Putting AMD Back Into the Game

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

- Koh Wanzi

We began hearing about ryzen even when aMD was still struggling with its bumbling Bulldozer architecture. Originally known as Zen, this was the chip that would introduce new competition at the high-end of the desktop market.

Ryzen features a bunch of new sensing and adaptive prediction technologies known as SenseMi. The core of this is a trio of features – pure power, precision Boost, and Extended Frequency range (XFr) – built into the hardware itself that are able to continuously adjust the chip’s clock speed, voltage, and temperature to reduce power consumption and maximize performance.

Sensors at the chip level enable constant monitoring and adjustments, so while pure power enables more efficient power delivery, Precision Boost allows granular 25MHz increments in frequency, and XFr will boost clock speeds beyond the official range if the cooling solution allows.

For the ryzen 7 1800X, XFr is a modest 100MHz boost to 4.1GHz from its 3.6GHz base clock, but it’s worth noting that the feature is only enabled on ryzen “X” chips. it also only works across two cores at once, and not all eight, so the difference will be most apparent in single-threaded tasks.