Image: Willis Lai/Foundry
AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 series looked promising from its initial benchmarks, but the first reviews and user impressions painted a much more disappointing picture. As it turns out, AMD was testing with a bit of flawed methodology.
Fortunately, an adjustment in Windows brings those dramatic performance boosts to life. The only problem is, the relevant update was limited to the Windows Insider program — until now. The relevant parts of the Windows update are now available on standard Windows 11 builds.
In a special interview with The Full Nerd podcast, an AMD representative said that the company was just as confused as everyone else when the first reviews of the Ryzen 9 9950X and other new CPUs showed such a tepid performance increase over Ryzen 7000 chips.
Eventually, it came to light that AMD was using Super Admin mode in Windows during their tests, which unlocked the full potential of some of the new CPUs’ functions, particularly wider branch prediction.
That’s a bit of a conundrum because regular users shouldn’t be running administrator accounts for day-to-day activities on Windows — it opens you up to all kinds of security risks.
A preview build of Windows 11 24H2 subsequently made it possible to unlock those performance gains without needing to run an administrator account, and initial tests with that preview build finally showed the performance gains we were expecting.
Now, those same performance gains are being made available to everyone else who isn’t part of the Windows Insider Program. Microsoft released a new build for Windows 11 23H2 yesterday, and the relevant changes that unlock the new Ryzen CPUs’ full performance are baked into that update, according to AMD.
So, if you shelled out for one of the first Ryzen 9000 processors, let your fingers do the walking over to the Windows Update tool. (You’re looking for Build 22621.4112 or 22631.4112.) Then, spend the day letting your PC sink its sharpened teeth into Cinebench and 3DMark.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.
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