A comprehensive auto-overclocking tool for AMD Ryzen processors built using the Zen 2 architecture has been released. The long-awaited ClockTuner for Ryzen (CTR) application helps you find which of your many CCXs (a complex of processing cores) is best suited to a little juicing for top performance.
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AMD Ryzen 3000 processors aren't noted for being fantastic overclockers—it's often just assumed AMD pushed these chips to the edge so you don't have to. That's not entirely factual, however, at least not if you're happy to get into the finer details in your pursuit for absolute PC power. For every CCX in your Zen 2 processor—each one is fit with up to four cores—there's an opportunity for even greater performance.
Developed by Yuri Bubliy, who also produced the popular DRAM Calculator tool for Ryzen, CTR helps you find the hidden performance lying just beneath the surface and often left untapped. You simply load up the CTR software and it will evaluate every core complex on your chip. How it judges this is down to various factors and variables, but essentially CTR helps you find those that will operate at the highest frequency for the least amount of power.
Once the software knows the lay of the land and the user has run the diagnostic step, you can then hit the start button and let CTR work its magic, adjusting frequencies and voltages to maintain optimum performance and energy efficiency. One you've found the perfect setting, hit create and save profile, and head to the built-in benchmark to see where it got you.
There's still a degree of the so-called silicon lottery involved in this process—some Ryzen processors will naturally clock higher for less voltage than others. But hey, CTR is an easy way to find that information and reap the benefits, whatever they may be.
And the reason for such a tool as this comes down to the very core of the Zen 2 architecture. Using multiple chiplets, AMD is able to offer a decent spread of processing cores for cheap, and within each of those chiplets, or CCDs, is a handful of CCXs. Each CCX could come with up to four-cores with the Zen 2 architecture, and the number of CCXs depends on your chip. The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X has a lot more core clusters in it than, say, the six-core Ryzen 5 3600.
What CTR is able to do is hone in on clock speeds at a CCX level—get right down to the silicon with granularity and flexibility. Figures provided by the developer show up to a 5 percent performance improvement in Cinebench R20 scoring, using the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X, thanks to CTR.
With Zen 3 sure to follow Zen 2's lead, we can expect there to be similar uses for such a tool with the next generation of Ryzen processors too.
So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, head on over to Guru3D for the software download. Just bear in mind that there are still some bugs and erroneous stats to fix with the final release yet. Also if you like the software and find it useful, consider firing a little money to the creator, Yuri Bubliy, on Patreon.
