Gigabyte with BIOS update for "upcoming CPU"

Gigabyte has made a BIOS update for mainboards of the 400 and 500 series available for download - "for upcoming new CPU support". What is probably meant is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which wants to steal the rank of the fastest gaming CPU from Alder Lake.

Since AMD's announcement that it wants to win back the CPU gaming crown, it's been pretty quiet around the Ryzen 7 5800X3D with 3D V-Cache. Although it is not named, there is now a new sign of life from the beefed-up Zen 3 CPU. Mainboard manufacturer Gigabyte recently released new BIOS updates for boards with 400 and 500 "chipsets". It is based on the new AMD "AGESA V2 1.2.0.6 B" and is intended to extend CPU support. The description says something nebulous: "Update AMD AGESA V2 1.2.0.6 B for upcoming new CPU support." Many on the net are now assuming that it will be the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

You can find out whether your mainboard has also been given an update on the manufacturer's support page. We looked at various older mainboards as examples and found that boards with a B450 and X470 I/O hub have also received an update. As expected, this has not happened with 300 series boards. In addition to the extended CPU support, Gigabyte also promises the return of the "QMax CPU Boost Clock Override" option for AMD's Vermeer processors (Ryzen 5000).

AMD had already presented the Ryzen 7 5800X3D at CES. The exact specifications were revealed in mid-February. As expected, AMD sends eight cores and 16 threads into the race, but the base clock has been reduced from 3.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz and the turbo clock from 4.7 GHz to 4.5 GHz. Apparently, AMD is compensating for the higher energy requirement of the stacked additional memory, which increases the capacity of the L3 cache from 32 to a whopping 96 MB. In addition to the TDP of 105 watts, the level 1 and 2 caches with their 512 KB and 4 MB respectively remain untouched.

AMD certifies that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has a 15 percent higher gaming performance compared to the non-3D version. Tests have to show whether this is really the case and whether the application performance increases accordingly. The CPU does not yet have an official release date - the communicated time window "spring 2022" apparently still applies.

In other news, after a month’s break since the announcement of the new roadmap for Battlefield 2042, the developers were initially silent. But now there was a sign of life from the developers and it should finally go on. Or not?