Overclocking The AMD Ryzen APUs: Guide and Results
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on April 16, 2018 2:30 PM ESTHow to Overclock With MSI UEFI BIOS
The MSI UEFI BIOS is aesthetically pleasing and is easy to navigate around. The core features between the board being used for testing today, the MSI B350I Pro AC, and other models in their AM4 line up such as the X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM are the same, with the same options for adjusting CPU core voltage, DRAM voltage and for the iGPU. It needs to be noted that the GFX Core voltage and CPU NB/SoC voltages are linked together; only one of them needs to be adjusted.
Hitting the Del key during system POST will get you into the first screen. The first screen is what MSI call ‘EZ mode’ which offers the basic panels for making minor adjustments.
Pressing F7 opens up the advanced section.
This offers high-level tabs for settings, OC and M-Flash. The overclocking panel is on the left, giving rise to the voltage parameters, CPU frequency multipliers, memory frequency, and the iGPU options.
On this particular board, all the options that need to be changed are all featured on the entry screen when the OC tab is selected. The CPU ratio can be adjusted by pressing +/- keys or by typing in a value. Voltage is in the Voltage Setting category a few options down, and is by default set to auto. For memory, XMP (shown as A-XMP) was set to profile 1 to enable DDR4-3333 mode.
The CPU core voltage options in the BIOS can only apply a maximum of 1.4 volts. Users looking to apply more can use the AMD Ryzen Master Utility which will allow for up to 1.55 V, although this is too much for ambient cooling and we would not recommend it. For our testing, this was set to 1.375 volts to match with our test setup and methodology settings. The memory voltage was manualy set to 1.35 volts to ensure it matched the specifications of our G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4’s first XMP profile.
Overclocking the graphics on our AMD Ryzen 3 2200G APU was also as easy as the rest, with the only settings needing changing is the GFX clock frequency, which we set to 1375 MHz.
When it comes to setting the voltages for the integrated graphics processor, the SoC voltage and the graphics voltage are linked, so changing one changes the other.
Once the settings are chosen, pressing F10 will bring up a summary of the changes made since the system was booted. Selecting yes will cause the system to reboot with the new settings.
Note: AMD’s Cool’n’Quiet function is automatically disabled on MSI motherboards when the CPU ratio is changed. Also, when OC explore mode is set from normal to expert, it opens up a setting called memory retry count. This is handy when manually overclocking memory as it will attempt to POST with a set variable amount, which automatically defaults at 5.
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0ldman79 - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
Setting the multiplier manually automatically disables Cool'n'quiet, can it be reenabled afterwards while keeping the higher multiplier?I plan on overclocking mine the same as my FX 6300, keep Cool'n'quiet, keep turbo and just push it all higher. I like the idle dropping down to nothing and I prefer to keep my turbo so single threaded apps (still have a few) get everything they can possibly get.
gavbon - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
You can re-enable it no problem, I only found it to automatically disable Cool'n'Quiet on MSI boards, there's absolutely nothing stopping you enabling it again :)YoloPascual - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
Should have oced the gpu to 1600 instead of the cpu.krazyfrog - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
Image compression is making my eyes bleed.PeachNCream - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link
The images in the article are fine and your eyes are working well enough for you to broadcast your whining to the rest of the world. Besides, the value in the article is in the written content, not the pretty pictures. If you want pictures as the primary content delivery mechanism, go buy a bunch of pre-literacy board books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.dromoxen - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
thess were my exact thoughts as many people here ... underclock the CPU and overclock the GPU for gaming (spend your heat budget on the GPU) and then on other tasks overclock the cpu and underclock the gpu) BUT I expect this cannot be done on one windows session . Actually using ryzen Master , it probably could . But youd need some scripts to o switch.If i ever take the plunge (waiting for 4000mhz dram) will examine this...
John_M - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
A few things trouble me about this article.Firstly, the charts for 7-zip and 3DPM are incorrect. If lower really is better, then they show the stock 2200G outperforming the overclocked 2400G. If they are so blatantly wrong, then can the others be trusted?
Secondly, DDR4 defaults to 2133 MHz (2 x 1066) if you "forget" to enable XMP, not 2400. This is not a good representation of stock RAM frequency. I would have preferred to see you set 2933 MHz, as specified by AMD.
Thirdly, the Thermaltake Floe Riing 360 is an unrealistically expensive choice of cooler for either of those processors. Who spends more on the cooler than on the processor?
Fourthly, you can overclock the iGPU and adjust the SoC voltage in the ASRock UEFI BIOS, but it's rather hidden away!
cpupro - Saturday, April 21, 2018 - link
ASUS have the best looking UEFI.Galatian - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Thanks for the test, but I hope you will test all parts separately? I mean the FPS increase probably stems from the huge increase from the faster RAM, but you make it sound like the CPU and GPU overclock take equal parts.ballsystemlord - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Where did you get your data from when you wrote?"ed: I'm in the sliding scale camp, for what it is worth. I find it amusing to note that DRAM bit-errors, unaffected by overclocking, can happen on the scale of one per GB per four years (or less). That's about a worse case scenario, but it translates to about one bit-error per three months in a system with 16GB. that is something that can't be controlled by stability testing. Hopefully it occurs in DRAM that isn't being used."
Thanks!