AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D does not support overclocking or PBO.Zilch | Computer Gamer
The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is AMD’s first consumer offering for its 3D V-cache technology, which adds another 64MB of L3 cache to its chips by physically mounting the cache on top of existing CPUs. The original CPU was slimmed down slightly to make room for this cache to ensure the overall package looks like any other Zen 3 CPU. This means it will work with existing coolers on existing motherboards. So far, so good.
The downside to adding this cache, though, is that AMD had to disable overclocking on the 5800X3D – in fact, this was confirmed by Robert Hallock a month ago. This is because frequency and voltage are inherently tied to how the cache works, so any tweaks to the CPU settings can disrupt timing and disrupt the entire process.
Not only can you not overclock the chip, but you can also underclock and underclock, and use AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive PBO for even more performance. PBO is an automatic overclocking scheme that pushes the power budget of a chip to increase performance. It’s been the go-to way to get more performance out of AMD chips for the past few generations, and the fact that it’s not available here is a little surprising.
It’s not the end of the world for many gamers, as many won’t come close to overclocking of any kind anyway, not even PBO fire and forget easily. It does mean, though, that there’s little point in overcooling the system, as there’s no way to benefit from those efforts.
Before the tinkerers ditch the new chips en masse, though, here’s some good news that the Infinity Fabric and memory bus can still be overclocked. So if you don’t want to get the most out of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, there’s still something to play with. Playing around with the 5800X3D is definitely the reason it exists, as the extra L3 cache can do wonders for some (but not all) games.
Where there is a will, there is a chance pic.twitter.com/q7yYE6whpmApril 13, 2022
However, some people were lucky enough to use BCLK overclocking to get a little extra performance from their samples, suggesting that higher speeds are possible. In our case, on the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, we didn’t have any luck pushing our chip further by wisely waving the BCLK stick.
But we’ll keep plugging it in and see if it goes anywhere.