AMD leaped up for their new AM5 CPU platform, their biggest showcase at Computex 2022. Their declaration at the Computex 2022 about the AM5 socket being capable of handling 170 watts of power at Computex 2022 caused a lot of confusion, leading to everyone wondering what this value was about.
Now, the main point here is the distinction between TDP and PPT. For AMD, PPT is typically 1.35x higher than TDP. It cleared the fact that the distinction between TDP and PPT matters. Making 230W the actual power limit of the socket, AMD’s 170W value is the TDP value. This value is already higher than AM4’s 142W, so regardless of AMD’s description, we surely expected a power boost.
As one AMD representative stated:
“AMD would like to issue a correction to the socket power and TDP limits of the upcoming AMD Socket AM5. AMD Socket AM5 supports up to a 170W TDP with a PPT up to 230W. TDP*1.35 is the standard calculation for TDP v. PPT for AMD sockets in the “Zen” era, and the new 170W TDP group is no exception (170*1.35=229.5).
This new TDP group will enable considerably more compute performance for high core count CPUs in heavy compute workloads, which will sit alongside the 65W and 105W TDP groups that Ryzen is known for today. AMD takes great pride in providing the enthusiast community with transparent and forthright product capabilities, and we want to take this opportunity to apologize for our error and any subsequent confusion we may have caused on this topic.”
Compared with AMD’s competitors, the new 230W socket will match the power of Intel’s LGA-1200-based Core i9-12900K, which packs 241W PL2/Maximum Turbo Power. Even though AMD, until now, didn’t confirm that the 170W was the TDP value, the same amount was already mentioned by MSI. AMD’s slides only mentioned ‘native support for up to 170W’.
According to AMD, regarding the AM4 package, when the CPUs had a TDP of 105W, the power limit was 142W. And this new power limit is an increase of around 28W. Allowing better overclocking opportunities for the enthusiasts, AMD stated that the manufacturers will now be able to deploy more premium power characters to their motherboards.
AMD has always given a tough time to its competitors with its innovations and grabbing the market through its comparison high-quality performance delivering but reasonably priced products, especially 5th gen Ryzen CPUs. Now it is ready to overcome with its 7th gen CPUs on the way.
As Robert Hallock (AMD Director of Technical Marketing) stated:
“So what we want to clarify is that it’s a 170 Watt socket power which with AMD, that spec is PPT (Package Power) for us. That doesn’t mean that every CPU is going to go up to 170 Watts but it’s 30 (Watt) higher than the socket AM4 power cap which was 142 (watts). And we did this to mainly improve multi-thread performance as many of the core count chips were actually held back in overall compute performance by relatively modest socket power.
The other point that I want to make is that by raising the minimum required socket to power or minimum spec, you also raise the power delivery with every motherboard built to that spec so you get more robust power characteristics on all the boards which we are pretty excited about as well, It should be good for people who want to experiment with overclocking, people who appreciate premium board designs.”
As explained by Hallock too, this new higher socket was to improve Ryzen CPU all-core boost frequency.
