When AMD brought the Zen-based Athlon 200GE to market, it became clear that the processor would be his first Zen-based desktop processor that was locked for overclocking it to get more performance.
Things have changed in recent months when YouTube channel TechEpiphany discovered that the Athlon 200GE could be overclocked with certain BIO files, revealing a UEFI error similar to what was seen on the first Skylake no-K processors.
With the B350M Gaming Pro motherboard from MSI and the latest AGESA 1006 BIOS from MSI, AMD’s Athlon 200GE can be overclocked with both the base clock and the overclocking multiplier, which also allows higher RAM speeds at higher BCLK clocks.
With this method, TechEpiphany achieved a clock frequency of slightly more than 3.9 GHz, a significant increase over the standard 3.2 GHz clock frequency, equivalent to an increase of over 20%. Tom’s hardware has managed to validate these results with an MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC motherboard using the latest BIOS files.
While overclocking a dual-core processor may not be one of some people’s priorities, the performance boost seen here can be more than valuable for those using the Athlon 200GE as a basic desktop machine or as part of an HTPC or home file storage server. This will bring the CPU over its 35W TDP, although depending on the additional power consumption.