You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs come excruciatingly close to a major clock speed milestone. The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is the fastest and able to push a core or two up to 4.9GHz but (officially) nothing more at stock speeds. But what if I told you that 5GHz was within reach and that you'd have to do next to nothing to hit it? That's what ClockTuner for Ryzen creator Yuri Bubliy is promising with an upcoming update to the CPU tuning app.
Best CPU for gaming: the top chips from Intel and AMD
Best graphics card: your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: get into the game ahead of the rest
With version 2.1, which is currently in beta and available to Bubliy's Patreon subscribers ahead of a full release, you'll be able to apply a new Hybrid OC setting to Zen 3 chips, too, complete with a new high-performance 'PX Profile'.
This new profile will see the effective frequency reach over 5GHz on AMD's latest high-end Ryzen processors, Bubliy says, and it does so with less voltage at 1.45V compared to the standard 1.475V.
How it goes about that will depend on the processor you own and its core count, but it'll offer up anything from two to six 'best' cores prime for juicing. The application will then set the frequency for all these cores while running the remaining at a reduced speed for greater stability.
You can dive into the specifics in the slides posted by Bubliy in the tweet below, but to over-simplify: a constant measure of power and temperature data with effective on-the-fly profile switching ensures the processor runs at an optimal speed at all times and for the given workload.
CTR 2.1 & 5000MHz! (announcement)And available in a few hours for Patreon subscribers!@AMDRyzen @AMD @LisaSu pic.twitter.com/MrEoXhAtPOFebruary 15, 2021
The update will bring with it some changes to the application UI, too, which are said to make it easier for beginners to get started.
All in all a promising piece of software for AMD Ryzen CPU owners, then, or something to consider if you're still waiting in line for your chance to purchase one. There's not a great deal of overclocking performance in the latest Zen 3 chips, so a system that takes care of all that for you for, what are claimed to be, effective gains might be a handy alternative.
Bubliy hasn't announced a public release date just yet, so watch out for the full release in the near-future or sign up to their Patreon for early access and help support development. You can download the current version of ClockTuner for Ryzen here. It also supports Zen 3, but doesn't yet offer the full sweep of features listed above.
