Planning to overclock my Ryzen 3900x to 4.2 GHz, but need clarification on a certain BIOS option first.

[ProtoflareX]

As mentioned in the title, I'm planning to overclock my Ryzen 3900x to 4.2 GHz in the Gigabyte Aorus Elite BIOS. I'm aware that doing so is as simple as setting "CPU Clock Ratio" to 42.00. However, I'm not familiar with the "CPU Clock Control" setting. Would anyone be willing to explain to me what exactly this setting does and if it is relevant to overclocking?

[Metallus97]

what are the options? I guess I know what this setting does but dont wanna tell BS

[ProtoflareX]

1 minute ago, Metallus97 said:

what are the options? I guess I know what this setting does but dont wanna tell BS

What are the options? As in what options do I have to pick from if I select it?

[5x5]

What is the intended reault? Honestly precision boost and xfr will give better results likely.

[Metallus97]

Just now, 5x5 said:

What is the intended reault? Honestly precision boost and xfr will give better results likely.

hmmm not when properly OCing and with a proper cooler. Although the performance delta being gained by a manual OC is small and not worth the extra power+heat 

[ch3w2oy]

Overclocking the 3900X to 4.2, IMO, is pointless and may only see improved results during benchmarks but the opposite in real life tasks. 

[ProtoflareX]

5 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

What is the intended reault? Honestly precision boost and xfr will give better results likely.

My goal was to improve gaming performance. Not to imply that I'm dissatisfied with my current gaming performance, but I'm sure I can get a little more performance out of it while still being within safe voltages and temperatures.

[ProtoflareX]

1 minute ago, ch3w2oy said:

Overclocking the 3900X to 4.2, IMO, is pointless and may only see improved results during benchmarks but the opposite in real life tasks. 

If I understand correctly, you're saying overclocking the 3900x has potential to decrease performance? Even in a task such as gaming?

[ch3w2oy]

6 minutes ago, ProtoflareX said:

If I understand correctly, you're saying overclocking the 3900x has potential to decrease performance? Even in a task such as gaming?

My 3800X boosts to 4.4GHz while playing Apex.. For gaming, I would not use a manual OC.. I mean I can OC manually for 4.4 but that's as high as I can currently go and then I lose my boosting to 4.5GHz for lighter tasks.. Trade off isn't worth it I don't think..

 

I haven't really looked at benchmarks lately but I'm pretty sure you should  be able to boost higher than 4.2 while gaming.. 

[DildorTheDecent]

23 minutes ago, ProtoflareX said:

 

CPU Clock Control: "Allows you to manually set the base clock in 1MHz increments"

 

Source: motherboard manual. Blows my mind that this isn't the first resource people turn too.

[ProtoflareX]

5 minutes ago, ch3w2oy said:

My 3800X boosts to 4.4GHz while playing Apex.. For gaming, I would not use a manual OC.. I mean I can OC manually for 4.4 but that's as high as I can currently go and then I lose my boosting to 4.5GHz for lighter tasks.. Trade off isn't worth it I don't think..

 

I haven't really looked at benchmarks lately but I'm pretty sure you should  be able to boost higher than 4.2 while gaming.. 

Now that you mention it, its capability to boost itself when performing demanding tasks would make overclocking pretty pointless wouldn't it? That fact completely eluded me until I read your post.

[ch3w2oy]

Just now, ProtoflareX said:

Now that you mention it, its capable to boost itself when performing demanding tasks would make overclocking pretty pointless wouldn't it? That fact completely eluded me until I read your post.

3900X is suppose to boost to 4.6 but I would expect 4.3-4.45 while gaming.. 

[5x5]

11 minutes ago, ProtoflareX said:

My goal was to improve gaming performance. Not to imply that I'm dissatisfied with my current gaming performance, but I'm sure I can get a little more performance out of it while still being within safe voltages and temperatures.

Yeah, then let XFR and PB2 work. Manual over locking will reduce gaming performance.

[paulmohr]

From what I have seen a manual overclock will help some in multi threaded tasks, at least in R15. The down side is it will pretty much lock your cpu into 4.2ghz. PBO will be better for single core stuff because it will boost certain cores to 4.4 or so. For example with my 3600 if I run it stock it will boost to like 4.125 multi core and 4.2 single core. With pbo on it will boost to 4.1 multi core, but it will boost to like 4.4 on single core. I if I manually overclock it to 4.2 that is all I am getting regardless of what I do. And the most I can get out of mine at reasonable voltages and remain stable is 4.25. And with pbo it will still idle down and stuff like its supposed to. However with mine using pbo it was hyper sensitive to anything it remotely saw as being work and shoot the voltage and heat up. So I turned it off and just run it at the bios default settings. And like was mentioned, that was only in benchmarks and testing. It had no percieved effect on anything I was doing normally with my computer. Sure it might have gotten me a few more frames per second in some games but I already get more than I need anyway. Now if I was barely getting 60 fps or it was lower and overclocking it gave me 70 or 75 fps then yes, it would be worth it. But if I am already getting 250 fps in a game and overlcoking gets me 257 it really isn't worth the effort or stress on my system lol. Same with rendering, if I render something and it takes 10 minutes stock and overclocking gets it to 9 or 9.5 minutes it really isn't helping me any. Now if it cut my time in half, then yes it would be worth it. And luckily for me I don't do any of that kind of stuff anymore so it really isn't worth it to me.

 

If you have the time on your hands it can't really hurt to test it as long as you are safe about it. Maybe it will be different in your specific use case. Just don't be shocked if it doesn't.

[paulmohr]

2 hours ago, ProtoflareX said:

Now that you mention it, its capability to boost itself when performing demanding tasks would make overclocking pretty pointless wouldn't it? That fact completely eluded me until I read your post.

Correct. AMD pretty much said they designed these to work about as well as they could out of the box. They didn't leave a lot of hidden performance in them that you could unlock with overclclocking. Some people don't like this because it ruins their fun. Some just like to tinker. But for the average consumer this is a great thing.

[sgloux3470]

4 hours ago, ProtoflareX said:

If I understand correctly, you're saying overclocking the 3900x has potential to decrease performance? Even in a task such as gaming?

The stock behaviour will boost 1-2 cores to much higher speeds than you will ever get with an all core manual OC.  For gaming this is often more beneficial than making the entire chip faster.