If you’re lucky enough to own the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, you may have noticed that the normally fast chip seems to be hitting near record-breaking boost speeds. Unfortunately, you don’t actually get that much performance out of the chip.
The Ryzen 9 7950X is one of the best processors out there with a boost clock speed of 5.7 GHz, which is already blindingly fast. According to our friends on Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab)however, some users have found that when their PC comes out of sleep mode with the chip, the processor’s clock speed skyrockets to 6.28 GHz, which would be absolutely incredible if it were real.
Unfortunately, those near-record-breaking clock speeds are too good to be true. It appears that the AMD chip has been hit by the RTC (Real Time Clock) reporting bug, which makes it appear that the chip is running significantly faster than it actually is.
Fortunately, unlike many Windows 11 bugs or major security vulnerabilities with AMD chips, the RTC bug won’t break anything or affect performance in any way as far as anyone can see, which may be why it’s an ongoing problem is that never quite manages to be ironed out, whether with the best Intel processors or AMDs.
So about those benchmarks…
One thing about RTC bugs is that benchmarking tools depend on RTC for how they score a particular component, such as a processor or a graphics card. There is nothing wrong with that, which is why RTC reporting exists. The problem, however, is that an RTC bug can throw off benchmark scores in tools like CineBench, which both users and reviewers use to test a system.
Benchmarking is especially important if you’re building your own PC, as benchmarking is an important way to see if your system is built and integrated correctly. This most recent RTC reporting bug shows why it’s also so important not to rely on a single test to determine how well a system is performing.
When I do benchmarks for a component, I make sure to use different tools and use cases to measure how well it performs, especially since there could be a problem with a particular test. While any synthetic processor benchmark takes into account the clock speed given by RTC, a gaming benchmark doesn’t take that into account at all, so if a processor erroneously reports a 6.28 GHz boost clock, you would expect it to translate into demonstrably higher FPS during gaming at low settings and 1080p resolution when using a powerful graphics card.
If those numbers don’t match that expectation, then you have strong evidence that something is wrong somewhere with how you put everything together. In short, when benchmarking a system, always use a variety of tests. That way you never have to worry about an RTC bug preventing you from optimizing your build.