A survey conducted by hardware Youtuber Der8auer, with the results made available on his channel on September 1st, has shown strong evidence that Ryzen 3000 CPUs were failing to deliver on their specified boost levels. His video explains his methodology in detail and while a public survey of CPU might not be the most accurate in terms of getting specific performance data, the overall trends that he has discovered are difficult to deny.
Sure enough AMD are not denying them. A statement from Max Powley, senior account executive at AMD reads:
“AMD is pleased with the strong momentum of 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen™ processors in the PC enthusiast and gaming communities. We closely monitor community feedback on our products and understand that some 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen users are reporting boost clock speeds below the expected processor boost frequency. While processor boost frequency is dependent on many variables including workload, system design, and cooling solution, we have closely reviewed the feedback from our customers and have identified an issue in our firmware that reduces boost frequency in some situations. We are in the process of preparing a BIOS update for our motherboard partners that addresses that issue and includes additional boost performance optimizations. We will provide an update on September 10 to the community regarding the availability of the BIOS.”
It makes sense for something like a performance boost to be more context dependent than the standard clock speed for the CPU. Getting to the problem of how it might be underperforming could have been extremely complicated. As such it is encouraging that a specific issue has already been identified. We’ll have to wait and see if it is as easy to fix as it was to find.