Microsoft delivers boost to AMD Ryzen gaming performance with Windows 11’s 24H2 update

Windows 11 update delivers staggering performance uplift for Ryzen CPU users

Earlier this month, it was uncovered that a bug in Microsoft’s Windows 11 OS were lowering the gaming performance of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs. This bug not only affects AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, but AMDs older Zen 3 and Zen 4 models. Once fixed, all gamers using AMD’s Ryzen 5000-9000 processors will receive a performance boost, and early testing for Microsoft’s 24H2 update is promising.

Hardware Unboxed has conducted some early testing for AMD’s 7700X and 9700X with Windows 11’s 24H2 update. Huge performance gains were showcased thanks to this update. In short, this update is a “must download” for Ryzen CPU users, as performance gains of up to 36% were showcased.

On average, AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 9700X saw performance gains of 10% and 11% respectively across over 40 games. Currently, it is unknown how much this update impacts the performance of non-gaming applications.

A huge win for AMD!

AMD has stated that Windows 11’s 24H2 update will only deliver a performance boost for AMD Ryzen CPUs. Intel processors will not have similar performance increases. This makes the release of Windows 11 24H2 a huge win for AMD. Their processors were already fairly competitive with their Intel counterparts in games, but now they have received a major performance boost thanks to this incoming Windows 11 update.

AMD has stated that Microsoft’s Windows bug has prevented modern AMD CPUs from making use of the “branch prediction code optimizations” that are present in modern AMD CPUs. AMD’s Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” CPUs feature a wider branch prediction capacity than older Zen CPUs. This is why AMD claims that Zen 5 CPU models are most affected by this bug. That said, AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs achieved similar performance uplifts.

Why didn’t AMD spot this earlier?

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” CPUs launched in 2022. That means that Zen 4 CPUs have been on the market for two years without AMD noticing this issue. AMD needs to ask themselves how they did not spot this issue. Furthermore, they need to ask themselves if anything else is preventing their CPUs from accessing their peak performance when using Windows. Will another Ryzen performance boost be possible through Windows updates?

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