How difficult is it to enable PBO?

1Wolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
433
Probably a stupid question and a simple topic but, for whatever reason, the google or the YouTube isn't helping me to find what I'm looking for.

I've just built an AMD 5900X system on an ASUS X570 Dark Hero motherboard (Not my first build but my first AMD build). Anytime I read folks asking performance questions or asking for performance benchmarks or even temp readings and stuff the question: "Is that with PBO?" inevitably comes up. I've watched some videos and read some stuff on what PBO is...some of them go into a bit too much depth for my level of knowledge (such as custom curves for each core). However, I seem to be having trouble finding recent (meaning applicable to PBO2 on the 5000 series) and relevant simple information on just how to enable it. I find lots of stuff where people walk through enabling it and then setting a host of other options in the BIOS then proceed to seem to perform all the steps of a "simpler" overclock procedure.

I'm benchmarking this new system and I'm curious what it can do with PBO on. However, I'm not sure if its as simple as "Flip a setting in the BIOS" to turn it on...and I'm also not sure if its safe. If it is a setting to turn it on in the BIOS I'm not sure which one or ones I need to set. Its all a bit confusing because there are "enable" settings and "auto" settings. Then there is this whole concept of "Auto OC" I hear mentioned and I'm not sure if that is the same or different.

I've overclocked intel based systems in the past. I may or may not eventually overclock this 5900x but at this point I wasn't interested in pushing limits, or going through the lengthy stability and performance tests of what I consider a full blown overclock. However, if it was extra performance that was safe, easy, and the flip of a setting or two then I was certainly interested in turning it on and benchmarking with and without it.

Any info would certainly be helpful.

Thanks!
 
not hard. for simple oc; turn pbo to enabled, lower your cpu voltage a tad(auto is agressive) and call it a day.
auto-oc lets the bios try and oc the chip.
 
PBO is simply a setting in the BIOS. Either enable it to turn it on or disable it to turn it off. It's perfectly safe to run and will not harm anything. All it does is allow the CPU/motherboard to run the CPU to certain limits for boosting. Having the setting to allow the CPU to handle the limits will usually get you lower boost clocks and won't allow the CPU to boost for as long as setting it to motherboard limits. Running CPU limits will also likely run the CPU a bit cooler because of it. For most people this is enough and it's not necessary to do a full stress test of the system to make sure the PBO overclocking is stable. I always recommend stability testing on a new system anyway but turning on PBO won't require anymore than I would normally test.

There is more you can do such as with Curve Optimizer which is part of PBO2. Curve optimizer allows you to basically do a voltage offset, usually negative to reduce temps, in order to boost higher. It's not necessary to do this but it can get you some more performance, especially in multi-core scenarios. There's also two options with it, to use the same setting for all cores or to set it per core. I kept it simple and use the same setting for all cores as I don't feel like taking a lot of time to test each setting on each core to make sure things are stable. With the way I have CO setup I boost a bit higher on heavy multi-core loads but have a bit lower single core boost. This is fine for me because with my workloads it's extremely rare to only have one or two cores in use with everything else idle.
 
Probably a stupid question and a simple topic but, for whatever reason, the google or the YouTube isn't helping me to find what I'm looking for.

I've just built an AMD 5900X system on an ASUS X570 Dark Hero motherboard (Not my first build but my first AMD build). Anytime I read folks asking performance questions or asking for performance benchmarks or even temp readings and stuff the question: "Is that with PBO?" inevitably comes up. I've watched some videos and read some stuff on what PBO is...some of them go into a bit too much depth for my level of knowledge (such as custom curves for each core). However, I seem to be having trouble finding recent (meaning applicable to PBO2 on the 5000 series) and relevant simple information on just how to enable it. I find lots of stuff where people walk through enabling it and then setting a host of other options in the BIOS then proceed to seem to perform all the steps of a "simpler" overclock procedure.

