The complaints of Ryzen 3000 chips not hitting their advertised boost speeds have evidently gotten severe enough to force AMD to clearly define what “Max Boost Clock” actually means on its product pages. There is now an “MROM-001” link that offers the following clarification: “Max Boost Clock is the maximum single-core frequency at which the processor is capable of operating under nominal conditions.”
That language isn’t sitting well with owners who feel they were lied to by the marketing department. Some allege that the wording (e.g., “nominal conditions”) is purposefully vague so AMD has an easier time dodging potential lawsuits.
…AMD processors spread their boost frequency progressively across cores during a multi-threaded workload that scales across all cores. At any given time, only one of the cores is awarded the highest boost clock, and while the other cores too get boosted beyond the nominal clock-speeds, they are in slight decrements of 25-50 MHz.