AMD Ryzen Sample Hits 5 GHz OC on Air

Earlier in the month, we got our first full review of the upcoming Ryzen processor. CPC Hardware, a French magazine publication, managed to get their hands on a Ryzen engineering sample and run a whole suite of tests on it. In a hidden easter egg just discovered, CPC has revealed their maximum air overclock on their Ryzen sample.

In a cryptic string of binary code, CPC left this hidden message “ZenOC@Air=5G”. Considering that the sample only ran at 3.15 GHz base, 3.3 GHz all core boost and 3.5 GHz for the single core boost, 5 GHz is pretty good. This raises hopes that AMD may be able to blow past their 3.4 GHz target and push for high stock clocks.

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Of course, this cryptic statement leaves a lot to be desired. For one, we have no idea how this overclocked was achieved. Was it a one-off run that kills the chip, are the voltages sustainable 24/7, what is the load temperature and how stable is it? We also don’t know if AMD’s new SMT was enabled or how many cores manage to hit that speed. Lastly, we must also consider the fact that this is an engineering sample, but this should be a positive fact since ES tend to run slower than retail samples. Overall, it does paint a picture that Ryzen and Zen has a lot of overclocking potential and AMD has not sacrificed too much clock speed for the IPC and efficiency gains.