AMD confirms the Ryzen 7 5800X3D won't support overclocking

A few days back, we wrote that AMD was reportedly going to disable overclocking on its upcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor. That news has now been officially confirmed by AMD.

Robert Hallock, AMD’s Director of Technical Marketing confirmed that the first Ryzen CPU with 3D V-Cache wouldn’t support core or cache overclocking during an interview with Hot Hardware (via VideoCardz). AMD says that Infinity Fabric and memory overclocking is still enabled and it doesn’t rule out overclocking on future models.

In the video, Hallock explained that the voltage does not scale above 1.35V. He goes on to explain that the technology is yet to mature and that it's been developed with gamers in mind rather than overclockers. This makes sense as games are more likely to benefit from extra cache. We wouldn’t expect miracles until the technology further matures.

The lower clocks and lack of overclocking support point towards the 5800X3D being a niche product, likely with a low production volume. AMD is set to release Epyc chips with V-cache, so what little manufacturing capacity there is is surely being reserved for those high margin models. It would also make sense for AMD to iron out the kinks now, with what amounts to pilot production runs, rather than face any issues if or when Zen 4 CPUs with V-cache are launched.

AMD is touting the 5800X3D's gaming performance. The extra 64MB of cache over the 32MB of the base 5800X is reported to deliver a boost of up to 15% despite its 400MHz lower base clock and 200MHz lower boost clock.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is scheduled to launch on the 20th of April at $449. It’s just one of several new CPUs that AMD is launching over the coming weeks and months. They’re likely to be the last AM4 CPUs to launch before the arrival of Zen 4 CPUs later in 2022.