MSI Kombo Strike on 5800X3D looks a lot like an undervolt

MSI Kombo Strike on 5800X3D looks a lot like an undervolt

Kombo Strike is a new feature for MSI motherboards that aims to maximize the performance and reduce the power consumption of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor, the first for the consumer market equipped with 3D V-Cache, a solution that allows you to have stacked cache memory on the die to increase both its size (which in this specific model amounts to 96MB of L3 cache) and gaming performance up to 15%.

The Reddit user known as Mannekino has tested this option, currently only available in beta BIOS updates for some MSI motherboards with 500 series chipsets, achieving excellent results. Kombo Strike appears to behave like an automated version of Curve Optimizer, AMD's undervolting utility for Ryzen 5000 CPUs. The configuration tested by Mannekino consisted of an MSI MEG B550 Unify motherboard, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 4x8GB of G.Skill Trident Z memory. Neo DDR4-3600 CL14 and an MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio video card. A liquid cooler with 360mm radiators was used for CPU cooling.

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Ultimately, the improvement to the highest level of Kombo Strike was 2.7%. However, it should be borne in mind that, at the same time, energy consumption has been reduced. In fact, in a 10-minute cycle of CineBench R23, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D recorded an average of 81.3 ° C and a consumption of 112.2W, but by setting level 3 both values ​​fell, respectively, to 72, 3 ° C and 98.2W (for a 12-14% reduction in wattage and temperatures).

Undoubtedly, Kombo Strike operates an undervolt, which allows the processor to reach higher boost frequencies and, as a result, offer better performance. Obviously, this is a small gain that is difficult to find when running everyday applications. For more details, please see the official Reddit thread.