Following a delay to contend with supply issues, AMD will launch its Ryzen 9 3950X processor with 16 physical cores and 32 threads of compute muscle in November, alongside the first round of third-generation Threadripper CPUs and just in time for Black Friday deals. On paper, it's a stout chip for multi-threaded workloads, but what kind of overclocking results can we expect? Gigabyte may have answered that question with the premature posting of an overclocking guide.
As spotted by Hexus the other day, Gigabyte posted an overclocking guide in PDF format related to its Aorus X570 Master motherboard. Gigabyte has since yanked the document offline, though not before curious eyeballs spied the pertinent details.
First let's go over the specs. The 3950X is a 16-core/32-thread CPU with a 3.5GHz base clock and 4.7GHz boost clock, 72MB of cache, and a 105W TDP. That boost rating is based on just two cores, though, rather than all 16.
Gigabyte's guide detailed its overclocking exploits with the 3950X sitting underneath an EK-KIT P360 liquid cooler with a 360mm radiator, all nestled alongside 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory.
Using that setup, Gigabyte found 3950X "can hit around 4.3GHz using around 1.4V." Out of numerous samples tested, there was one instance where Gigabyte hit 4.4GHz, but that was not the norm.
Gigabyte also provided some benchmark data. In Cinebench R15, here's what Gigabyte recorded (along with our own internal results from a Core i9-9980XE):
- 3950X @ 4.3GHz—4,384
- 3950X @ stock—3,932
- Core i9-9980XE @ stock—3,765
Gigabyte also noted temps were similar to what it was getting "last year using a Ryzen 7 2700X," which is a second-generation Ryzen chip with 8 cores and 16 threads.
We'll have to wait and see if Gigabyte's experience is indicative of what shipping retail silicon will be capable of. As it stands, though, the results look promising.
