Is somebody having fun overclocking Ryzen CPUs with Apple iMac?
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at 6.0 GHz
AMD has recently been eager to provide samples to extreme overclockers to test their Ryzen processors. Historically speaking, AMD Ryzen CPUs were not overclocking monsters, but they tend to provide a lot of performance once fine-tunned, which usually is a very time-consuming task.
There are two entries in the Geekbench benchmark database, as discovered by @TUM_APISAK. The entries don’t list the Ryzen 9 5950X name directly but use AMD OPN code (100-000000059-37_46/35_N ), which can then be traced back to the CPU through AMD’s own website.
The processors appear to be overclocked to 6 GHz. At this time we are not sure if this is really overclocking or a software bug, but the data collected by the benchmark is quite clear.
In order to see the actual clock speeds of the sample used for this benchmark, one must access a .gb5 file. These files are accessible through the website. They contain a raw JSON output with all the data recorded during the test. As it shows, the CPU clock speed has been oscillating between 5.922 to 6.02 GHz (as shown in a screenshot below).
Please note that this clock speed was most likely achieved with very good cooling (possibly liquid nitrogen). It does not mean Zen3 CPUs will overclock to such frequencies for all users.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X clocked at 6.02 GHz, Source: Geekbench
The benchmark of the Ryzen 9 3900X running at 5.89 GHz has also been spotted. Clearly, somebody is having a lot of fun at Apple or AMD headquarters. It’s hard to imagine that any extreme overclocker would be testing the stability in macOS.
Twitter user @harukaze5719 has been quick to create a comparison chart for this leak. It demonstrates how much faster the overclocker 5950X really use compared to AMD’s own Ryzen 9 3950X and Intel Core i9-10900K (both running stock clocks).
AMD Ryzen 5950X (overclocked) compared, Source: @harukaze5719
AMD will officially launch its Ryzen 5000 series featuring Zen3 architecture on November 5th. The Ryzen 9 5950X will retail at 799 USD. This CPU will feature 16-cores and 32-threads with a TDP at 105W and boost clock up to 4.9 GHz. AMD has not yet officially commented on the overclocking potential of the Zen3 CPUs yet.
Source: Geekbench #1, #2 via @TUM_APISAK
