Unexpected Performance Boost for AMD Ryzen CPUs with Windows Update

The recent 24H2 update for Windows 11 brought a pleasant surprise for AMD Ryzen users, as it resulted in a significant improvement in CPU performance.

Despite eagerly anticipating the performance figures for the highly-anticipated ‘Zen 5’ Ryzen 9000 processors, many AMD users were disappointed by the underwhelming numbers revealed in benchmarks, which paled in comparison to the official figures released by AMD.

It has been discovered that the discrepancy between what was expected and what actually occurred could have been caused by a bug in Windows 11. However, this bug has since been resolved with the introduction of the new 24H2 update.

The bug not only impacts the latest Zen 5 CPUs, but it has also resulted in a performance decrease for previous Zen 4 models and potentially even Zen 3 models.

According to Hardware Unboxed, a YouTuber and analyst, both the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 9700X experienced performance boosts of 10% and 11% respectively. Additionally, certain CPUs saw an impressive 36% increase in performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlfTHCzBnnQ

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X vs. 7700X: 40+ Game Benchmark [23H2 vs. 24H2] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlfTHCzBnnQ)

The issue is believed to be linked to the optimizations of the ‘Branch prediction code’. This process involves the CPU making predictions about which code will be required next by the software and preloading that code into the cache for quick execution.

It was reported that Windows had been impeding the ability of AMD CPUs to effectively utilize branch prediction, resulting in a slower execution rate of code by the CPU. The Zen 5 processors are expected to greatly capitalize on branch prediction, which explains why they seem to receive the biggest advantage from the update.

AMD’s utilization of their higher administrative privileges allowed them to activate these branch prediction options, which explains the variance in performance observed by users compared to the officially reported figures by AMD.

Despite the unknown reason behind AMD’s decision to keep this bug under wraps for an extended period of time, the performance boost will undoubtedly be advantageous for Team Red upon the release of Intel’s Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs.