AMD Ryzen Linux overclocking driver adds power limit and SMT controls, but skips CPU clock tuning

AMD is working on a software driver for Linux that will allow Ryzen users to overclock. This will improve the experience for tweaking your performance, especially compared to the current state of the Linux desktop which doesn't have the simplicity or officially supported features for Ryzen to be overclocked. This is important for Linux users who might be gaming or doing something intensive on Linux as now there's a simpler way to get your Ryzen up to higher speeds without having to rely on some third party hack.

New kernel patches allow power and memory tuning for Ryzen users on Linux

It uses an AOD WMI interface to interact with the platform's firmware to be able to send instructions to the platform via the OS. With the patches being proposed right now, you can control the power limits. More specifically the PPT, TDC, and EDC which control how much power the CPU can consume. You can also toggle SMT and change your memory clocks, which are classic performance optimizations for enthusiasts.

However, the current driver does not let you control the CPU clock speed itself for this first iteration. There's no Ryzen Master type of GUI interface from AMD. So users will probably have to use the open-source command-line interface tools to interact with the driver itself. So it'll be a bit more technical, and less easy to use compared to point-and-click GUIs.

We've seen these trends before with other Ryzen updates where they emphasize stability and balance. This driver seems to be like that, as they're starting off with some of the fundamental controls. There's no CPU clock speed adjustment, so they're putting more emphasis on power/memory stability before we're really allowed to jump up to the final level of performance. You can see this as a stepping stone towards the final solution where you can finally overclock your Ryzen at high frequencies on Linux.

Source: TweakTown