April 20, 2022. It is on this date that AMD will make the official release of ryzen 7 5800X3D, octa-core processor that promises plenty of performance in games and other demanding activities. This will be possible in part thanks to 3D V-Cache technology. But it brings a “side effect”: it prevents overclocking on the chip.
The Ryzen 7 5800X3D was unveiled by AMD earlier this year during CES 2022. The processor attracted attention for being the first model of the brand to come with 3D V-Cache (hence the ‘3D’ in the name). It is basically a encapsulation technology that stacks layers of cache memory at the top of the CPU.
What is the use of this approach? With it, AMD can supplement the CPU with more L3 cache memory without, however, having to increase the chip area. In addition, the physical distance between cores and cache memory is shorter, making communication between these components faster.
According to AMD, 3D V-Cache also allows the processor to support up to 192 MB of L3 cache. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D will go out of the factory with 96 MB of this type of memory. It is a much lower amount than the limit, but still quite expressive. How can you not get excited about it?
It has 3D V-Cache, but overclocking…
Here, then, this March, rumors that the chip would not be enabled for overclocking have gained traction. Strange, isn’t it? After all, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has among its audiences precisely users who enjoy extracting the most from their PCs.
But it’s true. This week, during a conference with HotHardware, Robert Hallock, AMD’s director of technical marketing, confirmed that the new processor will not support any kind of voltage or frequency overclocking.
The explanation is that the processor voltage is limited to 1.35 V, a value that is slightly below the range in other Ryzen 5000 processors (usually 1.45 V to 1.5 V).
Why is there such a limit? Simply because 3D V-Cache technology is not optimized enough to work with something above 1.35 V.
This makes the Ryzen 7 5800X3D the first AMD Ryzen processor to have official overclocking support. At least you can make adjustments to the Infinity Fabric (component interconnection technology) parameters and the memory bus.
As if to reassure on-call enthusiasts, Robert Hallock tried to make it clear: this limitation will not last in line; the next chips relying on 3D V-Cache technology will not meet this barrier.