MSI adds auto BCLK overclocking to X870 MAX motherboards — claims new 'one-click' features add up to 15% extra performance on Ryzen 7 9800X3D

MSI has implemented new one-click auto overclocking features in its latest B850 and X870 Max series AM5 motherboards (including the X870E Tomahawk Max WiFi PZ that we reviewed recently) that manipulate BCLK, PBO, and memory timings. MSI claims its one-click overclocking features combined can yield up to a 15% performance boost on AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D, with benchmarks to prove it.

The BCLK portion of MSI's auto-overclocking feature set consists of two profiles that can be set in the BIOS of the aforementioned supported motherboards. "PBO BCLK Booster 1" sets the CPU BCLK frequency to 103 MHz, and "PBO BCLK Booster 2" sets the BCLK to 105 MHz. MSI says the first mode is geared towards CPUs with "average" overclocking headroom, while the second mode is aimed at CPUs with greater headroom. MSI also warns users that the second mode might cause instability on AMD chips that can't handle it.

The memory side of MSI's auto OC features consists of two options: "Memory Try it!" and "High-Efficiency Mode". Memory Try It! is a feature MSI has implemented in its boards for years that provides multiple timing profiles based on the headroom available in existing DDR4/5 memory ICs. This mode aims to give users an easy way to improve sub-timings on their memory kits without diving into the complexity of manually tightening individual timings.

High-Efficiency Mode expands on this by further tuning timings beyond what the Memory Try It! profiles provide. MSI has four presets: tightest, tighter, balance, and relax.

MSI provided several benchmark results showing the capabilities of its auto overclocking features, featuring Cinebench, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom: The Dark Ages, Counter-Strike 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Metro Exodus, Monster Hunter Wilds, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, and Watch Dogs: Legion. MSI's test setup consists of a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, B850M Power motherboard, 2x16GB of Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, and an RTX 5090.

In Cinebench, MSI saw a 3-5% performance improvement with all of the aforementioned overclocking features switched on. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, MSI saw less than a 1% improvement, Counter-Strike 2 4% improvement, Cyberpunk 2077 6% improvement, Doom: The Dark Ages 15% improvement, Metro Exodus 5% improvement, Monster Hunter Wilds 3% improvement, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail 5% improvement, Watch Dogs: Legion 12% improvement.

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As with all automatic overclocking features, please use caution with your expensive hardware. These features are not guaranteed to work with your hardware, and you'll want to stress-test your system with each setting to ensure stability. MSI's testing also clearly shows that not every game or application will yield a 15% performance boost with these features.

That said, tightening memory sub-timings is one of the most effective ways to increase gaming performance on modern hardware. PC games are usually latency-sensitive, and outgoing XMP/EXPO memory profiles only change the primary timings, not the dozens of other timings that affect DDR5 memory performance.

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