Can you overclock the new Epyc CPUs?

Quartz · 11 Oct 2019 at 16:01

I'm looking at the low-end Epyc CPUs - e.g. the 7262 - and they seem price-competitive with Intel's desktop CPUs (e.g. the 9900) and I'm wondering if with their huge L3 caches they might be performance-competitive if overclocked.

Has anyone tried it?

LuckyBenski · 11 Oct 2019 at 18:48

Even if they're unlocked - I think boosting to 3.4GHz max with a 155W TDP, you're not going to see any seriously competitive clock speeds out of one of these. I'd be surprised if you'd be playing with 4GHz on even one core. Plus I don't know how the IPC is but doubt it's competing with Intel either.

I thought Epyc were aimed at server/data centre setups so high core count, multiple CPU boards. But 8 cores seems low for that purpose. I doubt there will he any high spec boards as they're aimed at servers not enthusiasts.

Quartz · 11 Oct 2019 at 19:58

LuckyBenski said:
Even if they're unlocked - I think boosting to 3.4GHz max with a 155W TDP, you're not going to see any seriously competitive clock speeds out of one of these.

Why not?

LuckyBenski said:
But 8 cores seems low for that purpose.

8 cores is the low end. Probably for cases where the number of PCIe lanes is more important, like SANs.

LuckyBenski · 11 Oct 2019 at 20:11

Quartz said:
Why not?

8 cores is the low end. Probably for cases where the number of PCIe lanes is more important, like SANs.

I don't know if you'd hit 4GHz all cores on the Epyc, +500MHz or 14%. But that's the 9900's all-core turbo. 5GHz single core.

Quartz · 11 Oct 2019 at 20:15

LuckyBenski said:
I don't know if you'd hit 4GHz all cores on the Epyc, +500MHz or 14%. But that's the 9900's all-core turbo. 5GHz single core.

I wouldn't expect the Epyc to achieve 5 GHz but it's the performance as a whole that interests me. And the Epyc CPUs have a massive L3 cache.

Hotwired · 12 Oct 2019 at 01:51

Dunno where this price competitive thing is coming from.

I had a look and the 7262 is over £600 but you reckon it's competitive with a 9900k which is about £150 less than that.

Then there's the motherboards which are really expensive. Easily more than a board for a 9900k or the 9900k cpu itself.

It's got 8 channel memory, lots of cache and 128 PCI lanes... which a 9900k doesn't have so if those are critical for a task, the 9900k can't compete and the 7262 wins by default.