Well, chalk one up for the reliability of occasional leaker chi11eddog (@g01d3nm4ng0 on Xwitter). Back on August 14th, he posted that AMD would increase the TDP of the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X from 65W to 105W in an AGESA update. Technically, he was wrong; the TDP increase is an optional toggle. However, it’s definitely real.
Hardware enthusiast and occasional MSI leaker “kuroberu” (@kuroberumo on Xwitter) posted up a screenshot of the MSI Click BIOS on an MPG X670E Carbon Wifi motherboard sporting the latest AGESA firmware. Plain to see right there in the Overclocking menu is a “TDP to 105W” option. It’s enabled in the screenshot, but given its presence in the Overclocking menu, we expect that this is probably a ‘default-disabled’ option.
This means that AMD is not changing the default TDP of these chips, and all extant benchmarks are still valid for the stock state of the processors. However, this could be an interesting option for people who want the extra multi-core performance. Zen 5 is a very big core, and we theorized in our review of the Ryzen 7 9700X that the part could be power-limited in some benchmarks where the uplift over the 9600X wasn’t very big.
Indeed, kuroberu himself says that his Cinebench R23 multi-core score went up by 13% simply by toggling on this option. It’s believable considering that the eight-core Ryzen 7 7700X shipped with a 105W TDP. The drop in power ratings for the Ryzen 9000 processors was met with some skepticism when it was announced, and most attributed it to the smaller fabrication process, but the beefier Zen 5 core clearly still wants quite a bit of power.
It’s not clear at this stage whether this update will necessarily come to all Socket AM5 motherboards or whether this is something that MSI itself has done, but either way you can already reap these benefits yourself by simply enabling Precision Boost Overdrive 2. Just make sure you have the extra cooling (and the extra in your pocketbook) to handle the increased power draw, which could be significant.