I'm benchmarking this new system and I'm curious what it can do with PBO on. However, I'm not sure if its as simple as "Flip a setting in the BIOS" to turn it on...and I'm also not sure if its safe. If it is a setting to turn it on in the BIOS I'm not sure which one or ones I need to set. Its all a bit confusing because there are "enable" settings and "auto" settings. Then there is this whole concept of "Auto OC" I hear mentioned and I'm not sure if that is the same or different.

I've overclocked intel based systems in the past. I may or may not eventually overclock this 5900x but at this point I wasn't interested in pushing limits, or going through the lengthy stability and performance tests of what I consider a full blown overclock. However, if it was extra performance that was safe, easy, and the flip of a setting or two then I was certainly interested in turning it on and benchmarking with and without it.

Any info would certainly be helpful.

Thanks!
Not a stupid question.
 
Probably a stupid question and a simple topic but, for whatever reason, the google or the YouTube isn't helping me to find what I'm looking for.

I've just built an AMD 5900X system on an ASUS X570 Dark Hero motherboard (Not my first build but my first AMD build). Anytime I read folks asking performance questions or asking for performance benchmarks or even temp readings and stuff the question: "Is that with PBO?" inevitably comes up. I've watched some videos and read some stuff on what PBO is...some of them go into a bit too much depth for my level of knowledge (such as custom curves for each core). However, I seem to be having trouble finding recent (meaning applicable to PBO2 on the 5000 series) and relevant simple information on just how to enable it. I find lots of stuff where people walk through enabling it and then setting a host of other options in the BIOS then proceed to seem to perform all the steps of a "simpler" overclock procedure.

I'm benchmarking this new system and I'm curious what it can do with PBO on. However, I'm not sure if its as simple as "Flip a setting in the BIOS" to turn it on...and I'm also not sure if its safe. If it is a setting to turn it on in the BIOS I'm not sure which one or ones I need to set. Its all a bit confusing because there are "enable" settings and "auto" settings. Then there is this whole concept of "Auto OC" I hear mentioned and I'm not sure if that is the same or different.

I've overclocked intel based systems in the past. I may or may not eventually overclock this 5900x but at this point I wasn't interested in pushing limits, or going through the lengthy stability and performance tests of what I consider a full blown overclock. However, if it was extra performance that was safe, easy, and the flip of a setting or two then I was certainly interested in turning it on and benchmarking with and without it.

Any info would certainly be helpful.

Thanks!

PBO is usually turned on by default so you should not have to do anything. I know my B550 Gaming F and X570 Tuf Plus Wifi have PBO turned on by default, one with the 3700X and the other with a 3600.
 
PBO is usually turned on by default so you should not have to do anything. I know my B550 Gaming F and X570 Tuf Plus Wifi have PBO turned on by default, one with the 3700X and the other with a 3600.
PBO is off by default on the dark hero, but PB (Precision Boost) is always on by default. The 'O' in PBO is for overdrive and neither my dark hero+5900x or aorus elite+5800x x570 boards enable it by default. AMD enforces the 142w limit so doubt anyone would get away with PBO on by default.

PBO does allow for much more power through the CPU and power is controlled by the temps along with limiters. E.g. if you run default PBO then you will have higher voltages and more watts at 75 degrees than at 85 degrees on a 5900x. Personally I found that the default PBO gains were too low to be worth it and based on what people were achieving with max OCs I just let it run default PB for normal use. Nowdays I only OC just to OC and see results, then go back to motherboard and GPU defaults when I am done. With a borderline stable OC the max gains in special case scenarios seemed to be at most 10% and PBO only 6-7% in the all core workloads I tested with aprox 20 degrees increase in temps. Essentially had 7% gains for around 74 degrees average, approx 4.6ghz all core and 211w with PBO on vs 55 degrees, approx 4.3ghz all core and 140w average with PB only at stable state with high end cooling and pump+fans running at high speeds.

If you are going to overclock then either doing switching on amps to all core and setting different voltages+frequncies for your CCDs or using PBO with curve optimizer is the way to go. Not sure if there are other boards than the dark hero that has the amp switching. Straight up using PBO is underwhelming IMO. Most gains will be in heavy workloads where most of the cores are in use. Very few workloads use all core, outside of encoding, encryption etc. For gaming the default PB will give similar or slightly better results as most seem to lose some single core performance with PBO on and PB boosts quite high on a few cores loads and the GPU is generally the limiting factor.

