The Ryzen 9000 series chips from AMD had a rocky start in the market. While they seemed promising initially, their real-world performance left many users frustrated.
Thankfully, AMD has taken significant strides to enhance these processors with some crucial updates.
Initially, the underwhelming performance stemmed from missing optimizations in Windows 11 concerning branch prediction. This issue particularly affected users who were excited about the potential of their new chips.
AMD has now addressed this with a set of updates in the latest builds of Windows 11, specifically the 23H2 and newer 24H2 versions.
This change could boost gaming performance by about 13% for those using newer Zen 5 models. Those with older processors might see some benefits too, although the improvements can vary.
Besides software tweaks, AMD has provided a BIOS update for specific models, namely the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X.
This update effectively raises the TDP, short for thermal design power, boosting it from 65W to 105W. As a result, users may experience a performance increase of around 10%.
However, with this change, CPUs will run hotter, so it’s essential to ensure that your cooling system can handle the extra heat.
Most current coolers equipped to manage 105W should do fine, yet it’s likely a good idea to double-check.
Furthermore, there are improvements in the way data moves between the cores in the multi-CCD models of the Ryzen 9000 series.
Previously, data transfers required two steps, causing delays whenever data moved between cores on different CCDs.
The latest BIOS update simplifies this to just one transaction, reducing latency in some scenarios.
This improvement could be apparent in games such as Metro, Starfield, and Borderlands 3, as well as in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Time Spy.
Downloading all separate updates to witness these performance boosts is encouraged. These updates are expected to come through Windows Update as they become available, offering Ryzen 9000 users a much-needed uplift in how their systems perform.
Image credit: AMD.com