I’m aiming this entire thread @wendell as a response to the video he posted regarding boost clocks on zen2.
I love building PCs, testing and setting them up and I also like doing builds for sensible prices with a mixed bag of new and a couple used components to get the price to something sensible.
So with the above in mind its no surprise to find I like Ryzen a lot. It suits my purposes well because you can build nice machines for good prices when basing it on Ryzen.
I’ve had quite a few ryzen chips, am4 boards and DDR4 and id like to share my experiences with clock speeds and stability and compatibility issues.
1600x bought within a month of launch. Put on B350m mortar MSI with Corsair 3000 c15 1.35v 2x8gb. About 6 months of bios updates before I could get ram past 2400 and about 9 months to actual use XMP. All core is right on the money at 3.66 and single core to this day (with every bios update) still never seen over 3.9 with my eyes on task manager. system always scores well on userbenchmark
1500x bought a week after launch. asrock b350m. gskill 2800 c15. 1.25v 2x4gb. This chip was actual great. All core was right on the money at 3.57 and it regular hit 3.88 visible on task manager on single core. This came stronger and stronger as the bios updates rolled out and at build the ram would only go 2666 but then it went xmp within 6 months and then I got to the point I could xmp and then manually notch it up to 3000 still at 1.25v Never had a minutes bother and always over performed. scored top 10% on user benchmark always.
1700x (ive had 2) both bought used for builds this year.
first one was recycled into my asrock b350m board. fitted with 3000 c16 1.35v 2x8gb corsair and xmp was fine. Had either a compatibility issue or a bad ram stick as it was intermittently reporting single channel so ram was swapped out for 2666 c16 1.25v patriot 2x8gb which did xmp and manually notched up to 2933. had no issues other than that. 1700x runs bang on all core 3.45ish and like the 1600x I have I never see high single core clocks on task manager but the pc scores well on userbenchmark.
Second 1700x is on an Gigabyte b450m ds3h board. Gigabyte 2666 c16 1.2v 2x8gb. Xmp works fine but gigabyte don’t allow you to then try higher speeds in their bios sadly.
CPU performance is exactly the same as the other 1700x. Boost clocks 3.45ish and single core you never see near the advertised on task manager.
1800x Bought used this year. Asrock b450m Pro4. 2x16GB 2666 c16 Corsair. I also tried Corsair 3000 c15 1.35v 2x8gb which would not run xmp even in 2019. the 32gb kit runs xmp and then is notched up to 2800 which is where it seems happy. it was flakey at 3000 and a bit hit and miss. all core is again bang on at 3.66 but same as the rest single core I never see anything like advertised in task manager
I feel I have had enough of these chips to have a fair basis for opinion on them and with regard to boost. Its how the chip is used. If we use windows defender quick scan as a basis for checking clock speeds you find it is a single thread load. the 1500x because its a 4c8t behaves like a 6700 or 7700 and boosts high on one core and looks great.
If you do the same test on any other Ryzen chip with higher core count the performance seems to be less than the 1500x as they do not boost as high due to other tasks being spread onto other cores where that seems not to happen on the 1500x.
I believe this is due to windows looking at the 1500x like it were a 6700 or 7700 and handling it the same way as them and windows seeing higher core count Ryzen as more like x99 or x299 chips and handling them like they would the intel HEDT or something but please correct me if I am wrong.
I also feel I have been through bios settings over and over making minor changes one at a time to see where the performance is hiding to say… its not hiding, either the high clock boosts are so quick task manager doesn’t see them or there is still some kind of optimisation to be had in windows for Ryzen, probably for all generations