Upon arrival two weeks lateAMD’s Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors have disappointed some buyers and reviewers lifeless performance. Now there is company addressed these problems with several new updates.
The biggest speed bump for Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs was the lack of Windows 11 branch prediction optimizations. For convenience, either Windows 11 24H2 (currently release the preview channel) or add the optional update KB5041587. However, AMD announced that the fix is now included by default in both Windows 11 version 23H2 build 22631.44112 and the latest 24H2 builds. This should increase performance by 3-13 percent in various games, with the biggest gains on Ryzen 9000 and Zen 5 processors.
Additionally, AMD has released AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 BIOS update for Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 9700X processors. This extends the warranty on those processors to allow a TDP (maximum power) of 105W, slightly above the 65W launch TDP. AMD said that this alone will increase speed by up to 10 percent on AM5 and X870 series motherboards.
It also introduced core-to-core latency optimization for Ryzen 9000 series multi-CCD (chiplet) models. Testers noticed that when data is shared between cores on different CCDs, it sometimes takes two operations to read and write. Although AMD calls it a “corner job,” the latest BIOS update cuts the number of operations in half, helping with latency in this scenario. “Our laboratory offers tests Subway, Starfield and Border 3 may show some improvement, as well as synthetic tests such as 3DMark Time Spy,” wrote AMD.
Still on the subject of speed, AMD noted that the X870 and X870E motherboards are now available with PCIe Gen 5 graphics (ie the upcoming NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU), NVMe memory, and USB4 support as standard. AMD also introduced support for “enthusiast-class” DDR5-8000 EXPO memory support, with latency improvements of 1-2 nanoseconds. AMD says it’s “a great choice for enthusiasts who want to push their systems to the limit,” though not for everyone.
