AMD Ryzen 9000X3D could get full overclocking abilities, making life even more difficult for Intel Arrow Lake CPUs

One of the major drawbacks of 3D V-Cache solved?

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AMDcould offer gamers the chance to go further with juicing up next-gen Ryzen 9000X3D processors when they arrive, making them even speedier (in theory).

Wccftechgrabbed the scoop on this one, and asserts – without indicating the exact source, so add a hearty pinch of salt here – that it has learned that AMD’s plan is to offer the ability to fully overclock 3D V-Cache CPUs from theRyzen 9000 range.

A little backstory here: the addition of 3D V-Cache to processors meant AMD pulled back on the overclocking front, due to this cache making chips more sensitive to the changes in voltage needed to ramp up CPUs in this way.

If you recall, the first-gen Ryzen 5000X3D processors offered no ability to overclock or fine-tune the chip at all, although with Ryzen 7000X3D, AMD did introduce some limited tuning in the form of support for Precision Boost Overdrive or PBO (a small amount of automatically applied overclocking, essentially).

However,full manual overclocking– changing the voltage yourself, assuming you know what you’re doing, of course – is apparently inbound for Ryzen 9000X3D processors, with the apparent caveat that there’ll be certain safety limits imposed by AMD.

Analysis: Another potential headache for Intel

So, at least with next-gen 3D V-Cache, AMD is seemingly looking to allow full overclocking, albeit with Wccftech’s caveat that “there might still be a few checks in place to safeguard the [3D V-Cache].”

As we’ve already said, we must be cautious about taking this at face value, but it does make some sense that AMD improved first-gen to second-gen 3D V-Cache to make use of PBO, so Team Red may well be taking another step forward with this third-gen take.

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X3D processors aregreat for PC gamingas we’ve seen in the past, so enthusiast gamers will doubtless be excited about the ability to further ramp up performance – given a good enough CPU cooler, no doubt.

It’s also another blow toIntelin the grand scheme of things. So far, in the next-gen CPU wars, Ryzen 9000 processors are imminent (due later this month), whereas Arrow Lake is still a fair way off going by rumors.

On top of that, further chatter from the grapevinesuggests that Ryzen 9000X3D could debut very swiftly– maybe at the same time as, or even before, Arrow Lake – and if AMD’s chips offer beefier overclocking chops too, that’ll put Intel even more on the back foot when it comes to the rankings of thebest CPUs.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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