Overclocking Ryzen 3700X and 3900X on Cascade -110c
I had a chance to test and overclock the new AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X processors and the results exceeded expectations in IPC performance yet disappointed in the lack of scaling with cold. This platform challenges Intel's high end desktop parts with aggressive pricing and performance when compared. The 9900K firmly holds the overclocking records for 8 core but AMD has really stepped up and put the pressure on with pricing and performance. This platform responds well with simple tuning of memory and fabric despite only reaching 5Ghz.
https://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/ryzen_9_3900x/
I feel the results we submit to the database are important to buyers who may want to get an sense of what is possible, they may own a similar setup will get tens or hundreds of thousands or more views. Most elite benchers today will only run benchmarks if it gives points and ignore all else. If a benchmark does not give points it wont get run has become normal and accepted. My goal was to load the databases with results in most categories for launch. My results are repeatable and tuned sub zero. My samples are retail parts in full retail boxes, exact to what you would get from a store.
In all of my screen shots I show bios revision used, best bios of the two boards is Asus 0057 1.0.0.2 for allowing me to run max temp and reboot. I ran with the 1.31 10.0.03 bios on MSI Godlike.
On the initial setup of both chips I noticed and noted the high core voltage being reported in windows (1.47v) on both chips at stock even though a much lower vcore was needed to run at stock speeds.
With the lower TDP on both chips I expected my cooling to go a bit farther than 5Ghz but the IPC was good enough to pull off several global first place runs and a world record pre launch. Asus had the better cold bios for me at launch, I ran best with the older 0057 bios as seen in most of my submissions.
Of these two boards I like the Hero better, it was a far better overclocking experience with minimal reboots and bios resets. Recovery was quick from failed settings and no cold boot bug issues with bios 0057. The Godlike I spent quite a bit of time fighting with a cold boot bug at -80c on the 3700X as well as the board was a bit pickier booting with bad settings. Both chips seem to have the same Mhz limits and the same voltage ranges despite being different TDP chips. Memory overclocking and bandwidth has improved greatly, booting in at 4200C16 was possible on both boards with on the Trident Z 3600C16 samples sent with the kits.
I spent quite a bit of time testing each core of both chips, the 3700X @ -110c could only reach 5.2Ghz for CPUZ, 5.1Ghz bench able without SMT and 5Ghz threaded. The 3900X was a better bin and the CBB was around -110c and that is close to the max temp of the cascade. This chip could complete PCMark 7 at 5.27Ghz with SMT off. After testing all 20 cores none were able to go more than one bin above the rest of the cores successfully, I was hoping to find a good core or two for single threaded stuff and CPUZ but my cores were not scaling much past 5Ghz. Another thing I noticed is you can get within 25Mhz of your cores max frequency and have excellent stability.
Scaling past 5Ghz was an uphill battle with huge increase in vcore needed to just get 100Mhz stable. 1.4v stock, 1.5v 5Ghz, 1.6v for 5.2Ghz no SMT.
Ryzen hits a brick wall, a window of operational speed that ends pretty quickly and futile try and muscle passed without more cold, a wall that voltage and cold should scale the CPU higher yet doesn't. Capacity of the cascade was not a problem at all for these chips other than I exceeded the CBB that required shutting down the cascade.
Both boards are excellent boards and it would be a tough choice but if I had to choose between these two boards I would take the Hero for overall performance and ease of use, getting past the cold boot bug made my life easier. The Godlike has a great package with 10G add PCIe in card included, the Godlike has a bit more RGB/LCD bling too.
