chip to insure stability above 3.5GHz.