On the dark hero the VRMs aren't an issue as they are overbuilt, but quite a few boards have low VRM capacity/bad cooling so one should keep an eye on the VRM temps when using PBO.
 
Last edited:
PBO is off by default on the dark hero, but PB (Precision Boost) is always on by default. The 'O' in PBO is for overdrive and neither my dark hero+5900x or aorus elite+5800x x570 boards enable it by default. AMD enforces the 142w limit so doubt anyone would get away with PBO on by default.

PBO does allow for much more power through the CPU and power is controlled by the temps along with limiters. E.g. if you run default PBO then you will have higher voltages and more watts at 75 degrees than at 85 degrees on a 5900x. Personally I found that the default PBO gains were too low to be worth it and based on what people were achieving with max OCs I just let it run default PB for normal use. Nowdays I only OC just to OC and see results, then go back to motherboard and GPU defaults when I am done. With a borderline stable OC the max gains in special case scenarios seemed to be at most 10% and PBO only 6-7% in the all core workloads I tested with aprox 20 degrees increase in temps. Essentially had 7% gains for around 74 degrees average, approx 4.6ghz all core and 211w with PBO on vs 55 degrees, approx 4.3ghz all core and 140w average with PB only at stable state with high end cooling and pump+fans running at high speeds.

If you are going to overclock then either doing switching on amps to all core and setting different voltages+frequncies for your CCDs or using PBO with curve optimizer is the way to go. Not sure if there are other boards than the dark hero that has the amp switching. Straight up using PBO is underwhelming IMO. Most gains will be in heavy workloads where most of the cores are in use. Very few workloads use all core, outside of encoding, encryption etc. For gaming the default PB will give similar or slightly better results as most seem to lose some single core performance with PBO on and PB boosts quite high on a few cores loads and the GPU is generally the limiting factor.

On the dark hero the VRMs aren't an issue as they are overbuilt, but quite a few boards have low VRM capacity/bad cooling so one should keep an eye on the VRM temps when using PBO.

Well, on my two Asus Boards and the MSI B550 Tomahawk, PBO is enabled by default. I verified that the last time someone asked this question here. :)
 
Well, on my two Asus Boards and the MSI B550 Tomahawk, PBO is enabled by default. I verified that the last time someone asked this question here. :)
Even after a bios reset to defaults? Don't tell AMD or they will get in trouble ;)
 
my asus didnt...
edit: misread. mine is on auto by default too. i set it to enabled.
 
Last edited:
Look at your ppt in ryzen master, it will show 142w for 5800x, 5900x and 5950x.

I run Linux and only using Windows 10 for gaming so, I will not be installing that software. Have anything in the manual or something else? Auto has to have a function other than disabled. Oh, and I use the 3600 and 3700X.

Edit: Yes, I could look for the evidence myself but, I would rather see what you have found out.
 
Other option is to run monitoring software if there is an equivalent of hwinfo64 for linux, that will show CPU package power. Then run an all core load and the package power will stop at PPT which is 142w or less for package power for the 105w parts. Think the PPT is 88w for the 65w TDP parts, but I am not 100% certain. Not sure if there is software for linux that will read the PPT, EDC and TDC of the CPU. Ryzen master is AMD official OC tool.
 
I have always seen on here and on other overclocking forums that simply enabling XMP on your memory and making sure fclk:memclock are 1:1 is all you need to do. These chips are extremely optimized out of the box. My new 5900x tickles 5ghz without me doing a single thing except enabling XMP. Aircooled.

Prior to this, the 3700x I had did just fine without any further tweaking. I spent hours and hours fine tuning memory through trial and error and benchmarking for basically zero gains. Some of us oldheads that have been overclocking for so long have a hard time - I know I do - letting go of tweaking every possible last setting. Anymore its just not work the timesink.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top