Legacy Bug Causes AMD’s 7950X to Appear to be Running at 6.3 GHz
Bear in mind the notorious RTC bug that brought on AMD Ryzen 3000 (codenamed Matisse) chips to truly run quicker than anticipated, wasn’t it really? Evidently the bug has by no means gone away and infrequently impacts AMD’s newest Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) processors, which rival the very best CPUs in the marketplace.
Russian tech blogger Professional High Technology (opens in new tab) He shared a video of a subscriber exhibiting his Ryzen 9 7950X waking up from sleep mode and clocking 6.28 GHz. That is clearly a bug because the Ryzen 9 7950X is clocked at 5.7GHz, so it is inconceivable for the 16-core chip to surpass 6GHz alone with out guide overclocking. Sadly, the person didn’t share the mannequin or firmware model of the motherboard. So, we aren’t positive if a specific AMD AGESA firmware is inflicting the error.
The trick is reportedly to include reaching the utmost clock velocity of the Ryzen processor after which placing the system to sleep. Because of this, the clock velocity magically skyrockets exponentially. The processor appears to run quicker even in benchmarks like Cinebench or Corona. In actuality, the processor doesn’t work past its specs; as a substitute, what seems to be the return of the RTC error is to trick benchmarks.
The RTC bug dates again to 2013, across the Home windows 8 period. The flaw was extra evident in Intel processors on the time, together with Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and Haswell. AMD processors had been affected, however not as a lot as their Intel counterparts. The RTC error primarily concerned altering the bus frequency of the processor. Modifications made throughout the BIOS had been acceptable, however altering the frequency on the software program stage may mess up Home windows 8’s timer.
Benchmarks, together with Cinebench and Corona, measure the time it takes the processor to render a scene. A slower inner timer will trigger the software program to suppose it takes much less time for the processor to finish the benchmark. If customers measured time with a stopwatch and in contrast the time displayed by the software program, a big disparity can be evident. The person who posted the video noticed a 15% distinction in render occasions between the 2 measurements. Subsequently, the abnormally excessive clock velocity mixed with the RTC error creates the phantasm that the Ryzen processor is offering extra efficiency, however it isn’t.
Microsoft reportedly fastened the RTC bug with later variations of Home windows, however Zen 2 chips had been nonetheless inclined to the issue. We’re at present on Zen 4 and it appears the bug has not gone away. It is stunning {that a} bug found nearly a decade in the past nonetheless lingers within the shadows. The error won’t break your system or trigger efficiency degradation. Fairly, it convinces much less skilled customers that their processor is over-performing. On the finish of the day, it is a placebo impact, and customers and reviewers ought to be cautious, particularly the latter, as a result of error scales will tip over Ryzen processors.
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